by Matthew Rief
“Are you going to call the hospital?” she asked, her voice groggy.
“Yes,” I replied right away.
She sighed.
“They’ll come get me.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She paused a moment. Had to think it over. More like had to decide how much she wanted to tell me. Sitting up in the hammock, she swung her legs over, then buried her face in her hands for a moment before looking up at me.
“I’m not going back,” she said.
I shrugged. “It’s not my call.”
She looked around the yard. “What if I run?”
“Then I’ll still call them,” I said. “Only difference is you won’t get any of my famous mango French toast.”
I could almost see her mouth watering behind her lips. Her expression softened.
“I don’t want to run. I feel safe here. That’s why I came.”
“You are safe here. You’re safe at the hospital, too.”
She was about to say something, but she stopped when she heard the sliding glass door open above us. I glanced up and saw Ange appear, wearing a white tank top and a pair of plaid pajama shorts. She peered down at us and couldn’t hide her surprise upon seeing Scarlett.
“Logan, why didn’t you tell me we had a guest?” she said from the second-level porch.
I glanced up at her and smiled.
“I wasn’t aware myself until a few minutes ago. Scarlett here snuck into the bed of our truck last night.”
“I’m impressed,” she said. “You must be smart. And stealthily quiet.”
“I am,” she stated.
“And humble,” I added sarcastically.
“I like a girl who’s confident,” Ange said with a laugh.
“We were just about to have some French toast,” I said.
Ange nodded.
“Sounds delicious. Scarlett, you look like you could use a hot shower.”
The young girl lit up and rose to her feet. “Could I ever.”
She must’ve spent half an hour in the bathroom. I guessed that she used just about all of the hot water in our fifty-gallon tank. She turned the knob so far into the red that steam made its way out the bottom of the door and managed to partly fog up our bedroom mirror.
Breakfast had been ready and cooling on the kitchen table for ten minutes by the time she stepped into the living room with a towel wrapped around the top of her head. She was wearing a pair of Ange’s denim shorts and a light blue Rubio Charters tee shirt.
She scarfed down three pieces of French toast, two strips of bacon, a pile of scrambled eggs, and two glasses of orange juice. All without a word aside from “thank you.”
Having finished eating already, I stepped out onto the deck. Grabbing my phone, I found the number for the hospital and pressed call. After a few rings, I got one of the front desk ladies. I told her what had happened and she was relieved to hear that Scarlett was safe. Apparently, they’d notified the police and had already begun to expect the worst.
After expressing her thanks, she transferred me to Dr. Patel. Patel was the head physician at the hospital. When he came on the line, he thanked me for taking care of her as well. He was in his early sixties, had a smooth and educated Indian accent, and always got straight to the point.
“If it’s alright with you, it might be good for her to stay with people she obviously trusts,” he said. “At least until CPS arrives.”
“She’s an orphan?”
“She’s been in and out of various foster homes for most of her life. I got the impression that this kind of behavior is nothing new for her.”
I paused a moment. I wasn’t surprised. Sex traffickers often target orphans. Some parents are willing to crawl through hell to get their little girls back.
“Any idea when CPS will get here?” I asked.
“They said by tomorrow afternoon. They have to travel down from Orlando. I can give you their contact info.”
He did so and I typed it into my phone’s note application.
“Alright, we’ll watch her, Doc.”
“Thank you, Logan. I’ll call CPS as well and let them know what happened.”
We ended the call and I headed back inside. Scarlett was still going to town on her breakfast, but her pace had slowed a little. I was amazed she had so much space given her thin build.
I sat down and after a few minutes of ravaging like a starving animal, she took a breath.
“You called the hospital?” she said, her eyes boring into mine.
I nodded. She bit her lip and looked down at the table.
“This is really good,” she said.
“Really?” Ange said. “I thought you hated it.”
She smiled for the first time. Showered and changed into clean clothes, she looked like a completely different girl than the one I’d seen the night before. Her eyes were vibrant, her freckle-spotted face pretty in the early-morning light. At fifteen, she was on the cusp of transitioning from a young girl into a beautiful woman.
Setting her fork down on her barren plate, she finished off the rest of her orange juice. She scanned back and forth between Ange and me.
“Thank you again for the food.”
“It’s our pleasure, Scarlett,” Ange said. “Feel free to eat as much as you like while you’re here.”
She paused a moment.
“Who are you guys?” she said, asking a question I could tell had been lingering in her mind for a while.
“I told you last night,” I said. “I’m Logan and this is my wife, Angelina.”
“Not your names. I mean, what do you do for a living?”
Ange and I exchanged glances. Scarlett leaned over the table toward us.
“I was blindfolded last night, but I heard everything,” she added. “You went from sounding like a clueless drunk guy to a grade A badass in the blink of an eye. People don’t do that kind of thing. Not without a whole lot of training anyway.” She glanced over at Ange without skipping a beat. “And you. You took care of us and remained composed the entire time. It was like you’d done it a hundred times. Most people would have freaked out. Most people’s pulses would’ve been well over a hundred beats per minute. I’m guessing yours never went above your resting rate.”
The table fell silent. Ange glanced over at me and smiled. She liked this girl. I assumed she reminded her of someone. A younger version of herself, perhaps.
“Let me guess,” Ange said. “You’re dad’s a doctor?”
“One of them was an EMT,” she blurted out, then placed a hand over her mouth like she’d said something she hadn’t wanted to.
I took in a deep breath and let it out.
“Alright, we’ll tell you who we are if you tell us your story,” I said. “And why it is that you don’t want to go back to the hospital.”
NINE
With Atticus restless and with the morning air warming up, we stepped out into the backyard. We sat around the patio, getting to know each other while taking turns tossing the tennis ball out over the lawn.
Scarlett led off. She told us about how she’d been living in various children and foster homes since she was four. She’d lived in seven different locations across Florida during that time. It wasn’t the system’s fault, she was quick to clear up. She believed they did the best that they could with her. But she had a free spirit, as she explained. She was restless and never felt like she’d found her home.
A few months earlier, she’d started messaging a guy she met online. They chatted for a while, then the guy said that he wanted to meet her. At the time, Scarlett was living at a group home in Miami after running away from her most recent foster home. She said that she snuck out in the middle of the night to meet the guy. Then, after leading her down a dark alley, a bunch of guys grabbed her. They injected her with something that knocked her out then loaded her into a van.
“Do you remember anything about them?” I asked. “The guys who
took you.”
“I told the investigator yesterday,” she said. “The guy wailing on the ground was the one I’d met. He’d said his name was William, but I’m sure that was a lie.”
“And do you remember anything from the drive down to the islands?” Ange asked.
Scarlett smiled.
“This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about,” she said. “Instead of talking about the weather, or your work schedule, or an upcoming dinner party, you’re trying to learn about the guys who took me. Like detectives or something. You’re trying to solve this whole thing on your own.”
Scarlett looked back and forth between us. Atticus showed up and dropped the saliva-covered tennis ball in the grass in front of her. She picked it up and tossed it across the yard.
“So?” she added. “Now it’s both of your turns. You’re secret agents or something, I’m guessing?”
“No,” I said. “I used to be in the Navy. After I got out, I became a mercenary. That’s how I met Ange.”
“Mercenaries? Aren’t they the bad guys?”
“Sometimes,” Ange said. “But we both vetted our jobs carefully. We were guns for hire, yes. But we never accepted a job if the ethics were in question.”
“So, you kill bad guys for a living?”
“Killed,” I said. “I told you we don’t do it anymore. But essentially, yeah. Every job’s a little different. Some were more intel gathering. Some asset protection. But yes, killing bad guys was usually involved.”
She fell quiet for a moment, mulling something over. Ange and I both waited for her to spit it out.
“Is it hard?” she said. “Killing people, that is. Like that guy last night. How do you feel afterward?”
I was taken slightly off guard. It was a good question. An important question. One that I’d never expect from someone so young.
I paused a moment but didn’t have to think long. I’d pondered such things for years. I never had a hard time dealing with it so long as the proper justification existed.
“Those guys who took you,” I finally said. “You’re not the first. Odds are they’ve taken hundreds of women. Innocent young girls on their way to school. Out with friends. Walking down a dark street.” I paused a moment, then continued, “Taken from everything they know. Drugged. Beaten. Forced to do things you can’t imagine. Then killed and tossed aside like smelly garbage. Do you think those guys deserved what I did to them?”
She swallowed hard. Nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re right. They did deserve it. So you don’t lose sleep over it?”
“No,” I said.
She glanced at Ange.
“Never,” she said. “You sure you’re fifteen?” she added with a smile.
Scarlett grinned at the compliment. Atticus showed up for what seemed like the hundredth round. If he was tired, he sure didn’t show it. Scarlett was a good sport. She grabbed the slobber-covered ball and tossed it again.
Turning back to us, she said, “So you’ve both fought a lot of bad guys before, then?”
I nodded.
“That’s a pretty unique job. What do you do now? For work, I mean.”
Ange and I exchanged glances. I gave her the floor.
“We don’t,” Ange said. “We’re retired.”
“You’re too young to retire.”
“You can retire at any age,” I said with a smile. “Though it’s more semi-retired. We get swooped up into adventures from time to time.”
We told her about a few of them—just summaries, really. The big pictures of various dangerous and exciting escapades we’d gotten ourselves into since we’d moved to the island chain. No gory details. Purely PG-13 versions.
She was intrigued, hanging on every word, and wanted to know more.
After half an hour of storytime, Atticus finally showed signs of fatigue. He ran with feigned enthusiasm, tennis ball lodged in his mouth, then plopped down in the grass beside Scarlett.
“You wore him out,” I said, rising to my feet and stretching. “It’s a miracle.” I glanced up toward the house and added, “Heading for a drink run. Either of you want anything?”
I took the girls’ orders, strode up to the kitchen, then returned with three glasses. Two lemonades and a glass of ice water. I handed the lemonades to the girls and looked out over the channel.
“What was that move you did on the dock?” Scarlett said after chugging down the entire glass. “The one you used to take down the first guy.”
“Just a standard hip throw,” I said. “With a broken arm added for kicks.”
“Judo, right?”
I looked at Ange, whose eyebrows were raised.
“You know martial arts?” I asked.
“Was one of your foster dads Mr. Miyagi?” Ange added.
Scarlett chuckled. She was so young that I was surprised she got the reference.
“Sort of. He was a taekwondo instructor. I lived in their house for almost two years and spent a lot of time at his dojang. Can you show me the move you did last night?”
I smiled and nodded. We migrated out onto the open grass and faced off. Ange leaned back, adjusted her sunglasses, then took a sip of lemonade.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll be me at first, and you’ll be thug number one. Now, come at me slowly with a right hook.”
She did so. I lunged toward her, grabbed her softly by the arm, rotated, and pressed my hips against her body as I dropped down. I was gentle and slow, and I talked through my moves. We repeated the action, reversing our roles. She was a quick learner.
“So what if it’s reversed?” she said. “What if one of those big guys had me from behind? What should I do?”
“No sweat. Even with the size difference, you’d just need to make a few tweaks to your technique.” I demonstrated the move.
Ange smiled and clapped when Scarlett replicated it. Using her body properly as leverage, she was able to lift me off the ground. In the heat of the moment, with her adrenaline pumping, I had no doubt she’d be able to perform the move successfully even on a bigger guy than me.
“Another great option is to just break their fingers,” Ange said. “The bones are fragile, so it’s easily done. It’s an underrated yet incredibly effective move.”
She was really excited to learn new defense moves. It was clear that she’d used her time with her instructor foster father well.
“Could you teach me to fight like you do?” she said after half an hour of sparring. “With guns and other weapons, I mean.”
I laughed. “Sure. But why would you need to?”
“Maybe I can do what you both did. I could travel and fight bad guys someday.”
Ange walked over and tossed us each a towel. “It’s a hard life,” she said. “Not for the faint of heart. Nor is it a decision to be made lightly.”
We wiped the sweat from our faces.
“How did you get into it?” Scarlett asked Ange. “You don’t look like a mercenary.”
“That’s why she was so good,” I said. “Among other reasons, of course.”
She patted Scarlett on the shoulder. “Mine’s a long story. Maybe someday I’ll tell you more, but for now, I was an orphan and had a strong disliking for evil men.”
“An orphan?” Scarlett said with a faint smile. “Like me.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, ruining the touching moment. I grabbed it and saw that I was getting a call from a good friend of mine, Scott Cooper.
“Excuse me,” I said and stepped over toward the house and up the stairs.
I entered through the side door, then plopped down on the living room sofa, where I had a three-way call with Scott Cooper and CIA Deputy Director Wilson. Scott and I went way back. We’d served together in the Navy, where we became good friends, and we’ve kept in close touch over the years. Smart and a natural leader, Scott was currently serving as a senator representing Florida.
“The Coast Guard did a thorough search of that freighter and came up empty,”
Wilson said, getting straight to the guts of it. He had a rich Georgia accent. “They also did background checks on the crew. They were all clean as can be. It’s possible that we could be wrong, but it appears as though the freighter wasn’t involved.”
“It had to have been involved,” I said. “I was there. I watched the scene unfold. The boat was less than two hundred yards ahead of us when the freighter came in. By the time it passed, it was gone.”
“I said it appears as though it wasn’t involved,” Wilson added. “But that doesn’t mean we’re ruling it out. Freighters smuggling illegal items is nothing new. Which is why we’re tracking it and all shipping activity more carefully.”
“There’s no reason why a freighter should have been that close to the Lower Keys, right?” Scott said.
“They shouldn’t have been that close, no,” Wilson said. “They were about eighty miles east of the normal shipping lane from Tampa to Havana.”
“How did they explain that?” I asked.
Wilson didn’t skip a beat. “The captain said their navigation equipment was malfunctioning,” he said. “Apparently, they just managed to correct it in time before running aground.”
We fell silent. None of us were buying that. The freighter had been off course, cruising at full speed, and the boat had disappeared behind it—one too many coincidences.
“I’ll contact you both once I have anything more,” Wilson said. “For now, good work bringing those guys down. We have the guy whose leg you shattered in custody and we’re hopeful we can get him to talk.”
We ended the call. I stood still for a moment, lost in thought, then stepped back out into the yard.
With Scott and Wilson on top of it, I was confident that it wouldn’t take long for one of them to dig up a lead.
TEN
After another hour of relaxing, intermittent sparring, and sharing a few pearls of wisdom, we decided to take the boat out for an afternoon on the water. With Scott, the CIA, and the Coast Guard tackling the missing boat mystery, there wasn’t much I could do to help. At least for the time being.
