The man plopped the long-neck down and sat next to Logan. He reeked of alcohol and seemed a bit more aggressive than Logan desired. He was here on business and had no time to fight with anyone. There was no doubt about Ayla’s disposition. She looked forward and tried to stop her hands from trembling.
The stranger pointed toward the sky beyond the canopy of palm fronds, “You mean to tell me that with all that out there that there is no way that life exists anywhere but here?”
“No, that’s not what I am saying. We have no proof that there is any life out there. Even if there was life, the notion of traveling at light-speeds is just a fantasy. Take whatever titanium alloy, or the strongest metals on earth and build the most durable vessel or spaceship with it. Let’s just assume that we figure out how to travel at light speed; if the craft hit so much as a speck of dust it would be disintegrated. The nearest habitable planet is what…twelve light-years away? Is it realistic to think that it is possible to travel at that speed and distance and not hit anything? A meteor...nothing? I don’t think so. You would need to travel at least that fast to get back and forth to make the effort even worth it. It could take more than a lifetime to reach another planet. Do you really think these things spend their entire lives traveling here? Why?” Logan asked holding his hands open.
The man began to get louder and more animated, “What about the strange things people are saying? The fisherman, the merchant ships, all the people traveling out there are saying that they see things in the sky and in the water. Strange lights under the water, darting about at speeds unknown to us. What are they?”
“Military technology perhaps,” Logan became irritated by the man and was disinterested in the conversation. “Can you return to your seat on the other side of the bar. I don’t really want to continue this conversation. We should agree to disagree. You are not going to change my mind, nor I yours.”
Without any acknowledgment of Logan’s comments, the man leaned closer to Logan and continued, “They’re coming for us. They’re going to feed on us…all of us like we are human cattle.”
Logan was six-foot-two and two hundred and fifteen pounds. He stood and squared his shoulders and faced the man. The stranger stood up and was shorter, but much heavier. The drunk grabbed his beer by the neck and drug it off the bar. He stared at him for a second as if making the determination whether or not to accept the challenge. The man leaned to the side and looked at Ayla, then stumbled backward, turned, and walked down the path toward the resort.
“Do you know that man? I can’t help but notice that you seem afraid of him. Has he threatened you?” Logan asked.
“No.”
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“No worries. Thanks for getting rid of him, but you didn’t have to do that.”
“Can you tell me what is really going on here?”
“Not here, not now,” she replied while turning away. Ayla turned and looked down the sandy path toward the beach. The odd fellow on the bench was gone. Her idea seemed to have worked for the moment. Ayla wasn’t sure if she was simply experiencing a bout with paranoia but sensed that someone was still watching her. She looked back at Logan, “I take it you don’t watch the news much?”
“Well, my opinion of the news media isn’t very high. I just want news, the truth, and no spin. The national media is just a spin machine. No, I don’t watch the news, because I don’t trust them to be honest. They’re an asset to one political party and are trying to destroy the other. That’s not journalism, that’s not reporting, they’re a political tool. I look at them more of a tabloid…a place of lies and gossip.”
“So, you want the truth? Are you really interested in the truth?” Ayla asked looking at him no longer attempting to smile.
“The truth is always good,” he detected a degree of emotion that she was trying to hide. “Always, but what truth are we talking about here?” he asked before taking a drink from the bottled water. He thought it was an odd question which had further aroused his curiosity.
“How about that walk on the beach?” she asked looking to the left over her shoulder.
“Absolutely,” Logan took the green binder into his right hand and motioned toward the water. As they started down the path, she reached out and grabbed his left arm. He hardly knew the lady, but she was beautiful, and he was definitely interested in knowing her better. Meeting a woman on this trip was not on the radar and the situation caught him off guard. The trip was a matter of business, but he was very intrigued as to what she was about to reveal to him.
During the walk, they simply stared to their right at Petit Piton and the lush landscape of the resort. When they reached the water’s edge Ayla led him to the left and walked away from the sparsely crowded area of the beach in the direction of Gross Piton.
“New Zealand…seems beautiful there. From all that I have seen anyway,” Logan said trying to lighten the mood.
“I grew up there and moved to the states when I was twenty. My accent isn’t as strong as it used to be.”
“I like your accent. I saw the Lord of the Rings movies.”
“There’s no place like it in the world. Have you been there?”
“No. It’s a long flight and I really don’t like airplanes much.”
She paused and stared at him for a second reading his face attempting to discern his character. He was tall, well portioned and spoke intelligently. Ayla found him to be attractive but never found that to be a marker for trustworthiness. Many men that she had been attracted to seemed to let her down and were eventually proven to be unworthy of any investment of time and emotion. Telling her story to just anyone, despite the international scrutiny already levied against her, would be an ill-advised move. It was clear that the man standing before her truly had no idea who she was and no idea why she was being followed. Perhaps she was rushing things. It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t have a hundred questions or accusations about what they perceived as the truth about what happened. This didn’t seem to be a reporter lying to get information so that another hit piece could be written, or, another nut-job wanting to use her experience to justify a radical theology or agenda. Logan had no idea, and this attracted her more than any of his physical attributes. To tell him anything would possibly ruin even the slightest opportunity of a relationship between them. He would think she was either a liar or mad.
“Is there any evidence that would change your mind?” she asked with a raised brow.
“About?” he replied.
“What may be up there?” she noted while motioning to the sky.
He paused and looked at the incoming waves for a second. “When I was a kid, our immediate family, along with my uncles, aunts, and cousins would try to take a trip together about once a year. The beach, theme parks, the Keys…wherever. About twenty years ago they decided to go to the Smokey Mountains. They thought it would be fun to camp out by Cades Cove. I’m not sure if you know where that is.”
“I do,” she said with a slight nod.
“On our second night there, it appears that the girls, on a whim, decided to sneak out and go for a bike ride. A little over two miles from the campsite is an old cabin called the John Oliver Place. For some unknown reason, four girls ten to sixteen-years-old thought it was a good idea to ride their bikes to the cabin at midnight without telling anyone they were going. Of course, if they had told anyone they wouldn’t be allowed to go. But they snuck off.
“About two in the morning I heard my cousin Annie screaming…running into the camp. She was hysterical. It took a few minutes to calm her down to try and understand her. She wasn’t making any sense. She kept saying that something came from the sky and had taken them.
“Once we found out where they had gone, my father and uncles drove over there to see if the girls were there. But all they found was grass and trees. It was impossible to find any tracks. So many people walk around that cabin every day.
“According to my cousin, when they had reached the cabi
n, she decided to return…she didn’t want to get caught. The other girls wanted to sit on the porch facing the field and mountain and look at the stars. Annie said she heard them screaming, stopped and turned around. They were running for the tree line to hide in the woods. She said there was a large circular light hovering over the cabin, and she watched as the girls levitated toward it. They grabbed at tree branches out of desperation, but it didn’t help. The branches broke or slid from their grip. She said they just kept going up in the air toward this thing in the air. They did find some broken branches in the trees about twenty feet off the ground. No one really believed Annie’s story. We never found out what really happened…why three teenage girls disappeared without a trace. Their bodies were never recovered. She may still be out there somewhere. The police came up with every possible reason for the girls to disappear. Out of desperation they even tried to pin it on me. I was asleep when it happened. But we never will know.”
“Why didn’t you believe her?” she asked lifting her head up to get a better look at him.
“I don’t believe in alien abduction. I don’t believe that is what happened to my sister. When I hear people talking about it…it irritates me. I’ve never seen any proof of it. I’m not sure why Annie made the story up. Why didn’t she tell the truth? The whole thing was rather bizarre. Every year I go there on that date and sit at that cabin all night waiting for something to take me or to see anything that would support what she said. I scream and yell, shine lights into the air trying to draw something in. Outside of a shooting star, I never see anything. I don’t know what happened that night. All I know is that I never saw my sister again.” Logan became a little emotional. The conversation was getting a little too personal with someone he had just met.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say. She opened her mouth to share her story but got cold feet. Ayla touched his hand consoling him, “I know that was hard.”
“Yes, twenty years ago. I watched it nearly destroy my parents. When the search and rescue became a search and recovery, they were never the same people after that. Life was just one day after another. Nothing to look forward too really. Life had no enjoyment at all. Anyway, when I hear this alien abduction stuff…” he took on more of a defensive posture.
“Do you mind if I ask her name?” she said.
“Sonia…her name was Sonia. Look, I didn’t mean to dump all of that on you. Do you mind if we head back? I’m a little tired,” Logan said becoming disinterested in the conversation. Thinking of that night always had that effect on him.
“Yea, a bit knackered myself,” Ayla said almost relieved that she would not have to share her story with him that night.
Chapter 5
Logan had a difficult time sleeping. He couldn’t direct his thoughts away from the time he had spent with Ayla. She was beautiful, intoxicatingly so, without question, but some of her comments left his mind searching and wondering. A chance encounter…nothing more, he thought. The rational side of him wanted to focus on the task at hand and solving the issues of this beautiful unknown woman would complicate matters.
She was certainly a mystery. In particular, the comments about being seen on the news and being dumbfounded by his lack of knowledge as to who she was jabbed at him the most. Perhaps he should watch the news more, he considered. This thought was immediately kicked to the curb and dismissed. There was an unquenchable desire to know the truth. Questions of why people were following her repeated over and over in his mind to the point of becoming annoying. Logan was a thinker. His analytical mind was often very difficult to satisfy without a solid and unequivocal resolution. And in this case, that part of him, as it often did, was winning. She talked as if she had some kind of celebrity, but if that were the case, she wouldn’t have needed him. She wouldn’t have been alone in the first place.
He fruitlessly analyzed the information he could recall, which irritatingly demanded some answers. With no last name, there was no way to look her up and find out what she was talking about. Regardless, he doubted that her name was really Ayla anyway. It was certain that she used an alias. Bribing the lady at the desk may provide her real name but may come off as somewhat scandalous. She may have booked the room using the same alias which would yield nothing from an online search. He was not a private detective attempting to solve a great mystery; he was supposed to be a man trying to find a shipwreck. That was the mystery he needed to focus on. It was the one in which he had invested both time and money. Like an infatuated schoolboy, he just couldn’t push her out of his mind. It was madness. He was a grown man and had dated many beautiful women over the course of his life, but this mysterious one had stolen his focus.
Perhaps all of it was a clever lie, a setup. What if she was strategically placed there for the sole purpose of siphoning information about the Mujer de Verano out of him? Perhaps nothing about her was as she let on. Did she represent the interests of the Columbian government? But they weren’t in Columbia and they had no lawful claim on the island of St. Lucia. Did Phil tell anyone about their work and theory? He wondered. If what they suspected was true, and the contents of the San José were loaded onto the Mujer de Verano, then the wreck may be worth billions of dollars. People had manipulated and killed for far less. He decided, for what seemed to be the millionth time, that it would be better to forget about the woman and the matter completely. She was beautiful and men were undoubtedly attracted to her like a magnet. She probably experienced this most of her adult life.
The alleged stalker certainly wasn’t the first to be interested in her. It was scary and if the situation was real, he didn’t want anything bad to happen. The reality was that women were targets of violent crime all over the world. Logan decided that if he saw the man again, he would speak with him in a way that didn’t directly implicate Ayla but would ultimately get him to leave her alone. He would stay out of her way and allow her to enjoy the wedding and time with her friends. He and Phil would dive the locations detected by the side-scan sonar, and then deal with whatever resulted. This had to be his modus operandi.
After several hours of tossing and turning, he looked at the clock and decided to go to the balcony where he could better hear the rolling waves of the incoming tide as they met the sandy shore. Logan had always found the Caribbean air to be therapeutic. Perhaps the change of scenery would get his mind focused on other matters. The moon was nearly full as it lit up the atmosphere over the island. A thin line of clouds slid across the sky to the west. Despite the night, the island was beautiful. In the soft light, the pitons seemed much larger and more mysterious than he remembered from the evening.
The desired effect was achieved as his mind drifted off into the science behind the formation of the pitons. It was certainly intriguing how the two large oddly shaped sections of earth had formed nearly side by side. He wondered why more of them hadn’t formed. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming he recalled seeing two Tetons side by side, just like the Pitons on the island. Why? he wondered. “Wyoming has the Tetons and St. Lucia has the Pitons…what’s the difference?” he asked aloud. The Tetons were more than a hundred times the size and were a part of the Rocky Mountains…but Logan wasn’t sure if that was the reason and started to turn and retrieve his smartphone to look up the answer.
Someone below him was moving. He turned back to the left and looked down. The silhouettes of two men appeared. One was oddly similar to the man that had startled Ayla. The second looked like the driver from the transport. They were speaking just off the beach trail. The conversation was animated but brief. The two separated and the driver disappeared into the dark cover of the palm fronds from the densely populated trees. It was 1:00 in the morning and the creepy guy was up and walking down the path toward the beach. It was even stranger that he was talking to the weird guy that drove the transfer earlier. Perhaps it was just coincidence, a casual conversation while passing, but it seemed to be a little heated as if they were anxious about something. Some would find it odd to walk on the beach at
such an hour, but Logan also preferred the beach at night or in the early morning in comparison to the day. It was simply more peaceful, which was not necessarily due to the lack of people, although that was a positive quality. It was simply more relaxing.
After the conversation, the guy stopped and sat on the bench while looking back in the direction of the man who was now invisible to Logan. For whatever reason, Logan stepped back behind the French doors as to not be seen observing, while keeping the man in view. Was he trying to find Ayla, or was he about to do something he didn’t want anyone to see? Either way, he appeared mildly suspicious.
Intrigue got the better of him and Logan realized that he too needed a walk. This would be a good time to strike up a conversation with the odd fellow, possibly learn something about him, and perhaps get him to stop scaring Ayla. If the driver was there, he would speak to him as well. Perhaps this would put his distrust at ease.
Logan quickly changed his clothes and ran down the five flights of stairs, off the concrete patio, and onto the pavers that divided the sand making up the path. By the time he reached the bench, the man was gone. He turned in a full circle scanning the area, but there was no sight of him or the driver. Perhaps the guy returned to his room. Or, he was hiding in the thick foliage with the driver waiting to jump him if he should pass. Logan considered his options. He had to know what the man wanted and why he was following the woman. But he had abruptly disappeared.
Since any hope of getting sleep had long since faded, Logan decided to take the risk and make his way to the beach. With a renewed sensitivity to sounds or movement, he strode down the path with extreme caution but managed to hide his anxiety. The anticipation of being assaulted from the shadows consumed his thoughts for the moment. He neglected to pay attention to the walkway and when he reached its end gravity nearly took him for a tumble onto the sand. After regaining his composure, Logan saw a wooden beach chair just outside of a line of coconut palms and sat down. The idea of sitting in a chair under large palm trees was not very appealing considering that more people died annually from falling coconuts than shark attacks. Regardless, he would risk it for a few moments.
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