“Andy, you have to help me,” Lara said when she broke the hug. “My daughter is missing. I escaped with her, but they caught me and brought me back. She’s out there somewhere alone.”
“She’s safe,” I said. “With a good friend of mine.”
Lara looked scared to believe what I’d said but Andy smiled and nodded.
“Mariela is safe,” I said. “She’s an extraordinary girl.”
At the sound of her daughter’s name, Lara knew we were telling the truth and let out a huge sigh of relief.
Blanchet stared at her, his expression somber. “Your mother… Mariela said she’d never met her.”
Lara shook her head. “They keep us here to bring in drugs. We’re expendable. If we get caught, then they leave us in Mexican prisons. The police there are corrupt. They don’t make deals like this country does to get people out. Mama left for a trip ten years ago and she never returned.”
My heart clenched. Maya had been held captive for another ten years in this place after she disappeared from Mudbug, only to wind up in a Mexican prison.
“Do you think she’s still there?” he asked.
“I don’t know if she’s even still alive. I don’t know why she brought us back here. I asked but she never explained.”
Tears streamed down Blanchet’s face, and he hugged Lara again.
“We’ll do everything we can to find out what happened,” I said.
My phone signaled an incoming text and I smiled. “The state police picked up three of the four guys that ran. They’re still looking for the last one. And Hermes showed up, raising hell about someone calling the state police in over his head, so he went out there in the sheriff’s boat trying to take over. Harrison says the state police weren’t having it and sent him on his way.”
“The governor can’t fire the whole state just to prop Hermes up,” Ida Belle said.
“There are three transport boats on the way to the cove to pick up the women and children,” I said. “I’ll lead and we’ll get them all out of here.”
“You can’t go that way,” Lara said. “There’s explosives along the path. The men know where to walk to avoid them.”
“Don’t worry. I know how to find them.”
She didn’t look convinced, but the desire to get out of this hellhole was greater than her fear of the path to the cove. The other women and children had been clutching each other during our exchange and now some had collapsed on the ground, weeping as they realized their nightmare was finally over.
“Ida Belle, I want you and Gertie to head back and get my boat. Meet us at the cove. Blanchet and I will get these women and children down there for pickup. Remember, there’s one missing guy still out there, so be on the lookout.”
As Ida Belle and Blanchet headed off, I turned to the women. “If there are things you’d like to bring with you, then please gather what you can easily carry. You’ve probably all been this way before, so you know how long the walk is. Only load up what you can carry, anything personal and maybe a change of clothes.”
They all nodded and headed back inside to grab what they wanted. It only took them a couple minutes and what they held wasn’t much, but then I didn’t figure they had much.
“Okay, I want you to follow me single file. Put a child in between two adults so that they can keep watch. Blanchet will bring up the rear. If you see anything suspicious, yell. If anyone yells, including me or Blanchet, I want everyone to stop in place. Do you all understand?”
They all nodded, and I could see their excitement starting to build as they realized this was really going to happen. The youngest of the children was probably six, so that was a plus, and only one of the women appeared to be pregnant, but she didn’t look far along. This wasn’t going to be a fast trip, but I had every confidence that it would be a successful one.
It took us thirty minutes to make it to the cove, and Harrison was already there with the three rescue boats. The state police with him appeared slightly stunned at the collection of women and children, and their expressions shifted from sympathy to anger as they processed everything the group must have been through.
We got them all loaded about the time Ida Belle and Gertie pulled up.
“Thank you so much for getting the state police on board,” I said to Harrison. “Where’s Hermes?”
“When they made it clear he wasn’t allowed to insert himself in any of this since it was going on right under his nose, he cut out. But not before he fired me.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“That’s what the state police said. I’m not worried about it. I’m just glad we rescued these women.” He grinned. “It was nice partnering up again. That paint in the balloons was a stroke of genius. They tried to blend among the fisherman, but it wasn’t possible. And that pink glitter isn’t going to play well for them in prison.”
“I’m sure you have Gertie to thank for that one.”
“Everything is better with glitter,” she said.
“What about the fourth man?” I asked. “What if he didn’t get paint on him?”
“No sign of him, but there’s still two boats sweeping the area, and the police have put out an alert. We’ll get him, Fortune. If not today, then we’ll track him down. At least one of those guys will make a deal. We’ll get everything we need.”
I nodded, but I didn’t want some random bad guy hanging over my head.
He gave me a wave and shoved off with the state police. I motioned to Ida Belle. “Let’s make a sweep and see if we can spot that last guy. I want to check near Spinner’s camp first.”
“He was moving awfully fast to be Spinner,” Ida Belle said.
“Even Gertie moves fast when she needs to.”
“Hey!” Gertie protested.
We climbed into the boat and set out, all scouting the bayou and channels for any sign of the man as we went. When we got to the place where we’d found Spinner’s crab pot, we slowed but the line was gone. Ida Belle cruised up the bayou until we reached the tree line, and I jumped out.
“Give me just a sec to check.”
“You want backup?” Blanchet asked.
“No. I’ll be quicker alone.”
I quickly found the path that Spinner had used and followed it deeper into the woods. It wasn’t long before I found a clearing with remnants of a campfire and markings of tent stakes in the dirt. A clothesline still hung between two trees. But it was clear that Spinner had abandoned this site recently.
I headed back to the boat and found them tucked behind a cypress tree, ducked down. Ida Belle signaled, and I looked up the bayou and saw the sheriff’s boat. Crap. The last thing I needed was a run-in with that idiot. He’d take the opportunity to arrest all of us now that we’d not only upstaged him but exposed his complete and utter incompetence to the state police.
I got low and eased into the boat, then peered through the moss with the others. Hermes had stopped about thirty yards away and was standing in the middle of the boat, looking down, but not at the water, at the bottom of the boat. It all made sense when he stepped to the side, and I saw Blair Johnson in the bottom of the boat and the flash of metal in Hermes’s hand.