Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

M oose wanted to follow along with Flynn’s sketchy synopsis of Rigger’s motive, but really, all he had in his brain was the feel of Tillie in his arms, the taste of her lingering on his lips, and the screaming of brakes, brakes! in his head.

So much for calm.

Or control. Sheesh , what had he been thinking, pulling her over to him, tucking her into his lap and kissing her?

Really kissing her, like he’d wanted to for months.

And as he’d expected, he’d lost himself.

Shoot . He knew better. Had made rules for himself years back, and again after coming home from war, and most recently when God had given him a second chance.

No drinking. Healthy eating. And he’d closed the door on romance—at least, until he’d met Tillie. And even then, it had taken him more than a year to ask her out. Not that he didn’t want a romance, but . . .

But after Pike’s story, he never wanted to be a man who walked away from a promise. And one of his promises was to focus on Air One, to be the rescuer God had saved him to be.

And then there was the fact that Tillie wasn’t a Christian. And as much as Moose’s heart stirred for her and Hazel . . .

He stood behind Flynn’s chair, gripping it, trying to focus as she sorted through her information, not looking at Tillie. Not hearing the words that had been about to leave his mouth on the porch. Tillie, I think we need to slow down.

“You’re right, Tillie,” Flynn was saying. “Matthew Lopez went missing over five years ago. He washed up on shore at the Newport Fishing Pier, his body badly decomposed, dead from unknown injuries. I reached out to a contact I have in the Miami Police Department, a friend of a friend. We’ll see if he can give us more information.”

Tillie nodded, her face hardening.

“As for Richer’s gyms, the Fight Factories, they are serviced by one security firm, Sentinel Vision Security, out of Hollywood, Florida. I’m going to call them in the morning, see how far back they keep their security tapes.”

That’s it? Moose looked at Axel. Probably a good thing he’d interrupted them, but?—

“That’s not the interesting part, however,” Flynn said. She was working on Moose’s computer, the glow against her face turning her hair a deep amber. “I kept asking, Why would Richer start a custody proceeding two years after Pearl and Hazel and Tillie disappeared? Why not sue immediately?”

“Maybe he was afraid of what I would do,” Tillie said.

“Maybe,” Flynn said. “But I watched the video on Pearl’s phone, Tillie. There are grounds there for assault with a deadly weapon, and he never filed a complaint against you for that, either.”

Tillie stiffened.

Flynn looked up at her. “I think you could reasonably counter with self-defense.” She smiled. “I’m just trying to think objectively here.”

Tillie nodded. Axel went over and pulled up a chair for her, tapped her shoulder, and she sank into it.

Flynn continued. “According to the current news, Richer is running for mayor against an incumbent whose platform is the fentanyl problem and the import of it through Miami harbors.”

“Richer’s against the control of fentanyl?” Moose said.

“No, of course not,” Flynn said. “He’s very outspoken about the drug problem. But his platform is for affordable housing, and he recently spoke at a gathering of people who want to legalize prostitution. Apparently, he says that criminalizing it makes the workers less likely to report crimes.”

“Probably wants to keep himself and his cronies out of jail,” Tillie said.

“It’s hard to believe that he’s seriously a candidate for mayor.” Moose folded his arms and wore his sentiment on his face.

“He’s just one of many,” Flynn said. “But let’s not forget that every presidential election, there are all kinds of alternative options, not just two parties. And in the lower offices, it gets really muddy. Especially since most people assume that politicians are crooked.”

“True, but sad,” Axel said.

Flynn nodded. “Consider his list of donors. Like ‘Speak for Peace,’ a group that advocates for socialism, and ‘New Era,’ a think tank that nationally supported communist candidates.”

“That is crazy,” Tillie said. “He’s not socialist; I can guarantee that.”

“Could be he’s just trying to support what will get him elected,” Axel said.

Flynn nodded. “So you need to ask why. Why does he want to run for mayor? And I don’t believe it’s because of what he espouses on his website—to create a fairer and more equitable Miami.” She turned back to the computer. “So, again, I had to ask . . . why? What does it gain him to run for mayor? Or to sue for custody of a child he hasn’t seen for five years and seemingly doesn’t want?”

Silence.

“The answer might be this.” Flynn had opened a new tab to a news article from the Miami Herald . “It’s an article about the joint operations between the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force—and a private anti-drug-trafficking organization that apprehended smugglers carrying ten kilos of fentanyl. Apparently, the private organization worked to help the DEA by infiltrating and conducting controlled purchases. The smugglers were arrested with enough illegally manufactured fentanyl to kill five million people.”

More silence.

“By the way, the drugs were in powder form, in mini packets of muscle powder.”

“Like the kind sold at a gym?” Tillie said.

“Yes. The article doesn’t say, but during the arrest, one of the men was killed. Here’s a picture of the smugglers.” Flynn opened up another screen and now pointed to a man on the screen. “This one look familiar?”

Moose leaned in as Tillie drew in a breath. “That’s Rigger’s brother.”

“Yes. He was the one who died.”

“So Rigger’s brother was transporting drugs,” Moose said. “And was killed by the cops.”

“Or the private organization—the article doesn’t say. But I did find this.”

She opened another tab—Moose noticed about ten more on her bar.

“About four months after the drug bust on Rigger’s brother, a Miami DEA agent was kidnapped and later found murdered. This is an article about the execution-style murder of his wife and daughter a few weeks prior to his disappearance.”

“When was this?” Moose asked, his voice low.

“The original bust? About three years ago.”

“That could be a coincidence,” Axel said. “But she also found another article. Show them, babe.”

She opened another tab. “This was a drive-by shooting. Occurred outside a school—a girl, seven years old, killed, her mother wounded.”

She looked over at the group. “The woman worked as a DEA agent. She was a single mom.”

“Any arrests?” Moose asked.

“Yes. He was a member of the Southern Syndicate.”

“The what?” Moose asked.

“The same organization that Richer’s brother worked for,” Flynn said.

“So Rigger is involved in organized crime,” Tillie said. “That, I can believe.”

“You think Rigger—or at least the Southern Syndicate—is targeting people who killed his brother?” Moose asked.

“I do. It’s just a hunch, but tomorrow morning I’ll get on the phone with my contacts in Miami.”

Moose glanced at Axel. “I still don’t understand. . . . What does this have to do with Tillie and Hazel?”

“Yeah. Good question. So . . .” Flynn glanced at Axel, then Tillie. Took a breath. “Okay, so the papers named the DEA agent who was the victim of the drive-by—Amaia Carrero. I looked her up, and that’s how I discovered she worked for the DEA. But I also found her page on Facebook. And then I found pictures of her daughter’s memorial service.”

Flynn opened the Facebook page and started to scroll through the pictures, stopping at one of a group of men dressed in dark suits, standing at what looked like parade rest, dark glasses, behind a seated woman.

“To be clear, these were pictures where she was tagged—she didn’t put these up. So I followed the tagger and discovered she is the wife of a marine, or rather former marine. A Raider.”

Tillie glanced at Moose. He gave her a nod.

“So I went back and scrolled through the pictures on Carrero’s feed, and I found one—again, not hers, but tagged by this same woman, the wife of the Marine Raider. It was taken six months prior—I think it’s at a barbeque. And I think the same men are in it.” She opened the picture.

A group of men sat together in lawn chairs. One of them held a little girl on his lap, his arm around Amaia. “I’m not sure who the man with Amaia is, but the tagger is Gloria Belafonte. I think this is her husband, Luca Belafonte.” She pointed to an Italian-looking man in the group. “I figured out his name after reading through her post about their Fourth of July party. I did a global search and discovered that Lance Corporal Luca Belafonte was awarded the Silver Star, along with two other Raiders who had been captured by the Taliban in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan in 2007. They were liberated in 2012 during an insurgent capture in the Badghis Province.”

“I remember hearing about that,” Tillie said. “I was learning Dari at the Defense Language Institute out in California.”

“Was that all you heard?” Flynn asked, looking at her.

“I was taking my final exams and then getting ready to leave, so I don’t remember much. And my sister had run away from the foster home, so that sort of consumed my thoughts.”

Moose frowned at Flynn. “What do you mean, was that all she heard?”

Flynn swallowed, glanced at Moose. “I’m just . . . I don’t . . .”

“Flynn,” Moose said. “Just tell us.”

“Right. Okay. So there is a picture of the Silver Star ceremony at the White House.” She clicked on the tab and turned her computer toward the group. “For Lance Corporal Luca Belafonte, Gunnery Sergeant Price Henry, and . . .”

“Master Sergeant Declan Young,” Tillie said on a wisp of breath. She leaned forward. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“He looked like the picture in Hazel’s locket,” Flynn said softly. “She showed it to me while we were waiting for the social worker. That, and Pearl’s picture.”

“He still has his dark hair,” Tillie said, her voice breaking. “He was—is—Black Irish. Descendant of the Spanish traders.”

“He’s very handsome. Striking, really,” Flynn said. “Memorable.”

“Yes,” Tillie said, her voice a little small and tight.

Moose couldn’t move. “Tillie, is that your . . . your father ?”

She looked over at him, swallowed, and her face had whitened. She nodded.

“Her father is alive ?” He stood up.

“It’s possible,” Flynn said. “That was twelve years ago. But he’s pictured here too.” She returned to the Facebook page, the men with the dark glasses around Amaia. She pointed to one. “This is him, I think.”

Same rugged jawline, same build. Even Moose could see it. “What does this have to do with Rigger?—”

“You think these are the guys in the private organization, working with the DEA task force,” Tillie said.

“I do,” Flynn said. “And I think that the Southern Syndicate is slowly punishing them for the death of Karl Richer.”

“As in, Julian is punishing them,” Tillie said. “By killing the people they love.”

“Yep.”

“And he thinks by finding me . . . Wait. He filed for custody to track me down—but I thought it was because I knew about Matthew Lopez.”

“Could be . . . or . . .” Axel said, a brow raised.

“Maybe he was looking for Pearl. But he didn’t know Pearl had died, and by getting the judge to issue a warrant on her—and you—for noncustodial kidnapping, and because you’d taken her across state lines, he could make it nationwide. . . .”

“And find me.”

“And find you,” Moose said, chilled. “And that’s why he wants Hazel—because he knows you’ll follow her, wherever he takes her.”

“All the way back to Florida,” said Flynn. “Where your dad is working undercover. And then Julian flushes out the person he’s really looking for.”

“And takes his revenge.” Tillie sat back. She was blinking hard, and Moose kneeled down next to her chair. “But how did my dad end up in Miami?”

“If I was gone for five years and my children were missing, I’d cross the country to find them. And keep looking in the last place they were seen,” Moose said, his jaw tight.

“Miami,” she said.

Moose lifted a shoulder. Then, as she put her hands over her face, he put his arms around her and pulled her softly, but firmly, to himself.

So much for brakes. Moose didn’t have a hope of holding on to his heart.

And she was supposed to sleep?

Tillie studied the wood-paneled ceiling of the lower-level bedroom, Flynn’s soft breathing rhythmic in the other twin bed, and tried to ground herself in Flynn’s words.

Her dad, Declan Young, alive .

Alive and searching for her? Maybe, because Moose’s words kept rounding back to her. “If I was gone for five years and my children were missing, I’d cross the country to find them. And keep looking in the last place they were seen.”

More, why hadn’t the military informed her of his return? Maybe they had discharged him and left him to do that.

So. Many. Questions. She rolled over, her gaze at the window, the darkness still deep, still obscuring the mountains, even the stars.

Blackness—outside and in her brain.

She’d rather think about Moose and the way he’d pulled up a chair as they’d searched the Facebook pages of Amaia and Luca and others. The way he’d put his arm over the back of her chair, protective even if he didn’t realize it.

Sadly, she’d found no more pictures. Her father was a ghost, so maybe, in fact, it hadn’t been him. But even as the others went to bed, as she lay in bed tracing her father’s profile in her brain, she knew.

She could almost hear his laughter, the sometimes-Irish brogue he’d brought out from his parents that made her giggle. The way he’d read stories to her and Pearl, sitting on her bed. The smell of him, an aftershave she’d never nailed down.

Alive . The thought simply took everything out of her.

Especially if she let herself imagine what he’d gone through or how he’d survived all those years. But if her dad was the hero she knew he was, he’d still be fighting for the safety of his children. Of his country.

Against men like Rigger, who fought for no one but himself.

Thank God—and yes, that was the answer—she’d left town with Pearl and Hazel.

And that thought sat her up.

She’d never thought of her desperate actions being . . . good.

Or simply used for good, like Moose had said.

“Faith that God knows what he’s doing. Faith that everything, for someone who trusts God, works together for good.”

What if it wasn’t a platitude?

Her throat was parched, probably from all the crying. She got up, pulled off the coverlet, wrapped it around herself, and headed out into the main room, shutting the door softly behind herself.

Darkness bathed the room, but she turned on a light, hoping it didn’t drain the solar batteries, then headed toward the water container in the kitchen.

Moose had filled it from the river, a filter in the container siphoning out the impurities. She took a glass, filled it, then walked out into the room.

The computer had died and sat dark, and frankly, she was tired of trying to track down clues. Instead, she walked over to the bookcase, to a lineup of novels on one of the shelves. A few Jack Carr novels, a ragtag edition of The Thorn Birds , and the Jason Bourne series by Ludlum.

And a Bible. Huh .

She pulled it out. Thick, with a cracked leather binding, it seemed like something a person wouldn’t leave behind. Unless they did all their big thinking here, in God’s country, under the shadow of the Denali and the ribbon of the northern lights.

She brought the Bible over to one of the cigar chairs and sank into it. A frayed red ribbon dangled from between the pages. Setting the book on her lap, she opened it to where the ribbon lay.

The Psalms. She’d heard her mother talk about a psalm. About it being a song of a shepherd. Or maybe they were all songs of a shepherd. But this Bible had markings in it, highlights and notes jotted in the margins, and stars and exclamation points and red underlining the bottom half of the psalm.

She read the words slowly, felt them splash upon her soul. “ If you say, ‘The Lord is my refuge,’ and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.”

She could almost hear Moose’s low voice from last night. “God keeps in perfect peace the man—or woman—whose mind is fixed on him, because we trust him.”

Faith.

She leaned her head back. It always came back to faith.

Moose’s words wrapped around her. “The question is, If you know that God wants to rescue you, what is holding you back from reaching out?”

“Morning.”

She looked up, and Axel had come into the room. Barefoot, he wore jeans, a half-buttoned flannel shirt, his hair behind his ear, just as devastatingly handsome as his brother, just as brave, but still they seemed so different. Axel outgoing, impulsive, heroic. Moose quiet, deliberate, protective.

“Morning.” She closed the Bible.

“What are you reading there?”

“I found it on the shelf.”

He sat on the other chair, reached out his hand. “Can I see?”

She handed it over, and as she did, it flopped and out dropped a letter. “Oops.”

He took the Bible. She picked up the letter.

Unopened. Return to sender was stamped on the front. She put it on the arm of the chair.

Axel had opened the Bible to the ribboned mark. “Psalm 91. Yeah, that’s a good one. A friend of my mother’s had a canvas made of this verse with her name in it. She gave it to her when she had cancer.”

“She had cancer?”

“Years ago. Breast cancer. She’s fine—all clear. But I remember her memorizing this psalm, repeating it to herself. Made me do it too, and put my name in it.” He gave a chuckle. “‘Because Axel loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him; I will protect him, for Axel acknowledges my name. Axel will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show Axel my salvation.’”

He looked over at her. “It still sort of blows me away. I need to remind myself of this more often, probably.”

She stared at him.

“You try it.” He held the Bible out to her.

“No, that’s okay.” She held up her hand, not sure why. Maybe it just felt too intimate, too real.

Too much hope.

He narrowed his eyes at her, then set the Bible down on the table between them. “You okay? Pretty heavy stuff last night.”

“Yeah. I’m just trying to get my head around the idea that my dad isn’t missing anymore.”

“Yep.”

She swallowed. “Do you think God used my running to Alaska to, you know . . .”

“Protect you?”

She lifted a shoulder, because suddenly that sounded so hokey.

“Absolutely. You may not know how God is at work, but I can tell you that he always is. I might not have said that a couple months ago, but then God saved my life through—and this is going to sound equally crazy—through a ham radio. Flynn was on the other end and my ship was going down and I was trapped and in the middle of a storm and . . . it’s a long story. But God completely spared my life and then . . . well, he wasn’t finished. So yeah, if you ask me, God is at work even if we don’t believe it.”

“Or deserve it?”

“Especially if we don’t deserve it. Fact is, that’s his specialty. Rescuing the lost, the broken, the guilty.”

“Why?”

“Because he is love. That is the very nature, the character, of God. That’s why we can have hope—because it’s not about us but him. His faithfulness.”

“And we’re back at faith.” She smiled.

“We’re back at love.” Axel winked, then stood up. “All I know is that God is sovereign. And even I can’t screw that up. I hope Moose brought some coffee in that pack.” He headed into the kitchen.

“I did.”

She looked behind her, and Moose had come down the stairs. He glanced at Axel, heading into the kitchen, then at her. “You’re up early.”

“Yeah. I guess it’s a thing.”

He was barefoot too, his hair tousled, a slight dark layer of whiskers on his chin, and he wore the same attire as his brother, the Mulligan flannel and jeans.

A longing for her sister washed over her. Her dad would be devastated at Pearl’s death when she told him.

No. If. If she told him. In fact—“If Rigger is trying to find me so he can do something terrible in revenge, the very last thing I can do is go back to Florida. In fact, it might be better if my dad didn’t know where I was, ever.”

Moose had sunk down into the chair Axel had just vacated. He put his hands on the arms. Looked over at her. Nodded. “I thought that too. Because if your dad finds you, then?—”

“Then Rigger kills me and wins.”

He gave her a grim look. “I’ll call Ridge today and see if we’ve gotten any traction on the custody appeal. Could be his team has uncovered some of the same things we have—and if not, Flynn can fill him in.” He reached over to the Bible. “Pike’s Bible. Where’d this come from?” He picked it up and opened it to the psalms. “Hey, that’s my mom’s favorite psalm.”

“Axel has it memorized.”

“I have it memorized too. ‘Because Arlo loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him. . . .’”

“Arlo? From your grandfather?”

He looked over at her. “Good memory.”

“I like Arlo. It’s a good name.”

He closed the Bible, then looked over at the letter on the arm of her chair. “What’s that?”

“It fell out of the Bible.” She handed it over. “A return-to-sender letter.”

He looked at it and his expression slacked. “This was to his son, years ago.” He studied the stamp. “Seven years ago. Before I met him.”

“You said he couldn’t find him. Could be because he moved away, no forwarding address.”

“Yeah. But I never had his name. And . . . given Flynn’s detective skills . . .” He looked at her. “I’m going to find him.”

Something about the smile on his face, the light in his eyes . . .

“You see what God did here?” he said.

Oh. But yes, maybe . Then he grinned at her, and the dawn seemed to cascade into the room, the night gone, the sunshine filling her soul.

Maybe this was what faith felt like. She stared at Moose, hearing his words. “You have to be willing to be rescued. And that starts with acknowledging that you need rescue.”

The door to the bedroom opened, and Flynn came out, staring at her phone.

She looked up at Tillie, her face so stricken that Moose got up.

“What?”

“I just got a text from Dawson. Hazel and her social worker were on their way to meet with her guardian ad litem this morning and were run off the road.” She looked up, and her eyes were wet. “Hazel’s gone.”