by Cara Dee
Both mother and son looked anxious about parting ways, though they put on brave faces and agreed to see each other soon.
A minute later, the room was empty of everyone except two.
Darius had to admit he was in higher spirits. When push came to shove, assignments like these were—or had been—his job. Other than picking him up from the airport, his family hadn’t gotten involved much. Ryan notwithstanding. Willow had been a sidekick for a few years too, though Darius hadn’t been on a field mission during that time. Helping buddies out from the sidelines and stocking up on favors was all part of being retired.
Granted, this occasion had been different. He’d been active as a free agent, with no superior for Ma to check in with when she got overly worried, no structured safety net, and so on. Not to mention, he’d cashed in most his favors…
A glance at Gray told Darius what he already knew: it was well worth it.
“Nervous?”
Gray nodded slightly, then shook his head just as hesitantly. “I don’t know. I just stick to…you know…right? I mean, that’s all I gotta do.”
“That’s it.” Darius nodded. “You’ll be fine. If you want, you can say your nerves are shot and you wanna listen in when I give my statement first. Then you’ll see how I do it.”
Relief flickered in Gray’s eyes. “Are you sure they’ll go along with that?”
“We’re not suspects, knucklehead,” Darius murmured. “They’re just building a case.”
“Okay.”
Darius cleared his throat and swung his legs off the bed, his hands gripping the edge. “We remember things differently. Try to use your own words, and don’t worry if the details differ a little. It’s not just normal, it’s to be expected.”
Gray nodded slowly, chewing on his lip. “Makes sense. Will you—” He stopped abruptly at the knock on their door.
Two agents entered, Agent Donahue and someone Darius hadn’t met before.
“You guys ready to give us your accounts?” Agent Donahue asked politely.
The profession had worn him down over the years, Darius thought. The man still stood tall and steady, but the graying at the temples and the lines around his eyes and mouth spoke of more than mere age. Gut feeling.
“Mind if I go first?” Darius lifted a brow. “Gray’s a bit anxious—worried he’s gonna mess up.”
The other agent, with his forgettable face, receding hairline, and the build of a paper-pusher, turned a composed look on Gray. “We only want to know what you’ve been through, but we can wait while Special Agent Donahue and Mr. Quinn get started.”
“Okay. Thank you,” Gray replied.
As Agent Donahue got ready to talk to Darius, the other agent explained they were dividing the interviews into four parts. Starting with the finish, how Darius and the others escaped. Over the next two days, they would tell the rest, everything they experienced on the yacht, the journey leading up to the auction, and how they got kidnapped.
“Don’t you have that on file already?” Gray asked. “My mom said the police back home know how I was taken.”
“We’d like to hear it from you too,” Agent Donahue responded, taking a seat by Darius’s bed.
“To establish a modus operandi,” the other agent added. “It means—”
“I know what it means.” Gray rolled his eyes. Darius’s mouth twitched with amusement. “I can tell you what my MO is. It’s to ask for news about Jackie until I get answers. Have you started looking for the other boat? There’s probably another twenty innocent guys out there.”
“I’m afraid that’s not our jurisdiction—”
“Let’s save some time, guys,” Darius said. “I don’t know how you’ve set up your teams yet, but if you can pass along a request to the CIA agents that we’d like as frequent updates as possible, that would be great. The boys spent weeks together with Jackie, and they’re all worried about him.”
Agent Donahue cocked his head at Darius but said nothing.
The other one did. “I’ll pass that along.”
“Cheers.” Darius slid his gaze back to Donahue. “So. The escape.”
Donahue nodded and folded one leg over the other, placing a tablet on his thigh. “Let’s start with the fact that you were hired privately to rescue Gray Nolan. Somehow, you ended up leading the escape to save an additional nine men.”
“There were more than that,” Darius replied quietly. “It happened in two stages, I suppose. Early on during the voyage, Gray let me know that he didn’t wanna leave without the boys he’d been taken with.”
Donahue scrolled on his tablet. “Cole Carter, Oscar Turner, Lee Bailey, Charles Campbell, Milo Edwards, Linus Richardson, and Jack Anderson. Correct?”
Darius inclined his head. “My original plan was to wait it out. When the auction was over and we’d spent a few days on board, we were gonna be escorted to the nearest port. Then Gray convinced me to help the others.”
Donahue nodded thoughtfully as he went through some notes. “What was the new plan?”
“We didn’t get that far,” Darius said. “I managed to negotiate a trade-off with one of the staff members. They were also held against their will, and Jonas—one of the staff—agreed to help if we helped them in return. They wanted to come with us.”
“What was he to do?”
“Distribute sedatives.” Darius cleared his throat and reached for the cup of water on his bedside table. “It was the role I portrayed as Gray’s buyer—a shooter. I had heroin and prescription drugs on board. The part of the plan that we managed to come up with involved cutting down the enemy without unnecessary risks. And Jonas was going to spike some meals with a sedative I gave him.” He paused to take a swig from his water. “We didn’t get any further than that.”
Donahue gave him his full attention for the next part. His dark eyes pinned Darius with interest. “Go on.”
The lies rolled off Darius’s tongue with practiced ease. “Gray and I were going to retreat to our stateroom to come up with the rest of the plan when we heard gunfire. We were in the dungeon—no windows there, so I can’t tell you where it all started. Or where they came from.”
“They…” Donahue trailed off.
“We’ve put two and two together since then.” Darius’s tone flattened. “Drug dealers. We didn’t know at the time, though.”
“Do you know if the first shot was fired on the boat or nearby?”
“I can’t know for sure… I’d say it was close, though.”
“You said something about the dungeon, Darius.” It was Gray who spoke up, and Darius raised his brow in curiosity and question. “About how the room was designed—with the padding, I mean.”
Pretending to know what he was talking about, Darius nodded and went with it. A little bit of improv was a good addition. “The dungeon was essentially a place for torture. It’s possible the gunfire sounded farther away than it was because of how thick the walls in that area were.”
Donahue hummed.
In the meantime, Gray lowered his voice and addressed the other agent, telling him he was ready to give his statement.
“Would you say it’s more likely that the people on board the yacht fired first?” Donahue wondered.
That was a question Darius refused to weigh in on. It was the whole fucking reason they were lying. He wouldn’t go so far as to claim every police department was corrupt, although corruption certainly existed, but for as long as Darius and the boys played Switzerland, they were safe. No sides would be picked, on or off any record.
“I really wouldn’t know,” he replied. “If it was a drug deal gone wrong, there should’ve been some kind of communication first—or argument—indicating both parties were present. So anyone could’ve started that conflict. I was in the wrong place to even guess.”
“I understand.” Donahue tapped his screen a few times and highlighted something. The tablet was angled wrong for Darius to see details. “Tell me what happened next.”
“Jonas an
d Nikolaj came to the dungeon to find me.”
“Would you call them the leaders of the staff?”
“In a way, sure. They shared the same status, but yeah, they looked after the younger boys.”
“I see. Go on.”
Darius’s head flooded with the memories of seeing Milo falling forward, blood gushing from his head, and he flinched. “There was more gunfire, so my priority became to see if there was a chance to flee.” He emptied the glass and returned it to the bedside table. “We had to gather everyone—bring them to safety first, which Jonas and Niko offered to do. That way, I could focus on finding an escape route.”
Donahue looked up. “Did you go alone?”
“No, I had Gray with me,” Darius answered. “It was a big boat with eyes everywhere. There was no way I could do that on my own.” He paused, pretending to think back, when in reality he wanted to eavesdrop on Gray. “We had to take cover inside staterooms and closets along the way when things escalated.”
Perhaps sensing the topic was growing heavier, Donahue didn’t push right away.
It gave Darius a brief moment to listen to what Gray was saying.
The knucklehead was good. Intentionally or not, he went with emotion. He cranked up the confusion caused by the commotion; the logistics and the timeline were fuzzier and harder to remember. Then certain events, he remembered with vivid clarity. Like the death of Milo and losing Jonas. Only, his death had been moved to the yacht.
“We couldn’t save everyone,” Darius continued with a sigh. “We lost Casper and Mike in the crossfire. By then, the slavers—or a couple of the guards, at least—figured out the boys were trying to run.”
“Was your cover blown?”
Darius shook his head. “Not until the end. I knocked one guy out—took his gun to have something to defend myself with. And once we had the rest of the guys gathered, we started making our way to the back of the boat.”
“They shot Milo in the head,” he heard Gray say. Something was missing in his voice. As if he spoke on autopilot or he was off in his thoughts. There was a void.
“We were aiming for the tender or, worst case, one of the lifeboats,” Darius murmured. “That’s when two guards stepped in our path.”
“…and blood everywhere…”
“His eyes—they were still open…”
Darius winced and tried to ignore Gray’s voice. He pushed forward. “I shot one of them when they fired at us. Jonas and Milo went down.”
“Both shot?” Donahue wondered.
“Aye,” Darius said. Letting his frustration show, he ran a hand through his hair and blew out a heavy breath. “I was surrounded by almost a dozen traumatized kids. I couldn’t get to the front fast enough. Once I did, they took fire from the outside.”
“The assumed drug smugglers?”
“Or whoever they were.” Darius lifted a shoulder. “It was fucking chaos for a long time, and it took a while before we reached the aft. I took a bullet, we had to detour, we hid… Gray was shot too.”
Donahue nodded thoughtfully and scrolled through what Darius was beginning to believe were other statements.
“We heard Spanish,” Darius went on. “They were arguing—or shouting. Money and cocaine and broken deals. Other than those two guards who gunned down Milo and Jonas, we got caught in the middle. At the end, they were too preoccupied to do anything but try to survive, so we reached the aft deck where we loaded up the tender.”
“But the smugglers—they were on the yacht? They’d boarded.”
“Oh, yeah. The aft was empty at that point. There were two speedboats, both empty.”
“I understand. And in that mayhem…what did you manage to bring?”
“A medic bag, a gun, and two folders.”
Donahue quirked a brow.
Darius clarified. “Folding knives. One of them was mine. I lifted the other off a dead guard.”
Donahue nodded in understanding and typed something in. “And then you got away.”
“And then we got away,” Darius confirmed. “Nick of time, too. The whole yacht was blown to pieces when we were some hundred feet away.”
“Hm,” Donahue grunted. “As surprising to hear it now as it was the first three times I heard about it today.” He sat forward and glanced up at Darius. “Listen, Mr. Quinn. As you’ve already figured out, we’re sharing this case with a team from the CIA, and after today, we’re looking at involvement from the DEA too.”
“Sounds like a dream team that will bury you in reports for the rest of your lives.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Donahue huffed a chuckle and closed the leather binder around his tablet. “We’d like to talk to you tomorrow again, my partner and I. We need names, dates, locations, any clues you can give us about who these people might be. We need to find the boat too.” Hopefully, that would take some time. “You mentioned you were brought to South Andros, correct?”
Darius nodded.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to find the fishermen who picked you up. If we can do that, we might find out where the islands are, and the yacht was destroyed close by, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We need divers out there,” Donahue replied and stood up. He buttoned his suit jacket and retrieved a card. “I appreciate your time, Mr. Quinn. It’s going to be a few dizzying days, but the sooner we get the facts straight, the more we can accomplish.” He took a step toward the door, only to stop and tilt his head at Darius. He lowered his voice. “Earlier, you gave us a nice spiel about the missing boy—Jackie. For Gray’s benefit, I presume, but what are your personal thoughts on the matter?”
The balls on this guy. Darius appreciated not being treated like a civilian, but it further proved he and Ry had made the right choice to cover up certain aspects of the events. These kids weren’t human to the Feds. People in law enforcement had hearts and emotions like anyone else, but they saw this too often. Like doctors who had to distance themselves from patients, agents and police officers had to look at victims and see matters and cases.
“That he’s a lost cause.” Darius kept his voice down too, and Donahue nodded once, almost satisfied, which irritated Darius. “But, Agent Donahue, I thought the same about Gray. Because it’s easy to see stats, innit? We forget easily—we forget that the twentieth case might not play out the way the other nineteen did.”
Donahue observed him in silence for a beat, then offered a nod and left the room.
Seventeen
The Westwater resort was postcard-worthy, consisting of beachside bungalows, stone paths, palm trees, villas with easy access to the spa, a private beach, and a five-story building with rooms varying from small studios to big apartments with their own terraces.
Aiden Roe had reserved the fourth floor for anyone impacted by the trafficking tragedy. Victims and their families were granted privacy, comfort, and an all-inclusive menu to ensure they didn’t have to leave the premises more than necessary. Along with security and anonymity provided by the Feds, it was the safest stay the boys could dream of.
Darius arrived late, having waited for Gray and Charlie to be released from the hospital.
Charlie’s mother had hugged Darius one time too many, so he was looking forward to shutting out the world.
Watching clients reunite with their families and spouses over the years had been rare treats, though that didn’t mean he’d wanted to be part of it. The key word was “watching.”
In the lobby, designed to be both lavish and intimate, Darius was given two keycards to his room. And reason told him to give the other to Elise. A glance at Gray told him something else.
Let him be.
Fuck inner voices. Fuck them hard.
Gray was smiling tiredly and talking to his older brother while Chloe talked to the other woman at the front desk.
He was a sight to behold. Standing there in his sweats and hoodie, that careful, sleepy smile, eyes glistening, hair in disarray under the hood. The background of wicker furniture, marbl
e floors, candlelight, and tropical plants added to the comfort of the scene.
“Darius!”
Elise’s voice grabbed Darius’s attention, and he looked over to the elevators. She was walking over with a carry-on-sized rollaboard bag that appeared brand-new.
“Oh my God, Gray!” Christ, more people coming out of an elevator. This time, a heavily pregnant young woman and a man. Huh, not just any man. Jack Grady. Darius was buddies with his younger brother.
Gray’s eyes bugged out before a big smile took over. “Holy shit, you’re huge, hon.”
It had to be Isla, Aiden’s daughter.
“He can say it, but I can’t?” Jack muttered.
Isla tinkered a laugh and rushed over to hug Gray.
At that point, Elise reached Darius, though she seemed as interested in the reunion happening next to them as Darius was.
“I’m surprised they let you fly,” Gray murmured thickly. “Wow, you’re beautiful. Can I…?”
“Of course.” Isla was wiping away tears and beaming, and Gray was marveling with a hand touching her stomach. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Me too.” Gray sniffled but held back his emotions. Somewhat. “Hey, Jack. Good to see you.”
“You too, kid. Come here.” Jack brought Gray in for a quick hug. Whatever he said next was too quiet for Darius to hear, but it must’ve been good. Gray let out a shaky laugh and turned fucking scarlet. Jack smirked and patted Gray’s cheek, then stepped back.
Isla wasn’t done hugging.
Envy burned in Darius’s chest, and he forced himself to return his attention to Elise. He was beyond grateful to have some family here; he shouldn’t act like he was alone.
“What’chu got there?”
“Huh? Oh!” Elise had been thoroughly distracted too. “This is stuff you might want from home. Clothes, wallet, phone, and some toiletries I picked up at the airport.”
