Vanessa read the encrypted message on her cell phone, the message confirming her fears. Her husband was missing.
She refused to consider the possibility that she wouldn’t see him again but rather relied on a combination of hope, prayer, and uncertainty to push her forward to prepare for her flight.
She had to leave Vanessa Johnson behind when she walked out of this room. She would be Lina Ramir, as she had been when she had first seen Morenta.
Her hands trembled slightly as she looped a scarf around her neck. She took a moment to harness her emotions, reminding herself to have faith that Seth would be okay when she found him. Not finding him wasn’t an option. She knew it, and so did Warren. She would either come back with Seth, or she wouldn’t come back at all.
With one last check in the mirror to make sure her transformation was complete, she picked up her purse and rolled her suitcase to the door of her hotel room.
A car was waiting for her when she exited the building, and Vanessa let the driver see to her bag. Then, with an air of arrogance and wealth, she slid into the backseat and tried to pretend she didn’t have a care in the world.
* * *
“I don’t care what you think I need to know. I want it all,” Kel said into the phone. “And I want it now.”
Damian and Paige stood just outside his office, both torn over whether to enter.
“Don’t just stand there,” Kel said, slamming his desk phone back onto the receiver. “Come in.”
Damian led the way but waited for Paige to claim a seat before sitting beside her. “I gather things didn’t go as planned last night.”
“You’re right. There wasn’t any sign of them at their designated rendezvous point. When he didn’t see them, the pilot who tried to pick them up broke radio silence but didn’t receive a response.”
“What about their emergency signals? Were any activated?”
“Not one.”
“This really doesn’t make any sense.” Damian shifted forward in his seat and rested his arms on his knees.
Kel studied Damian and Paige, then said, “I’ve been working on a theory I want the two of you to help me explore.”
“What’s that?” Damian asked.
“I think I already mentioned that the ship wasn’t able to track the helicopter that dropped them off because the transponder wasn’t working properly.”
“What about it?”
“Let’s assume it was switched off deliberately and that the pilot was murdered to keep him from talking.”
“You think the pilot took them somewhere else,” Damian said, following Kel’s logic.
“I had Amy work with the flight crew of the helicopter. They verified that there weren’t any bullet holes or any evidence of a firefight.”
“So you think the Saint Squad made the drop thinking they were at the right location and then were captured?”
“I’m still not convinced on the captured part. I think if Morenta really had them, we’d be hearing demands by now. Besides, I’m sure they prayed before they left on this mission. I’d like to believe the Lord is looking out for them.”
At Paige’s confused expression, Damian explained, “They’re all Mormon. They have this thing about praying every morning before they do anything else.”
“All of them?” Paige asked, clearly surprised.
“Actually, I am too,” Kel said. “That’s how the squad got its name. Saint comes from ‘Latter-day Saint.’”
“I never realized that,” Paige said.
Kel changed the subject and handed Damian a rolled-up map and a handful of notes. “I want you to look over this map and project a range of where the helicopter could have dropped them in the time he was off our radar. Remember, we can’t be certain he even dropped them in Venezuela. It could have been at one of the nearby islands or even a neighboring country.”
“Do you have the specs on the helicopter, positions, and time it was off grid?”
“It’s all in there. I know you haven’t lived in Venezuela for a long time, but I also want you to see if you can narrow down other locations within range that could have been mistaken for their drop site.”
“Actually, I traveled there a lot the year before I joined the navy.”
“Even better. I know it’s a long shot, but maybe if we can find out how Morenta is tied to Venezuela, we can pinpoint where they might have been dropped off.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Damian stood.
“Is there anything in particular you want me to work on?” Paige asked, also standing.
“I guess just keep reviewing the intel reports we already have. What we really need is an updated psychological profile on Morenta to see how likely it is that he’s the one behind all of this. Unfortunately, that will take time, and that’s one thing we don’t have a lot of.”
“I can do it,” Paige said, although she didn’t sound too confident in the assertion.
“A psych profile?” Kel asked. “Do you have any experience with that kind of thing? I thought you were a nurse.”
“I’m a psychiatric nurse, but I also interned with the FBI during college. Two of those summers, I worked in profiling.”
Apparently pleased with her answer, Kel said, “In that case, that’s where you can start. Both of you get to work.”
Damian led Paige down the hall to his office. As soon as they were inside, he said, “I didn’t know you were a psych nurse before you came here. Why the change of careers?”
“After four years of trying to help people work through their problems, I realized it was starting to wear on me. Dealing with mental illness and trauma is emotionally exhausting.”
“You don’t look old enough to have worked as a nurse for that long.”
“I started when I was nineteen. My high school had a nursing program, and I took summer classes at the community college starting when I was sixteen. With all of that, it didn’t take me long to finish my credentials.”
“I didn’t realize you were one of those overachiever types.”
“I’m not really. I just like understanding what’s going on around me.” Damian heard the undertones of some hidden meaning in her words, but she shut the door on the conversation when she said, “We’d better get to work.”
Damian unrolled the map and pasted it on the huge whiteboard on the wall near the door. He stared at the country of his birth and considered Kel’s theory and the possible reasons behind why someone would want to capture or strand the Saint Squad. The more he thought about it, the more confused he became.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “First someone tries to kill one of us, and now my teammates are either lost or captured? I think I’m a curse for this squad.”
“You aren’t a curse,” Paige began, but then her mind must have caught up with the rest of his comment. “What do you mean someone tried to kill you?”
Damian hesitated, realizing he had said too much.
“Don’t start holding things back now.” She put her hands on her hips and took a firm tone Damian wasn’t used to hearing from her. “We need all of the pieces on the table, and you know it.”
Damian dropped into his seat. “There was a training accident a couple weeks ago. In fact, it was the day I met you.”
“That’s what you were all hiding from Vanessa.” Her eyes flashed with the connection, but Damian was pleased that condemnation didn’t accompany it.
“Yeah. Seth didn’t want her to know about it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure. I guess he didn’t want to worry her.” Damian lifted both hands helplessly. “I’m the only guy on the squad who isn’t married, so I’m afraid the whole husband-wife thing is pretty foreign to me.”
“I know what you mean,” Paige said. “What exactly happened that day we met? I gather if you think someone tried to kill one of you that it wasn’t really an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t an accident. NCIS agrees that it was sabotage, but they don’t have any idea who was behind it.” Damian proceeded to tell her about the events of that day, leaving out his complete terror when he thought he and Jay were going to plunge forty feet to their deaths.
Paige listened intently. When Damian finished his account, Paige asked, “If someone wanted to target one of you, why use sabotage when there would be no way to be sure who the victim would be?”
“Maybe they just wanted someone to die, and they didn’t care who. It could have been some sort of revenge.”
“Maybe,” Paige conceded, looking like she was trying to wrap her mind around a motive. She set her oversized purse down on her desk. “I think you’re right on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“None of this makes any sense.”
* * *
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Seth asked as he followed Quinn through a particularly dense section of jungle.
“Well, no, Seth. I don’t,” Quinn retorted. “In case you’ve forgotten, we don’t have a map, and we’re in the middle of a jungle.”
“Just asking,” Seth said.
“Ignore him.” Tristan fell into step beside Seth. “You know he gets grumpy when he’s hungry.”
“Quinn’s always hungry.”
“Not always,” Quinn said, the banter apparently taking the edge off his frustration . . . or at least distracting him from his never-ending hunger. He held his compass in front of him and veered slightly to the left. “Maybe we should try to find the river and follow it to the tourist area. It will take longer, but at least we’ll know where we’re going.”
“Hey, quiet down, you two,” Brent called out, raising his hand to silence them.
Everyone stopped. The silence was the first thing Seth noticed. No longer did he hear the chatter of birds in the trees or the movement of the various animals inhabiting the area. Then the rumble of a helicopter sounded in the distance.
“You don’t think that’s our friends from last night, do you?”
“I don’t think so.” Brent looked up, but the dense evergreen trees above them made it impossible to see the sky, except in tiny patches. “Jay, get up one of those trees and see what’s out there.”
“How come I’m always the one who has to go up a tree?” Jay said, but he moved to the nearest one and started shimmying up the branches.
No one answered his question. They simply waited until he’d made it high enough to report. “It looks like a recreational craft, probably a tourist helicopter.”
“Where’s it headed?”
“Looks like an overflight of the falls.” Jay hooked an arm around the tree trunk and kept his eyes on the sky.
“I hate to do this to you, Jay, but stay up there until you can see where it lands. That’s where we’re heading,” Brent said.
“Okay.”
“Tristan and Quinn, go see if you can round up some food for us.”
“I already took care of that,” Tristan announced. He opened up his pack and held up a pineapple.
“Where’d you get this?”
“We picked them this morning when we went to fill up our canteens.”
“Them?”
“I have one more, and Quinn has a couple in his pack,” Tristan said. “After what happened last night, I figured you wouldn’t want us to start a fire if we could help it.”
“You were right about that.” Brent tossed the pineapple to Seth, who drew his knife and cut away the skin of the pineapple. He then sliced it into chunks and handed everyone a section, reserving one for Jay.
“Hey, it looks like it’s landing.”
“Can you figure out coordinates?”
“A direction at least.” Jay waited another minute before beginning his descent. Once his feet were on the ground, he said, “I think we’re only about thirty or forty miles from where it landed.”
Seth heard the hesitation in Jay’s voice. “But?”
“The terrain isn’t going to be easy to cross. We’ll have a river in our path, and there’s a nasty-looking mountain a couple miles from here.”
“At least we know what direction we’re heading,” Tristan said.
Jay accepted the wedge of pineapple Seth handed him. “I don’t suppose any of you brought any climbing gear, did you?”
“I’m afraid not. Just some rope.” Brent took a step in the direction Jay indicated. “We’ll figure out a way around, one way or another.”
“As long as it doesn’t involve me climbing any more trees.”