Aruban Nights (Coastal Fury Book 19) Read online

  “What happened then?” I prompted her, struggling to keep my expression calm. I was so angry hearing about what had happened to her, I wanted nothing more than to find the man responsible and throttle him with my own hands.

  “We got back on the boat,” she answered. “I stayed in my room. One of the other girls was with me. Two days after they made us swallow the drugs, she started saying that she felt sick. She was really pale and shaking, and Andre thought maybe something was wrong. He took her somewhere after that, and I didn’t see either of them again.”

  “That was the last time that you saw Andre?” I asked, trying to piece together a coherent timeline in my head.

  “Yes,” she replied, her expression growing dark as she stared off into space. “A little while after that, I could hear people yelling outside the cabin door. I didn’t know what to do. Andre told me not to move, but I really wanted to know what they were doing, so I peeked. I could hear them yelling about people dying and that there was a murderer somewhere on the ship. I got scared, so I closed the door and locked it. I thought that Andre would come back any minute, but he never did. Then there was an announcement that all the passengers needed to stay inside their cabins for safety.”

  “That was yesterday morning,” I muttered as I recalled Sergeant Barnes informing me that all the passengers had been sequestered to their own rooms while the investigation was carried out. “When did you finally come out?”

  “A few hours after that, I think,” she mumbled. “There were voices outside again, a lot of them. People were saying that we could leave the ship now. Andre still hadn’t come back, and I was worried about what would happen if he caught me outside the room without him but… before I even knew what I was doing, I was walking away with everyone else.”

  “That was really brave of you,” I commended her. “And a smart move.”

  “Thanks.” Gabby smiled weakly up at me before frowning and looking back down again. “As I was leaving, I heard the second announcement. The one about everyone that had died and how any more people involved should turn themselves in because they needed to go to the hospital. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even come out of my room, so I had no idea that all the other girls were dead. I wanted to come forward then, but… I kept hearing Andre’s voice in my head. He always told us that after all the things we’d done, the police would arrest us too if they ever caught us. I thought maybe it was a trick, so I just ignored it and left.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked as I tried to picture this poor girl wandering around on her own after being held captive for so long.

  “I just walked around.” She shrugged. “I didn’t even know where I was at first. I’ve never even been outside of L.A. before this. It took me a while just to figure out I was in Miami.”

  “L.A.?” I repeated. “You mean Los Angeles?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I’m from California, born and raised. Anyway, I overheard some people talking about what happened on the boat. They were gossiping about the people who died, about how they’d suddenly collapsed without warning. I got so scared. I didn’t want that to happen to me, and I kept thinking about that announcement. In the end, I decided to go to the police. When I got there, though…” She trailed off, her hands balling up into tight fists as she did.

  “That was the right decision,” I replied, fighting the urge to step closer. Normally, I’d be at eye level while speaking to a victim, but right now, I needed to consider her comfort. “You’re a strong woman, Gabby. You survived when others didn’t.”

  “Yeah,” she mumbled as fresh tears slid down her cheeks. “Yeah, I did. I’m alive.” She almost seemed surprised by her own statement.

  “Gabby,” I asked her gently, “do you remember where it was that you stopped and got off the boat?”

  “Oh,” she mumbled as he scrunched her eyebrows up in thought. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. No one told us anything. I think Andre might have mentioned it to one of the other men, but I wasn’t really listening. I was just doing what they were telling us to. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her quickly before she could start apologizing again. “Really, it’s fine. You’ve already told us enough.”

  “Five days ago!” she suddenly exclaimed. “It was five days ago. I remember that. I remember because Andre wouldn’t let us eat. He said that we could eat once we made it back into port in five days. I don’t know where it was, but I know that it was wherever we stopped five days ago.”

  “That’s perfect, Gabby,” I replied. It broke my heart just how desperate she seemed to provide us with useful information. I was going to make it my personal mission to get justice for her.

  “I think that’s enough,” Doctor Shelton declared sternly. She was still glaring daggers at Holm and me. “You need to get some rest, Gabby. You’re still weak, and all this stress isn’t good for your recovery.”

  “But--” Gabby protested as she looked between the doctor and me.

  “She’s right,” I replied. “You need rest. You’ve already helped us out a lot, Gabby. I know we’ll be able to get a lot done with what you gave us.” My words were enough to reassure her because she immediately relaxed.

  “Alright.” Gabby smiled up at me. “I’m glad I was able to help you.”

  “Get better soon, Gabby,” I encouraged her before gesturing for Holm to follow me out of her room. As we left, I could hear Doctor Shelton speaking to her in a soft tone. As curt as she was with us, I knew she was only doing it out of concern for Gabby’s wellbeing, and I was glad she was being looked after by someone so caring.

  “Well, that was intense,” Holm remarked morosely once we were several steps down the hallway and out of earshot.

  “No kidding,” I muttered darkly, rage and revulsion bubbling up inside me once more. “Come on. We need to find the bastards who did this.”

  7

  Ethan

  After the interview with Gabby, we decided to return to the ship to investigate further with the new information we had. The first thing I wanted to do was search the rooms that were assigned to our suspect, Andre, as well as the ones that were allocated to the victims. To that end, Holm and I were currently going through the passenger records with one of the ship’s staff members, a man in charge of guest services and records, in a room similar to the control room we’d been in earlier, minus all the screens. Instead, desks and computers filled this room, where the ship’s information was stored and handled.

  “It might be under Gabriella,” I suggested when the name Gabby didn’t bring up any results. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the trafficker used aliases for the victims.”

  “I would imagine that would be difficult,” the staff member muttered as he typed something into his computer. “It would have had to match her passport, and unless he made a fake one-- Oh, here’s something. Gabriella Masden. Is that her?

  “That might be her,” I replied as I read through the booking record. Aside from a date of birth that put her in her mid-twenties, there wasn’t any identifying information. “Which room was she in?”

  “Looks like she and another passenger were both in four-seventeen,” the man replied as he read through the file. “Actually, it looks like someone booked six guests in total, all under a discounted rate.”

  “She did say that she came here with a few other girls,” Holm noted before turning to look at the men. “I’m guessing four of the other guests were female, and the last one was male?”

  “Yeah, actually,” the man replied with mild surprise.

  “Thought so.” Holm frowned. “We’ll need the male passenger’s room number as well.”

  “Looks like it was four-nineteen,” the man replied after taking a look at the screen. “Just down the hall. Here, take this with you.” He pulled open a desk and rummaged through it for a moment before handing us a thin plastic card connected to a lanyard. “It’ll let you into any of the rooms.”

  “Thanks,” I replied as I took the ke
ycard from him before turning to Holm. “Let’s go have a look.”

  The ship felt empty again as we made our way up to where the cabins were. The only difference was that it really was empty now since the passengers had all left. The only people still remaining were the crew and staff, who didn’t have any other way of getting back home for the moment. The ship itself couldn’t leave since it was still considered a crime scene. The ship was so huge that it took us a few minutes just to walk over to the elevator.

  “This is the same one,” Holm noted absently as we stepped into the round, glass elevator. “The one that the kid saw the perp from, I mean.”

  I realized he was right as the elevator began to ascend. As it did, I looked down and wondered what must have been going through the kid’s mind as he watched the scene play out live in front of his eyes. It had been jarring enough for me, and I’d only watched it later through the lens of a security camera.

  The elevator stopped with a loud chime that echoed throughout the empty, cavernous hallway. Our footsteps seemed unusually loud as we stepped across the carpeted floor toward our destination.

  “Should be right over here,” I muttered as I counted the room numbers as we passed. I came to a stop as we reached number four-seventeen. I pulled the keycard out of my pocket and scanned it on the small reader by the door. It opened slightly with a soft click. As I pushed it open the rest of the way, I stepped inside and looked around.

  There were two beds set side by side pressed up against the left wall of the room. They took up most of the space in the small cabin. At the far end of the cabin, beneath a window, was a single desk, along with a small, simple rolling chair. A few feet away from that was a small, round table with two chairs upholstered in a plastic-looking pleather material. Aside from the bedsheets, which were messy and rumpled, it didn’t look like much else had even been touched.

  I walked over to the desk and opened the drawers one by one. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was looking for. Maybe some kind of identifying information. If we figured out where the victims were all from, we might be able to trace where the traffickers were. Unfortunately, it looked like the room was completely barren.

  “See anything?” I called to Holm, who was yanking the sheets off the bed and looking around on the floor.

  “No,” he sighed with disappointment. “Though I can’t say I’m surprised. The way that Gabby spoke about Andre and the other men, I somehow doubt that they would let them keep any kind of personal possessions.”

  “Don’t remind me,” I grumbled as I shut the drawers and scanned over the table and chairs. “Just thinking about it makes me want to beat the crap out of the guy.”

  “We’ll get him,” Holm assured me as he stood up straight and took another glance around the room. “You want to go check out the other room? We might have better luck in there.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed reluctantly. It was disappointing not to have found anything, but we needed to keep moving. We left the room and walked two doors down to four-nineteen. I used the keycard to open this one the same way I’d opened the last one. Unlike the last one, this room was not empty.

  There was a duffle bag at the foot of the bed, for one thing. More pressing, however, was the small pile of white powder sitting on top of the table in the corner, next to several empty bottles of beer.

  “Looks like our man was not shy about indulging in his own goods,” Holm remarked as he leaned down to examine the power. Some of the pile had been organized into neat little lines with a plastic card, sitting off to the side and stained white.

  “Looks like he was in the middle of it when something interrupted him,” I pointed out as I slipped my phone out of my pocket to take some pictures of the scene.

  “That must have been when the other girl with Gabby started to feel sick,” Holm replied. “She said that she didn’t see either of them after that.”

  “Maybe that was the passenger that died in the bathroom,” I suddenly realized as I pulled a pair of gloves and a small evidence bag out of my back pocket. Normally, we would have called forensics to come and handle evidence, but it wasn’t worth it to call them all the way out here to collect a tiny amount of cocaine, so I always carried some supplies for just these kinds of situations. “That might have been Andre that we saw on the security footage, waiting outside the bathroom to make sure she didn’t escape.”

  “It’s possible,” Holm agreed as I finished collecting the evidence. As I did, I noticed the card again. I hadn’t paid it much attention since I assumed it was just a random card the perp had used to cut the cocaine, but now that I looked at it, I realized something odd.

  “What language is this?” I wondered out loud as I picked it up. “Looks like Spanish.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Holm replied as he looked at the card.

  “They speak Spanish in Aruba, right?” I asked as I put the card into the evidence bag as well.

  “They do,” Holm replied as he walked over to the duffle bag that was on the ground. “Along with a few other languages, if I recall from the last time we were there. You think Andre is connected to Aruba?”

  “It’s a strong possibility,” I replied. “Gabby said they got off the boat five days ago, right? That’s when they were in Aruba.”

  “That would make sense,” Holm replied as he unzipped the duffle bag. “Whoa.”

  “What is it?” I asked as I set the evidence bag down and peeled the gloves off before leaning down next to him.

  “Passports,” Holm replied as he reached into the bag before pulling out a pile of blue booklets. “Five of them. I’m assuming they’ll correspond to five of the victims.”

  “Let me see,” I responded as I took one of them. I flipped it open and nearly gasped when I realized who I was looking at. It was Gabby, but she looked so different that, at first, I didn’t recognize her. The woman in the passport photo, which had been issued several years ago judging by the date, had shiny, thick black hair and rosy skin. It was such a stark contrast to the pale and gaunt woman we’d just visited in the hospital that I had to look closely to make sure it was her.

  “It’s Gabby’s,” I muttered as I handed the passport back to Holm so he could see it.

  “Wow.” Holm frowned as he looked at the image in the passport, probably thinking the same thing that I had. “So all the victims were American citizens, presumably. They’d have to be in order to have passports.”

  “Well, the plan wouldn’t work if they didn’t,” I replied as Holm put the passports back into the bag before picking the entire thing up. “The whole point is to get the drugs into the US, which they wouldn’t be able to do if they didn’t have passports.”

  “Seems like a lot of effort for a relatively small amount of drugs,” Holm remarked. “When there are people bringing in entire boatloads all the time, they can’t possibly be making all that much profit.”

  “Maybe not,” I conceded as I gathered up my own evidence bag, and we walked out of the room. “There’s a much greater chance that they’ll get away with it, though. Large shipments are risky, they get seized all the time, but if these victims hadn’t died, we never would have known they were being used to traffic drugs in the first place.”

  “That is an unsettling thought.” Holm grimaced as we stepped into the hallway. “Let’s not go down that particular rabbit hole, or we’re going to go crazy wondering about all the potential crimes going on right now that we know nothing about.”

  “You’re right,” I replied. “Anyway, let’s go speak to the captain. I’d like to talk to the staff again. Andre wasn’t the only trafficker on this ship, and I find it hard to believe that no one noticed anything out of the ordinary in almost three weeks.”

  “Alright,” Holm said as we made our way back toward the elevators. We couldn’t quite remember our way around the ship, so it took us a while to figure out how to get back to the bridge where we’d last met with the captain.

  “I hope he’s in here,” Holm muttered as I knocked
on the door. A few seconds later, his hopes were answered when a gruff voice called from inside.

  “Come in!” Captain Havisham yelled.

  I opened the door and stepped into the control room where we’d first met the captain.

  “Oh, hello, Agents,” he greeted us as we entered, standing up from the table where he was sitting with a few of the other crewmen. “Have you finished your investigation?”

  “Not quite,” I replied. “Actually, I wanted to speak to the staff of the ship again. We’ve managed to determine that the drugs made their way onboard the day that the ship docked in Aruba. We wanted to know if anyone noticed anything suspicious on or around that day specifically.”

  “I’m glad to hear that you managed to find out so much in such a short span of time,” he replied. He seemed significantly less tense and passive-aggressive than he had the last time that we spoke. “I’ll call everyone back into the ballroom, then.”

  He took his walkie-talkie off his hip and held it up to his mouth.

  “This is Captain Havisham,” he spoke into it, his voice calm but authoritative. “I need all staff and personnel to report to the Grand Ballroom right away. Repeat, all staff and personnel currently on board, please report to the Grand Ballroom immediately.” He put his walkie-talkie away again and turned to one of his crewmen. “Johnson, could you please put out an announcement over the intercom as well? Just in case anyone missed that.”

  “Right away, Captain,” the man replied before taking off out of the room.

  “Let’s meet them down there, then,” Havisham said to us before leading the way out of the room. We followed him back off the bridge, through the ship, and back to the same ballroom that we’d used to interview the passengers the day before. It was still fairly empty when we arrived, with only a few confused-looking people milling around. In no time at all, however, more began to arrive, and soon enough, the majority of the ballroom was filled with people talking and questioning why the captain had summoned them here.