What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 4)

by Selena Kitt

  The girls stepped back to stand in the doorway while the two men lifted the old set of stairs and moved it off to one side. Unloading the largest piece of the new set first, they butted it up against the trailer. They then grabbed the second half and lowered it into position. Large squares of decking were laid down on top.

  And just like that she had a small porch. Jade bounced on her toes. “Is it safe to stand on?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Dane watched Jade run up and down the stairs like a kid at a new playground. And all because of such a simple thing. Her lab coat bounced as she moved. She had to be dying in the heat with jeans and a t-shirt underneath. But then, in her place, he’d also want an extra layer or two between him and the skeletons she worked on every day.

  She laughed.

  He grinned. Good. She was way too serious. If something like this gave her a kick then he was all for it. Meg followed Jade up to stand on the little deck. It appeared bigger with the two women on it.

  “Will that work for you?”

  Jade smiled and her eyes gleamed. “Thank you. This will work nicely. If I do nothing more than stand here and grab fresh air and sunshine for five minutes at a time, it’s a help.”

  “Good.” Motioning to Emile, they lifted the small set of stairs and loaded it into the back of the truck. Dane walked to the front of the cab and opened the door to retrieve something. He turned around, a big grin on his face and his hands full.

  “And speaking of coffee…” He held out two large take out cups. Steam rose from the small opening in the top of the lid.

  “Ohhhh.” Delight lit up their faces.

  He grinned as the women almost danced in place. “See, I keep my promises.”

  “And that makes you a very special soul.” Jade accepted a cup and sniffed the small vent. “Wow. What is this?”

  “It’s a Haitian version of a cappuccino.”

  Jade inhaled again. “Really? Where did you find it?”

  “Ahhh.” Dane grinned. “I told you I would show you the hidden gems of this area.”

  “Hidden is right.” She took a tiny sip and sighed happily. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”

  Dane held out the second cup to Meg. “Are you also a coffee fanatic?”

  She accepted the cup gracefully. “I enjoy it, but I’m not crazy like she is. And I only eat a quarter of what she does.”

  “I’m not that bad.” Jade smiled at Dane. “Don’t let her scare you.”

  Dane walked back to his truck. “It would take more than a hungry female to scare me off.”

  Stephen and Wilson came around the corner of the rocks, dust covering their weary faces. They waved cheerfully. When Stephen spied Emile his smile became more formal. He walked over and held out his hand.

  “Hi, I’m Stephen.”

  Emile reached out and shook his hand. “Emile.”

  “Hey, you’re Dane’s brother-in-law, right?”

  Emile frowned and glanced over at Dane.

  Grinning, Dane answered. “He means you are related to my brother’s family. The answer is yes, Emile is Tasha’s brother.”

  “Ah.” But Emile didn’t smile with understanding.

  Stephen stepped back as Wilson walked over with a bottle of water in his hand.

  Dane watched as each person spoke. Emile, like his sister Tasha, was quiet – reticent with strangers. Still he handled himself well in this context. He didn’t exactly smile; he did, however, gradually lose his stiffness.

  Dane turned his attention to Stephen. “Is Bruce around?”

  Stephen shook his head. “Bruce has gone to the authorities to update them on the progress here and to let them know about the clinic opening in town.”

  “Clinic?” Emile was struggling with his English, so Stephen explained. A strange look stretched across Emile’s face that had Dane wondering…but Emile was a simple soul so he let it go.

  Though apparently, he wasn’t as simple as Emile’s father, Peppe, whose mental health had deteriorated rapidly over the last few years. There wasn’t the necessary level of care available here for someone like him and according to John, Tasha wouldn’t let him go to a home anyway. Emile was supposed to take care of him now, however, according to John that wasn’t happening.

  Dane hated it, but it wasn’t his place to interfere. He’d made his opinion of the situation clear. To no avail. He’d rather eat a bullet than sit in his own shit though.

  Another reason to go home soon. It wasn’t in his nature to let an injustice like that go on and on.

  Neither had it been in John’s nature years ago. What had the ensuing years done to him?

  Sitting in the truck on the way back, Emile cast a wary glance at Dane, his boss. Questions burned in his mind. Only he didn’t want to cross that invisible line between boss and employee. “Now those are good looking women.”

  Dane tossed him a grin. “They are, aren’t they?”

  “Smart to help out. I would too.” Emile twisted on the seat to stare out the back window. The women were gone from view. He turned around as the truck approached his home.

  “Nothing stopping you. You live right around the corner from the site. Although I guess they aren’t always there. And you work elsewhere.” Dane nodded and turned a sharp corner.

  “Exactly. You’re the boss. You can come during working hours. Emile has to come after work, when women are long gone.” He grinned. “Maybe Emile needs to stay home sick.”

  Dane laughed. “Well at least I’d know where to find you to haul your ass back to the job.” He shifted gears and made a right turn to John’s house. “Those women are hard to ignore.”

  “Me, I like brunette. Tall dark brunettes.” Emile grinned.

  “Me, I like blondes. Short tiny blondes.”

  Emile laughed, a hoarse roughness to his voice. “Then again, I like all women.”

  As he pulled the truck to a stop in front of the main house, Dane smirked. “What’s not to like?”

  Emile hopped out and headed inside for dinner. He knew what there was not to like.

  Women who didn’t know their place.

  Chapter Nine

  Unlocking the lab door, Jade accidentally swung her laptop bag against the side table as she entered and jarred the microscope. “Shit.”

  She’d woken late, barely made it for breakfast and still hadn’t gotten on track for the morning. She’d also been shortchanged on her coffee and that was bad news. For everyone.

  The air inside was stifling so she opened the door wide. Sighing, she dumped her bags down on the floor and walked over to turn on the lights.

  She frowned and looked around the lab. What was different?

  Meg had been last to leave and closed the room yesterday. It didn’t feel like the same lab at the moment. How odd was that? The tools weren’t arranged as she’d have laid them out. Neither did her chair sit where it normally sat.

  Was it because she hadn’t been the last one here yesterday?

  Must be. The door had been locked. She walked over to check the door mechanism. It didn’t appear to have been touched or tampered with in any way. The windows had been left open though. Normally they closed and locked them when they left. The equipment inside was expensive and could be hocked for some serious money if someone knew where to sell it.

  They’d been tight with security on the first couple of days then, when problems hadn’t developed, they’d grown lax.

  That needed to change.

  A proverbial list maker herself, she booted up her laptop then opened a new document to create a checklist for opening and closing the lab at the end of the day. She couldn’t print it off here. That would have to wait until she returned to the hotel.

  Dr. Mike showed an hour later, coffee in his hand. But only one. “You dare bring java in here and not bring enough for everyone!” She shook her head in disgust.

  Solemnly he held the cup out to her. “Actually, it’s for you.”

  Shamefacedly, she accepted the treat.
“See, that’s what happens when I’m deprived in the morning. I turn into a real bitch. I am sorry.”

  “Nah. Figured you’d run late this morning. Besides, I’m here to go over our ‘prisoner lady.’ Can you point her out for me? I’ll have Wilson give me hand bringing her over. Also,” he said looking around, “is there a space in here for me to work?”

  “I’m just finishing this boy and I need to enter the information into the computer, so this table will be clear in a couple of minutes.”

  “Perfect.” He nodded. “I’ll grab the others to give us a hand when you’re done.”

  Jade quickly cleaned off the table and brought out the ‘prisoner lady’s’ chart. They really should have some kind of name for the poor women. She pondered that for a second, remembering the plants flourishing around the gravesite. She smiled and gave ‘prisoner woman’ the moniker of Rose and wrote it on the chart.

  Stephen and Wilson entered carrying Rose.

  Grabbing her laptop, Jade headed to the far end of the trailer and tried to focus on her own work. It was hard to ignore what Dr. Mike was doing though. Not that there could be much to say about the condition of a body after an earthquake.

  An hour went by.

  Finally, she couldn’t wait any longer. She wandered over to his end on the pretext of grabbing her forgotten water bottle. In the silence, every move she made sounded extra loud. She waited impatiently, hoping he’d notice her presence. No such luck. She had to ask, “So did you find anything?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  She stared at his bent head, then leaned in for a closer look at what he was studying.

  “What’s that?”

  “Good question. The chains weren’t put on after her death as someone suggested. In fact, I’m going to say she’d been wearing them for a while.”

  Jade’s stomach dropped. Uh, oh. She waited impatiently until she couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Anything else?”

  “Lots. But not necessarily conclusive. See here,” he pointed to the neck area. “Her neck was broken.”

  “Which could have happened during the earthquake.”

  Dr. Mike bent for a closer look. “True enough but the hyoid bone has been crushed and that’s usually caused by strangulation.”

  Jade swallowed. Hard. “What about other injuries?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Right.”

  Stephen blasted through the front door, wide eyed and gasping for breath, his emotions ravaged by…something. Jade shook her head as she raced to his side. “Stephen, talk to me.”

  He took a deep breath as Dr. Mike joined her.

  Stephen struggled to breathe normally. “You need to see this.”

  Dr. Mike raised his brows. “All right. Let’s go.”

  They exited the small trailer and headed toward the path.

  “Hey, where are you all going?” Wilson called out from the reefer truck. He slammed the door closed, turning to face them.

  Pointing to the gravesite, Jade said, “Stephen found something he wants us to look at.”

  “I’m coming too.” Wilson jumped down the stairs then raced to catch up.

  The gravesite looked the same as always when they approached. In fact, she’d half-expected there would be natives lodging a protest over their arrival or something, given Stephen’s reaction.

  “It’s over here. I wasn’t sure when I first started. Now there can’t be any doubt.”

  Frowning, they gathered around the spot in question. A path had been dug through the pile almost to the other side. Enough to be sure that there were no other bodies in the heap of rock. After opening the grave in the middle, the plan had been to dig out the lower part of the pile on the left until they’d found everything to be found, then move to the right side.

  Remains lay exposed.

  “What am I looking at?” Jade asked in confusion.

  “Exactly the question I was hoping you’d answer for me,” Stephen demanded, explaining further. “I found more skeletons. But cleaner, older, deeper in the ground than the others we’ve found to date. These appear to have been covered by a thick layer of dirt and rocks. As if they were in a layer below the mass grave.”

  Dr. Mike shrugged his shoulders. “Some of the dirt would have slid down on top of the first bodies when they were dumping in more. This was done in a hurry by people without the skills to do it right. Hell they might have done that deliberately if there was a break between loads of bodies. That would actually be practical. They’d have to keep the predators out somehow.”

  “True,” Stephen pointed out smoothly. “But why would these victims dumped in here be so clean, and buried with chains?”

  Chains?

  The color bleached from Dr. Mike’s face. He could barely get the words out. “More? Are you saying you’ve found more people with chains on them? This doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does if you don’t look at this simply as a pile of earthquake victims. Sorry, but what we have here is no longer simple.”

  Jade bent down to take a closer look. Stephen had opened a six-foot square. The remains and dirt had long married together into a brown, sandy mess. Only the white of bones showed.

  Coiling away from several of the bones were rusty-linked rings ending in thick manacles.

  Jade stared as Dr. Mike pointed out at least two sets of links crumpled in and over top of each other. “We’ll need to treat this site carefully.”

  Dr. Mike nodded. “Still, chains are not definitive proof. Again, we can’t let our imaginations run away from us here. There are possibilities other than foul play.” He sighed heavily. “However I’m really struggling to find a good one.”

  “I think this should wait until Bruce returns. We’ll need to treat this as a potential crime scene – just in case.” Jade cringed inside. She wished there was another way.

  “And how about an expert on Haitian culture? Surely there’s someone we can ask about this.”

  Stephen snorted. “Be serious, Jade. What can we ask? This isn’t exactly the type of question that you ask to start a conversation. So…” He mimicked a heavy Texan drawl as if he were asking the authorities. “Do you keep your whole family in chains – or just the women?”

  “Actually…” Jade winced at the images that refused to stop prodding the back of her mind. “I had worse thoughts going through my head.” She took a deep breath. “I was thinking of the sex market. What if someone kidnapped young women for the slave trade in Asia or Malaysia?”

  All the men stopped and stared at her.

  “Now that’s not a nice concept.” Wilson ran one hand through his dust-covered hair and stared at her. “Why would you even think of something so nasty?”

  “Because it’s a huge problem. We all want to bury our heads but just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening all around us. After a disaster like what happened in Haiti, children were being snatched off the streets and as always young women are the prime victims.”

  “And this is as good a place as any, to stop.” Dr. Mike stepped in as the voice of reason. “There’s no way to know exactly what we have here until we remove everything and analyze it.”

  “Just in case, we need to photograph this site and all the stages of our work here, until we have these bodies out and safely inside.” Jade looked Dr. Mike in the face. “Speaking of safe, has anyone considered security on the site while we’re working here?”

  Stephen said, “Bruce requested more money be budgeted for security. I don’t know what the end result is. Why?”

  Looking around, Jade shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know if there is foul play involved here or not, but if people hear about what we’ve found…”

  Dr. Mike clambered over several rocks. “You think that the person responsible might find out? That’s highly unlikely, isn’t it? Not everyone knows what we’re doing.”

  “Sure,” said Stephen. “About as likely as finding a bunch of chained women in a grave intended for
victims of an earthquake disaster.”

  Jade stood up. She glanced back toward the trailers, barely visible through the rocks. “Bruce said he’d be here around noon today.” She took a long drink. “He was hoping you’d have information on that first woman with the chains.”

  “Right. That’s why I’m going back to work on her right now.” Dr. Mike rotated his shoulders.

  Closing the lid on her own bottle, Jade nodded. “And I’ll photograph what we have so far here – then when Bruce arrives, we’ll proceed.”

  Relief lit Dr. Mike’s face. “Good plan.”

  Jade walked down with him and retrieved her camera. As soon as she returned to the gravesite, she adjusted her camera for the light and started with close-up pictures from all sides.

  Stephen watched her for a few minutes. “Fine. I’m going to grab a bottle of water then. The dust here fills my lungs and dries my throat.”

  “Grab me one while you’re there, please.” Jade focused and shot, changed her position and did it all over again. She tried not to think about the poor people in front of her. But her mind twisted through the endless possibilities. How did they end up in chains?

  The stillness around her settled in. Jade felt as if she were being watched. She glanced around wondering how long Stephen had been gone.

  Weird. She continued to photograph their findings. Then, because she couldn’t get the feeling out of her mind, she refocused her camera and started taking pictures of the surrounding woods. Just a nice series of shots showing that there was no one there. By the time she turned back around again, Stephen stood beside her grinning.

  “And you are doing what?”

  She smiled. “Sightseeing.”

  Jade studied their new room and immediately laid claim to a small portable table where she set about creating a workspace beside the window that overlooked the gardens. This space was a hell of an improvement. It was twice as large as the space they had before, boasted big bay windows that let in lots of natural light and came with several large tables. Bruce had decided that they needed a more secure area at the hotel for work. This had been the perfect solution. Nice.