by Matt Lincoln
Three hours, a fresh change of clothes, and a strong cup of coffee later, Holm, Olivia, and I were standing outside of the Grace Bay Police Station interrogation room. A medical examination had confirmed that, though he might have a mild concussion, he didn’t need any further medical treatment and could be interrogated right away.
It was nearly midnight by that point, and though I’d felt a little tired earlier, I was now buzzing with energy.
“Are you ready to go in?” Captain Morris asked us. He’d accompanied us down to the interrogation room personally, eager to see the man who had committed unspeakable crimes in his town get his comeuppance.
“Yeah, we’re ready,” I replied.
He opened the door to let us in, and Holm, Olivia, and I stepped inside.
Samuel was sitting in front of the large table in the room, his shoulders slumped forward and an angry scowl on his face.
“Hello Samuel,” I greeted him acerbically as I sat down across from him. Holm and Olivia both sat down on either side of me.
“What do you want?” he grumbled.
“We need to have a talk,” I answered him curtly.
“What?” he scoffed. “You caught me red-handed. You won, agents. What the hell else do you want from me?”
“You’re right.” Olivia glared at him. “We did catch you, and you’re going to rot in a prison cell for the rest of your life, but before you do, I need you to tell me about them.”
He pulled two photos out of her bag. One was of Eddy, and the other was a picture of Allison’s body from the morgue. She slammed them down on the table in front of him.
“What is that?” Samuel sneered as she reached for the photo of Allison.
“She is Allison Newark,” Olivia corrected him with a snarl. “She was one of the women you and your men were keeping captive. You knew her as Cat.”
“Oh, her,” he huffed with a shrug. “I barely recognized her. She looks like hell.”
Even though she was sitting a foot away from me, I could practically feel Olivia tensing with anger at his rude response.
“Yeah, well, if she hadn’t sailed from here to Miami in a tiny fishing boat, maybe she wouldn’t be in that state,” I retorted.
“Right, right,” he muttered. “She’s the one that took off a few weeks back with Antonio’s kid. I told that idiot keeping them around was a stupid idea. Looks like I was right.”
He was smirking as though he found all of this funny. It pissed me off.
“Allison was kidnapped from her parents nearly twenty years ago,” Olivia continued calmly, though I could tell she was annoyed. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Of course,” the man grinned, exposing his gnarled and yellowed teeth. “I’m the one who grabbed her.”
“You what?!” Olivia exclaimed.
“Just what I said,” Samuel cackled. “I was just a grunt worker back then. I had a part-time job as a custodian at the hotel she and her parents were staying at. I still remember that day. I knew the moment I saw her that she’d fetch a huge price. Blond hair and blue eyes, and milky white skin, too. You don’t find girls like that here, aside from the tourists. Clients will pay a lot more for a girl with her looks.”
“She was a child!” Olivia gasped as she stood up, her chair dragging across the floor with a scrape.
“So?” Samuel shrugged. “She was going to grow up eventually, and boy, did she grow up fine, eh?”
I literally shuddered at the way he chuckled at his own disgusting thoughts. I glanced over at Olivia. She was glaring at Samuel with a look of unbridled hatred, and for a moment, I was genuinely concerned that she was about to attack him. After a few seconds, though, she slowly sat back down.
“I was right, too,” Samuel continued. “She was a big money-maker. At least until Antonio went and knocked her up. I told him to arrange for her to get rid of it, but he insisted that he wanted her to have it. We had other girls by then, younger ones, so it wasn’t a big deal.”
“You’re a monster,” I uttered, unable to hold back any longer.
“Ha!” he scoffed at my insult. “You think I haven’t heard it all? I’m no monster, boy. I’m a businessman. I’ll bet you make a pittance doing that little government job of yours. You go out, risk your life, spend all day getting shot at, and for what? Meanwhile, I’m here, basking in paradise and getting rich off the backs of others.”
“You’re sitting in a police station,” I deadpanned in response. “And you won’t ever be a free man again, I can assure you of that. Say whatever you want, but you’re going to pay for everything you’ve done.”
Samuel’s face scrunched up like he’d just smelled something rotten.
“Whatever,” he replied petulantly.
“Captain Turner,” Olivia suddenly spoke up. “From the Kew Town police station. Is he working with you?”
“Turner?” Samuel raised an eyebrow at her. “Why do you want to know? What’s in it for me if I talk?”
“You’re in no position to be making bargains,” Olivia snapped angrily at him. “Answer the damned question.”
“Alright, alright.” Samuel shrugged. “I guess if I’m going down, I might as well take him with me! Yeah, he is, in a way. He uh… looks the other way, if you know what I mean. And In return, I give him a small cut of our monthly earnings.”
“That explains why he kept trying to hinder our investigation,” Holm muttered.
“What a shock,” Olivia scoffed bitterly.
“One more question before we go, Samuel.” I kept my voice as even as I could. My skin was crawling just being near this unimaginable monster, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. “You said that you were the one who grabbed Allison all those years ago. How long has this group been operating?”
“Oh, hell if I know,” he shrugged. “I’ve been working for them practically my whole life. Worked my way up, right to the tippy top.”
He smirked proudly as he spoke, and it made me sick.
“Yeah, well, it’s all going to end here,” I told him as I stood up. “You’re going to be extradited to the United States, and you’re going to spend the rest of your miserable life locked in a tiny box. Everything you dedicated your life to has come crashing down, and I hope you die angry about it.”
He glared at me as I turned to leave the room, Holm and Olivia following closely behind me.
As soon as the door closed behind us, Olivia buried her face in her hands and let out a long, anguished groan.
“You cannot imagine how close I was to doing something I would have regretted,” she said as she ran a hand through her hair.
“Oh, I think I can,” I scoffed.
“How can someone be so cruel?” Holm grimaced. “I mean, being a jerk is one thing, but he seemed almost proud while he was talking about everything he did.”
“He was proud,” Olivia huffed. “That’s the whole reason he talked to us so easily. It gave him a chance to brag about everything he’d done.”
“I need a shower,” Holm grumbled. “Or maybe two, after that interrogation.”
“I hear you,” I sighed. “But what’s important is that we caught him. According to what Samuel said, we put a stop to a group that had been operating for decades. He’s going to spend the rest of his life rotting in prison. Let him brag all he wants in there.”
“You’re right,” Olivia replied. “At least now, we can give the Newark family some closure, too. We were able to get justice for Allison.”
I smiled as I thought about how we’d managed to pull a twenty-year-old case to a close. It was unfortunate that Allison hadn’t survived, but Eddy and all the other women were now safe because of her.
“Okay,” I declared. “Let’s head back to Captain Morris’s office. We need to sort out all the extradition details.”
“Great,” Holm sighed as we made our way down the hall. “My favorite part of any case. Paperwork.”
31
Ethan
I triple-ch
ecked to make sure I had everything on my list before heading to the checkout. It had been a few weeks since we’d gotten back home from Turks & Caicos, and I’d invited Olivia over to celebrate both the conclusion of the case and the fact that she’d been released from her arm sling. We were both so busy that it had taken a few days for us to both find a day when we were free to meet up. We’d finally managed to sort it out, and I’d decided to run to the store to pick up some ingredients to make dinner. Olivia had sounded really enthusiastic about the idea of me cooking.
As I scanned my purchases, I thought back to everything that had happened since that final interview with Samuel. He’d been extradited, of course, and was currently awaiting trial. Captain Turner, too, had been taken into custody by local authorities in Turks & Caicos for the part he’d played in helping the traffickers get away with their crimes. Olivia had been giving me updates about the women we’d rescued as well. Apparently, the FBI was making sure that they were all receiving the help and support they needed and helping those kidnapped, like Allison, return to their homes.
I felt content as I loaded the groceries into my car. Ultimately, the case had turned out as well as we could have hoped.
I parked my car at the entrance to the dock where my boat was and retrieved the bags from the trunk. As I did, I noticed two men carting a massive crate on a dolly between them. I wondered vaguely what it could be and who might have bought it. I peered around the lid of my trunk to watch them, and my curiosity quickly turned to confusion as I realized they were heading straight for my boat.
I was about to call out to them to ask what they thought they were doing, but another voice beat me to it.
“Over here!” Olivia called from the deck of my boat as she waved to the two men.
I was surprised to see her there already, though honestly no less confused. I decided to forget about the groceries for the moment and closed the trunk before walking briskly toward where my boat was docked on the water.
“How am I supposed to get it in here, though?” I heard her say to herself.
“What even is it?!” I called out to her.
“Ethan!” She jumped in surprise at my voice. “I didn’t realize you were back already. Dang, you couldn’t have taken a little longer at the store?”
“What?” I chuckled as I watched the two men set the crate down in front of my boat. “What is this?”
“It was supposed to be a surprise.” She pouted as she climbed down off the boat before turning to address the two men. “It’s fine right there. We’ll figure it out from here.”
“We will?” I stared at her in disbelief. “You think you could clue me in a little?”
“I pulled some strings.” She shrugged demurely before smirking at me. “Remember Richard? The antique store owner? Well, the FBI needed to do an investigation on him as part of the case, and wouldn’t you know it, most of the stuff in his store was stolen, or otherwise illegal for him to own in some way.”
“Okay…” I replied nervously, afraid to even dream that this was going where I thought it was.
“So, naturally, we had to confiscate all of it,” Olivia continued with a sly smile. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that we found in there. Apparently, they found some rare piece of Polynesian pottery in there, hundreds of years old and worth thousands. How did he even come across something like that?”
“Is there an ancient Polynesian vase in that crate?” I asked her.
“Nope.” She grinned. “Something even better. See, I knew that with so much rare and priceless evidence to go through, it was unlikely that anyone was going to miss some grubby old anchor.”
“You’re kidding,” I breathed, unable to keep the smile off my face.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” She smirked as she leaned back against the crate. “I’d say you owe me one hell of a dinner for this one, Marston.”
I reached out to pull her to me and crashed my lips against hers, unable to contain myself anymore. She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me back.
“Maybe we should take this inside,” she murmured. “Unless you want to give all of your neighbors a free show.”
I took her hand and led her onto the boat, groceries entirely forgotten at that point. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever received a gift this amazing, and right now, I wanted to shower Olivia with as much gratitude as I could.
We spent the rest of the day together, and it wasn’t until much later, after we’d finally had that dinner, that I finally noticed the missed call on my phone. I’d been so preoccupied that it wasn’t until late at night when I was in bed that I even looked at my phone for the first time since Olivia had arrived.
I was surprised to see that Tessa had called me earlier that day, around the same time that Olivia had gotten there. She hadn’t left a voice message, but she had texted me. As soon as I opened the message, my eyes went wide, and I nearly dropped my phone.
Ethan, call me back ASAP. They opened the chest!
I was so stunned that I read the message twice just to make sure I’d gotten it right. She was, of course, talking about the old treasure chest I’d found inside a sunken pirate ship a few weeks earlier. I couldn’t believe that, on top of the anchor, I was about to find out what was inside that old chest.
I got out of bed immediately, all thoughts of sleep instantly gone at Tessa’s message. As I crept my way out of the room and up onto the deck to call her back, my head was filled with thoughts of how I was getting closer and closer to finally finding the Dragon’s Rogue.
Epilogue
“Wow,” Jeff muttered solemnly as I pulled the story to a close. “Man, that was a rough one.”
“Yeah.” Charlie frowned. “I got shivers just hearing you talk about the way Samuel acted. I can’t imagine how bad it must have been to be there.”
“It was unsettling.” I nodded. “You could tell that he really felt no remorse about the things he’d done.”
The kids were all quiet and serious. Even Ty, who was usually the most boisterous of the bunch, was staring thoughtfully ahead.
“But he did end up paying for it, right?” Jeff asked. “What happened at the trial?”
“Oh, the judge threw the book at him,” I replied. “He died in his prison cell, just like I told him he would.”
“Good,” Mac replied with a firm nod. “Although it doesn’t make up for what those poor women had to go through.”
“Yeah,” Charlie chimed in. “What happened to all the women?”
“Olivia made sure they were all well taken care of.” I smiled fondly. “She was absolutely devoted to her job and the victims she helped. She made sure that the ones who wanted to go back home got there and that the ones who just wanted a new start, like Daniela, got that too.”
“So, Daniela wasn’t with the traffickers?” Jeff asked as he leaned his elbows onto the bartop. “I mean, she acted kind of sketchy, and even that one girl, Jenny, said she didn’t really trust her.”
“Daniela was a victim just as much as any of them,” I replied as I took a sip of my drink. It was always a little hard to recall the details of some of these more brutal cases, and a nice shot of liquor helped dull the sting. “It turned out that she’d been there for a really long time, about as long as Allison had, though she was much older when she was kidnapped. Working as a sort of warden for the traffickers was just a survival mechanism. She did what she had to do to survive, and in the end, it was beneficial to us since the men trusted her enough that she was able to help us with our plan.”
“Man, that’s sad.” Ty shook his head. “Having to work with the enemy just to survive? That must mess with your head.”
“I think so too.” I nodded. “Maybe that’s why she wanted to have a clean start. Last I heard, she took off to someplace in Europe, as far away from Turks & Caicos as she could get.”
“I don’t blame her,” Mac snorted before taking a sip of her beer. “Oh, and what happened to Eddy? Did he get to stay with his
Grandma?”
“Of course.” I smiled in response. “There were a few issues with social services and such. He was severely malnourished, developmentally delayed, and just in a very bad state when he was found. They needed to make sure they did right by him, but Olivia was there every step of the way to make sure that he got back to his grandmother and aunt as soon as possible.”
“That’s good,” Charlie replied. “I’m glad the little dude got a happy ending. I can’t imagine being, what, five years old? Going through all the stuff he did? Little man’s a fighter.”
“He is,” I agreed. “He's doing well, too. His aunt, Christina, kept us updated for a few years. From what I heard, he made it into a pretty prestigious university a few years back.”
“What about Olivia?” Jeff suddenly changed the subject with a sly smirk. “Seems like she was competing with Tessa there at the end with the Dragon’s Rogue stuff.”
“Answering texts from a woman while you’re in bed with another one,” Mac shook her head in mock disapproval. “For shame, Ethan.”
“Hey, it was an important text!” I replied with a chuckle. “I needed to answer it. And Olivia did stick around for a while.”
“Oh, really?” Charlie asked. “I wanna hear more about that.”
“What?” Jeff scoffed at him before turning to look at me. “Man, forget that. I want to hear about the Dragon’s Rogue. Come on, you can’t leave us hanging. What was inside the chest?”
“Oh, would you look at the time?” I teased them as I pretended to glance at the clock on the wall. “It’s getting pretty late. I think we should call it a night.”
“What? No!” Ty groaned. “You always do this!”
“Then you should be used to it by now.” I smirked. “Another time, kids. If I keep going, we’ll be here all night.”
“Okay,” Jeff sighed as he finished his drink and hopped off the stool. “But I’m holding you to that. The next time we come back, you better tell us what was in there.”
