Ava entered the hospital on a stretcher led by a physician and with an assortment of other medical personnel flanking her. Faisal felt a sense of relief and panic all at the same time. They were feelings that he’d had from the beginning of this mysterious rescue. He should be relieved that she was in professional hands yet he also felt a profound sense of loss that she was out of his. He strode down the gleaming corridor. He made his way past bustling nurses and doctors and other medical personnel moving quickly through the corridors. He wondered what had brought Ava and her father to this. What had they been doing on that yacht? And where was Dan Adams?
He knew none of it boded well. The United States Coast Guard were coordinating efforts alongside the Bahama Search and Rescue. So far, Ava was the only survivor. There was no sign of the boat or Dan Adams.
He strode through the hospital’s doors as he followed the stretcher that carried Ava as if somehow keeping her in his sights would keep her safe.
“Mr. Al-Nassar,” a nurse called. “A minute, please.”
At first, he didn’t slow his stride. He wasn’t used to being called by such a formal name. The only thing more formal would have been if they’d used his real title of Sheik. Again, something he never used. It was a title that was more accurate than mister, for, like his father before him and his grandfather before that, he was born a Sheik. But none of that was him. He was just Faisal Al-Nassar to everyone he knew and everyone he dealt with. No one in the Wyoming office called him by any title. They called him by his first name. Here, it was obviously different.
“Yes,” he said, turning around despite his thoughts on the formality of the address, the hesitation being so slight as to be unnoticeable.
“There’s some paperwork that needs to be completed.”
“I’m not her next of kin,” he said shortly.
The stretcher carrying Ava had now disappeared behind the sterile-looking stainless-steel doors ahead of him.
“You’re the best we have at the moment,” the nurse replied. “If we’re lucky she may come to long enough to sign consent herself. But in the meantime, if you could just give us what you know.”
He took the clipboard and the pen she offered and filled out the forms as best he could. There were large gaps in the information he provided. He knew nothing of her medical history or, barring Dan Adams, who her next of kin might be. He couldn’t tell them if she were allergic to peanuts or anchovies or neither. He knew her stepfather, Dan, because he was a friend of the family. He knew that her birth father had died when she was a toddler. When her mother had married Dan, he had acquired a ten-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, Ava’s mother had succumbed to a debilitating disease and died a decade ago. Dan and Ava were close. As close as any family he’d seen, even without the blood tie. Dan had taken parenting seriously and Ava was his daughter in the full meaning of that word. He handed the clipboard back to the nurse. Most of what he knew would be of no use to the medical team working on Ava.
He went to security next, explained the situation and ensured that she had a private room with a guard on the floor. Next, he went up to the floor and spoke to the nurses’ station, ensuring that media were not allowed near her. He wasn’t sure the latter was enough. He knew how tenacious media could be, especially when they sensed there was a story.
“Of course,” the charge nurse replied. “She’s not the first. We’ve had other local celebrities.”
He wasn’t sure how Ava would feel about being called a local celebrity. There was a bit of a mix-up in that, for it wasn’t she who was the celebrity but her father. For Ava, he knew the media’s interest would be bothersome. She’d always been very private. To him, that explained why she’d taken a position as a psychologist with a public school in Wyoming. The pace was quieter but more important, it was far away from her father’s success and the notoriety that came with it. She was low-key. He’d always loved that about her.
Five minutes later he was exiting the hospital. She was in professional hands. Hands that had assured him that she would be well taken care of. In fact, they’d made it clear that there would be no visitors until she was stable. He’d gone over the contact information with a hospital administrator who had assured him that he would be notified as soon as there was a change. He gave the information, knowing that it was unnecessary. Barring the worst-case scenario, he’d be in touch long before any of them needed to reach him. In the meantime, her father, Dan Adams, his mentor, was still missing.
But his mind was stuck on other words. Worst-case scenario. There would be no worst-case scenario. He would not allow that to happen. Despite the fact that they’d fished Ava out of the Atlantic on a mission that could have easily failed. Despite the fact that the odds were still stacked against them, he was determined that those odds could be beaten. They would find out what happened. Otherwise he would have failed because now it was her father and an entire yacht that were missing.
Outside, with the Florida sun beating down on him, Faisal looked at the phone in his hand. The one that had been found with Ava. It was white, a basic, no-frills model, reminding him that Ava had learned her low-key approach to life from her father. She’d always been too busy getting good grades to put much thought into lip gloss or fashion. She’d been, at least then, a basics-only kind of girl. But despite that, there’d always been a sexy kind of appeal about her. Another year of maturity under her belt and he could have fallen for her. And yet that wasn’t quite true—he’d wanted her even then, but the timing had been off. They were unproductive thoughts that weren’t relevant to the situation. All of that was a long time ago and none of it mattered any longer.
He turned the phone over, but it provided no answers. He moved off the sidewalk, out of the way of a man in olive-toned hospital scrubs, moving briskly toward the parking lot.
“Barb,” he said into his own phone a minute later. A light breeze wrapped around him and gently rustled the leaves of a nearby tree. He’d just phoned Barb Almay who headed Nassar’s research team. She was located in their Marrakech office where she provided research for both Nassar offices. He explained the situation to her and then asked, “Can you run a check on this number’s call activity?”
“Of course,” Barb replied. She was their head researcher and a technical whiz almost on par with Craig. Their team was good but as far as researching went, Barb was the best—hands down. Barb was originally from Boston and had been on vacation in Morocco over a decade ago when she’d met a Moroccan man and fallen in love. The story had a fairy-tale ending—they’d married and she’d stayed in Morocco. Now she called Morocco home and it was there where she had been discovered by his brother Emir, and hired as part of the Nassar team.
He slipped the phone into his pocket and moved from beneath the shelter of the palm fronds. Overhead it was a clear sky and a seagull dipped and soared as if there was nothing wrong in the world. It sent a chill through him as he thought of the woman he’d left behind, unconscious, to the care of experts. He thought of the man still lost somewhere on the Atlantic and it was all incomprehensible.
His phone buzzed. It was Mitch Brandt, a man he’d gotten to know in his initial search-and-rescue training when he’d been fresh out of university and still debating whether a career with the Coast Guard might be an option. In the end he’d finished the initial training only out of interest, when the chance to head a new branch of Nassar had been presented to him. Mitch had completed the training and eventually gone to work with the US Coast Guard. Mitch had promised to keep him as up-to-date on the search as he could. They were conducting the search from where the yacht had last been seen off the coast of Paradise Island and beyond into the Atlantic Ocean. Yet the oddity they had found, Mitch said, hadn’t been on water but on land.
When Faisal hung up, a frown creased between his brows. Only yesterday evening, shortly after dark on Paradise Island, a local had reported an incident regarding a strange man hiring a fisherman to take him to a yacht that had anchored a mile from shore. The incident had been unremarkable until the news of the missing yacht had been leaked. They now knew that the yacht had belonged to Dan Adams. There had been two people on board. Dan Adams and his daughter, Ava Adams. The description of the mystery man indicated only that he was of average height, forty to sixty years old and Caucasian. A twenty-year age gap left a lot of room for guessing.
Two knowns and an unknown on board who, except for Ava, had since disappeared. She had been rescued and the other two had vanished along with the yacht. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone. He strode back to the helipad where Jer and Sam were waiting by the helicopter.
“What now?” Jer asked.
“You have to ask?” The question was redundant. The thought that they wouldn’t take at least one more run wasn’t even a consideration.
“I’m in,” Sam said in that quiet, steady tone of his.
Thirty minutes later they were heading back out to sea, where they searched until just after dark. But there was nothing to be found. By mutual agreement and before exhaustion set in, they called it a day. Faisal sent an alert to the volunteer team coordinator to let him know the area they’d been assigned on their second pass was searched and empty.
“I can’t believe Dan’s still out there,” Faisal said. “That we didn’t find him.”
“Not just him. There’s the man with no name, as well,” Jer said. “Guy shows up and a few hours later the yacht and its occupants go missing. Is there some kind of link between the two events? Seems rather coincidental otherwise.”
Faisal shook his head. He’d filled Jer in on the basics of the case, the search aspect anyway. “I don’t know what that was about. Hopefully, Ava will be able to tell me something soon.”
The lights of Miami’s skyline lit the horizon. It was just short of nine o’clock in the evening. Faisal felt torn. He didn’t want to end the search with Dan still out there but his heart was already back at Mercy Hospital afraid for Ava. Dan had an army of people looking for him; Ava had only him, or at least that’s how it felt.
He pulled out his phone and placed a call. A minute later, he said, “Drop me at the hospital. The helipad is clear and there aren’t any emergencies coming in.” He’d just checked with the hospital authorities and, considering the circumstances, they were okay with a quick drop and leave. “You get home to your wife.”
“She’s not too happy with you,” Jer said with a smile. He’d called earlier to let his wife know what was up.
“Doesn’t matter what she thinks of me,” Faisal said with a laugh. “She loves you, man. That’s why you get away with murder. But you’ve made her wait long enough.”
They’d already discussed the fact that Jer had commitments at home in Tampa. He had a wife and kids waiting for him and while his plans could and would be broken if Faisal asked—that wouldn’t happen. Jer was a contract worker that he’d used often. He was also one of the best heli-pilots he knew. When this had all come down, he’d taken advantage of the resources he’d had in the moment. He’d contacted Jer only because they’d worked rescue before and Florida was his home state.
Sam, like Jer, had worked with him before on other cases and they were both based out of Miami. The rest of it, the fact that Craig was heading to the east coast anyway, had been a stroke of good luck. He’d known that if anyone could find out where that phone signal had come from and get to it in time, he could. He’d been right in thinking that and in doing what he had. He’d cobbled together the powerhouse team in minutes after hearing the news. They’d done what they’d set out to do. Now, there were search-and-rescue teams combing the area from both countries. But there was still no sign of the yacht or Dan Adams. He could only hope that he was still onboard, for then he stood a chance.
It was because of everything Dan had done for him and everything he’d been that Faisal had left Ava’s side for the length of time he had. But if her father’s life depended on it, he couldn’t do otherwise.
“What’s next?” Jer asked. The helicopter had just landed.
“I’m having a check run on the phone we found with Ava,” Faisal replied.
“We’re not heading back out?” Despite their earlier agreement, Jer sounded oddly disappointed. “I’ve got the rest of the night, man, if you need me.”
“And Rene,” he said, referring to Jer’s wife, “will blame me when you don’t come home at all tonight.” He was fully capable of flying one of the company planes or helicopters if it came to that. “I’m going to wait. We’ve been out twice—had success once. Now I want to make sure Ava’s alright.”
“There’s nothing you can do if she isn’t,” Jer said.
“True. But I don’t like leaving her alone.”
They were silent as a Jeep pulled into the adjoining parking lot.
“That’s my ride,” Sam said and a minute later he was departing with a nod.
“You knew her in college, didn’t you?” Jer asked after Sam left, raising the subject with a worried look at Faisal.
“Yeah, we were friends. Her father and she were always considered family friends, no matter that I lost touch with Ava.” The thought of how close they’d been and how easily it all came back at the sight of her was disquieting. “I’m hoping that Ava knows something. They’ve all the manpower they can muster on the search,” he said, looking toward the Atlantic. “We’ve given it our all. Time for a rest. You might as well go home. You’re supposed to be on vacation.”
“Yeah, right.” Jer grinned. “Rene has a list of odd jobs for me to do. More than I could get done in three weeks never mind six days.” He shrugged. “Some vacation. In the meantime, I better get this bird home,” he said, referring to the helicopter.
After Jer had left, Faisal received a call from Barb in their Marrakech office.
“I don’t have a lot,” she said. “But I thought you might want what I do have, for now anyway.”
If the situation hadn’t been so dire Faisal might have smiled. Barb often qualified her research as less than what she actually had. He waited for her to prove him right. “Let me have what you know,” he said.
“As you know, the phone belonged to Dan Adams. That particular phone was on a pay-as-you-go plan. There wasn’t anything unusual about any of it. What was intriguing though were the number of calls received from Vancouver. Over half dozen within three days.”
“Vancouver, Washington?”
“British Columbia, Canada,” she said. “I used some tech to unmask the private phone numbers and, as always, it worked like a dream. Interesting fact...a few actually—I don’t have a name to go with the number, but I managed to get a location. Those calls were made from a Vancouver number in an area that, well, let’s just say it’s very wealthy. Many who live there are first-generation immigrants from China.” She paused as if considering this seriously important. “So far that’s all I have. I’m still working on the name of the caller.”
He thanked her and ended the call shortly after that. As he hung up, he thought of everything that had transpired in recent days. Only three hours ago, in Fort Lauderdale, he was to have met with Dan. That hadn’t happened. Now it might never happen. Fate had intervened in a particularly grim way. She had a harsh sense of humor, one he’d never much appreciated. He pushed that thought aside.
For now, they had nothing but tragedy on their hands.
Faisal clenched his fist. He’d lost too many people he cared about. He refused to let anything further happen to Ava and he prayed they found Dan.
But the facts weren’t encouraging. And until either the yacht or Dan Adams was found, the only witness he had was an unconscious woman. His instinct told him that the answer to all this lay on that yacht. But the Atlantic was a big place to get lost in.