LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t know.”

      “When did this happen?”

      “One month and six days ago. So she’s nine months now.”

      “Okay, let me get this straight. So this doctor told you to come up here and get with this Eldon Osceola guy, and he’d help you find your kid. And all those guys around that fire are his family?” He gestured at the men. None of them were paying any attention to them.

      She nodded. “They are his sons and nephews and cousins. They work this place for the people who come to visit the Everglades.”

      Novak looked around. He couldn’t see anything but darkness outside the ring of fire. “What’d you say this place was?”

      “They take airboats out into the water, you know, to see the birds and deer and alligators. This place is called the Pa-hay-Okee Safari. That word means grassy waters, Eldon said. Lots of people come here to go on the boats.”

      “The Everglades is a couple of hours from Fort Myers. I was out that long?”

      “We have been here three hours. You were unconscious all the time. It is safer here for you. They’re looking for you now. We had to bring you along. It was for your own good.”

      The fetid odor of standing water came to Novak on the wind. It smelled like that at his house on Bayou Bonne, too. He’d recognize it anywhere. “Do these guys live out here?”

      She shook her head. “No, but they work here. There’s a museum here with tribal artifacts and alligator shows and booths to buy crafts. The airboats take the people who come here out to the preserve. Eldon and his family all live in Naples.”

      Novak couldn’t get over her English. In Novak’s mind, that didn’t compute. If she was from the kind of jungle village in Guatemala that he’d visited, how the devil had she mastered English so well? Many of the Maya still spoke their ancient language as well as Spanish, but he’d never heard them speak English. She didn’t even have an accent. That bothered him. He glanced out at the men again. A lot of things weren’t adding up for Novak. “He’s got a lot of relatives out there, and they all wear identical black clothing and carry weapons. Looks more like a SWAT team to me.”

      “They are very brave. Jake, the one who hit you with his bat? He’s Eldon’s youngest son. There are seven sons and two daughters. They have taken turns keeping us safe until you and Claire Morgan could come and bring back my baby.”

      He hoped Claire hadn’t promised a miracle like she usually did. If this case concerned a missing infant, Claire was going to be extra gung-ho because she was pregnant herself and would relate big-time to this young woman’s plight. “Where the hell were those guys when that punk tried to drown you in the ocean? I thought you said they were protecting you.”

      “They were out front watching the road. They did not expect them to come through the thicket on foot. We thought we were safe there at Eldon’s condo. We were good and did what Eldon told us to do. We kept inside every day and let no one see us. We saw you and we thought you were Claire’s friend, but we could not be sure. We were afraid you might be one of them.”

      “Okay, I want to talk to this Eldon guy. Which one is he?”

      “He’s in Miami. He will come back in the morning.”

      Novak was tired of wondering. “How come your English is so good? Where’d you learn it?”

      She looked down. Not a good sign. “Dr. Eloise lived with us for a year. She taught me English and trained me as a nurse’s aide. She chose me.”

      She sounded proud of that. “Is she with Doctors Without Borders?”

      “Yes. She taught many of us to speak English better, and she cared for our sick. Our village is far away from the cities. She was good to us and believed me when I told her that Rosa had been taken.”

      “Was she there when it happened?”

      “No, now she works in Guatemala City. We called her for help.”

      “Okay, I get all that. So how did you find Claire?”

      “Dr. Eloise worked with Claire’s husband. His name is Nicholas Black. She asked him if his wife could help me find my baby. Then she sent us here to wait for Claire Morgan to come. She told us about you, too. She told us you were very big, but I did not expect you to be as tall as this.”

      Novak probably did look large to her. She was tiny, five foot one, if that. Novak frowned, not sure he wanted to take this case, much less hear all the gory details. It did not sound like it would have a good outcome. Finding a baby already missing for over a month and inside a different country would not be easy. “You have no idea who took Rosa?”

      “No, but other children have been taken from our village and others, too. The men come at night and steal our children. Then they leave and our babies are never seen again.”

      In the ensuing silence, both Castillos stared at him, as if they had said enough and only waited now for him to get up and go get their baby. They looked young and innocent and desperate and sad and almost too stoic, considering what had happened to them Well, that story wasn’t going to get it, not by a long shot. He needed to know more than what she’d told him.

      “What about the men who attacked you? How do they fit in with this?”

      Alcina shrugged and shifted her gaze to her little brother. She spoke to him in rapid-fire Spanish. Novak was fluent, too, another perk from working missions in Central America. She was telling the kid to join the men at the fire so she could talk to the big man alone. Pedro didn’t argue. He jumped down off the chickee and walked over to the fire. He sat next to a couple of the younger men.

      “Is Pedro okay?” Novak asked her. “He didn’t say anything.”

      “Pedro’s brave. You saw how he fought the man at the beach.”

      “What about you? That guy got you pretty hard in the face.”

      Her hand moved up absently to touch the bruise. She gave a little shrug. “It does not hurt now.” She turned her face away as if she didn’t like him looking at her injury. Then she looked back. “How did you know it was us on the beach?”

      Their eyes held for a moment. Hers looked as dark as midnight. “I didn’t know. I just saw a man abusing a woman and child who were a lot smaller than him. I don’t like that. I intervene when I see it happen. And you have no idea who they are?”

      She shook her head. “Eldon says they are called Skulls. We do not know such men in Guatemala.”

      Novak knew for a fact that there were men like that in Guatemala. They just didn’t ride motorcycles. “Consider yourself lucky. There’s nothing good about them.”

      “You will find my baby.”

      “I’ll try. Do you know how many men are in that gang? I saw five, but there’s got to be more.”

      “Eldon says there are many and that they will try to kill anyone who helps us. They have been looking for us.”

      “Why do you think the kidnappers wanted Rosa?”

      “Dr. Eloise says they bring babies to America and sell them. She said she has heard that there is a devil in Fort Myers, and he sends his demons to snatch our children.”

      Alcina seemed calm now, except that she was squeezing her hands together. Novak knew all about human trafficking. That kind of thing ran rampant south of the border, especially in Guatemala and Nicaragua but in other countries as well. The feds usually handled those kinds of crimes, especially ICE and DEA. Illegal infant adoption was one of the worst crimes in Novak’s eyes, but there was also sex trafficking and human slavery. All of it was terrible. Countless unsuspecting American couples who wanted to adopt a child were duped by these criminals, unaware that the children brought to them were not from orphanages but stolen out of villages. The Skulls could be involved, but he doubted if they were the brains

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