Covert Cargo

“Are you and the child all right, ma’am?” Dillon asked.

She smiled. “We are now.”

Dillon reached for the child’s hand to give him reassurance. If this boy had been trafficked along the Californian coast, it was Dillon’s responsibility to find and free the many others who had not managed to escape.

“Let’s go make sense of what just happened,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

* * *

Beth stood on the shoreline and inhaled deeply. She loved the smell of the morning air after a storm, new and clean, leaving a sublime taste of fresh oysters in her mouth. The storm had washed up all kinds of jetsam along the beach, mixed with the foam that came in with the tide. The foam caught on the wind and small patches of it swirled in the air, sending Ted into playful mode. He jumped up to snatch at it with his teeth, before bounding off with his favorite playmate, a Jack Russell terrier by the name of Tootsie.

Beth’s friend Helen Smith walked on the beach alongside her, keeping to the hard sand where Helen could use her walking cane with one hand and lean on Beth with the other. With her eighty-five years of age, Helen’s mobility was failing and she didn’t have the stamina that she used to. Beth called at Helen’s beachside house at 10:00 a.m. each day, which was just a short walk from her lighthouse on the coastal road. Then they would exercise their dogs on the beach and enjoy the fresh air. Helen was Beth’s closest and only friend. Beth knew it must look odd to the townsfolk that she, at the age of thirty-one, was best friends with a lady almost three times her age, but it didn’t matter to her. Helen was more than her friend—she was a counselor, spiritual adviser, prayer buddy, confidante and many more things besides. Beth was blessed to have her.

“You’re quiet today, Beth,” Helen said. “Are you still worried about the child you found last night?”

Beth stooped to pick up a stick to throw for the two dogs, and they raced along the sand. They were a comical sight, one huge and the other tiny, but they were inseparable.

“Yes,” Beth admitted. “I know he’s being looked after by Child Protective Services, but I wonder how many more children there are like him out at sea.” She looked out over the blue water. There was a Jet Ski circling the bay. “I guessed he was being smuggled across the border, but the new coast guard captain was really cagey about it. I think he was hiding something.”

“You’re always suspicious,” Helen replied with a good-natured smile. “Let Captain Randall do his job. I’ve heard good things about him, and he’s made quite an impression on the town already.” Her expression turned playful. “I understand that he’s also setting a few pulses racing among the single ladies in the town.”

Beth let out a spontaneous laugh. “You’re not supposed to notice these things.”

“Why on earth not?” Helen said with an indignant look on her face. “I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.”

Beth’s laughter faded away. “I have to admit that he is a very handsome man, but there’s something distant about him.”

“How so?” Helen asked.

Beth sighed, not sure she could put it into words. “Even when he was in the room with me last night, it felt like his mind was someplace else.” She stopped. The Jet Ski in the bay had cut its motor and the lone man occupying it was staring in her direction. It made her feel uneasy and she turned her head away. “Dillon’s a complicated man,” she said. “I can tell.”

Helen raised her eyebrows. Beth understood exactly what the gesture was saying. “Okay, yeah,” she said. “I’m probably just as complicated as he is, but at least I’m honest.”

“You don’t think he’s honest?” Helen asked, clearly surprised. “He’s started going to the Bracelet Bay Church, so I sure hope he’s an honest and godly man.”

Beth waved her hand in the air, worried that she had cast doubt on the character of the new coast guard captain. “I’m sure he’s perfectly nice and honorable,” she said. “But I’d like to keep my distance from him all the same.”

“Oh, Beth,” Helen said with a chuckle. “You keep your distance from everybody. Why should Dillon Randall be any different?”

Beth smiled. She couldn’t argue with Helen’s words. “Did you say he started going to church?” she asked.

“Yes. He fit right in immediately.”

“That’s nice,” Beth said with a pang of sorrow. She had loved being part of the Bracelet Bay congregation. But that was in the past now. She hadn’t attended church in five years. Helen stopped walking. “Let me just catch my breath for a moment.” She clasped Beth’s hand in hers. “You know, there’s no reason why you can’t start going back to church again. The pastor gives me a lift every week to the Sunday service and he always asks after you. I told him that you and I have our own church of two, taking daily worship together, and he told me to tell you that he keeps you in his prayers.” Helen looked hesitant for a moment. “The whole town keeps you in their prayers. You should know that. Five years is a long time to shut yourself away from those who love you.”

Beth squeezed her eyes tightly closed. Helen was often trying to persuade her to embrace life again, to return to church, return to her old friends, but she simply didn’t have the desire.

“I know you mean well, Helen, but I’m doing fine as I am,” Beth said. “I have everything I need right here.” She extended her arm out over the ocean, catching sight of the Jet Ski still bobbing up and down on the gentle waves. “What more could I possibly want?”

Helen didn’t respond, but Beth knew exactly what answer came to mind: a husband, a family, a future without loneliness.

“I often wish I had put more effort into finding someone to share my life with instead of being alone all these years,” Helen said. “Don’t make the same mistake as me. Nobody judges you for what happened on your wedding day, and nobody is laughing at you. I know you find that hard to believe.”

Beth felt the serenity of the ocean breeze ebbing away. “I had to go to the drugstore in town a couple of weeks ago to get some painkillers,” she said. “I don’t normally use the stores in Bracelet Bay, but I had a big migraine brewing.” She looked down at her feet. “I could see everybody whispering and pointing when I got out of the car—look, there goes the crazy lady whose fiancé dumped her at the altar.” She felt her cheeks grow hot with shame. “I left without even buying the painkillers.”

“Have you ever considered that people might be surprised to see you?” Helen asked. “They might be staring because they’re happy, or because you look pretty.” She smiled. “Or because you don’t realize you’ve spilled spaghetti sauce all over your shirt.”

Beth laughed. Helen always had the perfect way of uplifting her spirit.

“Come on,” Beth said, steering Helen around and changing the conversation. “It’s almost time for our daily devotional.”

Helen checked her watch. “Oh, so it is.” She called for Tootsie to come to heel. The dog stubbornly ran in the opposite direction. “That dog is so disobedient,” she said, with a shake of her head. “He’s got a rebellious streak.”

“Just like me,” Beth said. “But you love us anyway.”

“I sure do,” Helen said, beginning the walk along the sand to her bungalow. “And so do a lot of other people.”

Beth nodded, not in agreement but to appease her friend because, in her own mind, she was a laughingstock and always would be.

Before she left, she turned and made one last check on the Jet Ski sitting in the bay. It was still there, and the man was staring intensely at her, wearing a hood pulled up over his head despite it being a bright and clear day. His presence felt sinister in the calm, sunny morning, and she drew her eyes away. She wanted to leave.

“Ted,” she called. “Let’s go.”

Her dog dutifully complied and bounded to her feet, carrying a pebble in his mouth.

“Drop it, boy,” she said. “You know those stones wear down your teeth.”

Ted released the pebble onto the sand, and Beth gasped in shock at the image with which she was faced. Helen reached for her hand, and they both stared down at the unusual stone, appearing totally out of place among the dull gray shingle and golden sand.

“Ted must have picked it up when he was digging in the dunes,” Helen said. “But what on earth is it?”

“I don’t know,” Beth replied, bending to pick the stone up and turn it over in her hands.

It was a normal pebble, the gray kind found on any seashore, but this one had been intricately painted with an array of bright colors, illustrating a picture of a female skeletal figure, shrouded in a long golden robe. In one hand, she carried a vivid blue planet: the earth in all its glory. In the other hand, she held a scythe with a menacing, curved blade. Beth gazed at the skull protruding from the hooded cloak, the eye sockets painted so well that the stone truly seemed to have been drilled away to reveal deep, dark shafts. The image was both beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.

“Maybe somebody dropped it,” Beth said, putting the stone inside her pocket. “Or it got washed up from a boat.”

Helen raised her eyebrows. “It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. And a little scary to be honest.”

“It doesn’t scare me,” Beth said, the lie sticking in her throat. “It’s just a rock.” She attached Ted’s leash to his collar. “I’ll take Ted home while you wait at the bottom of the steps. He looks exhausted from all this foraging for stones.” She tried to sound lighthearted, but inwardly the fear wouldn’t budge.

Arm in arm, the women resumed their return walk along the sand. Beth’s stomach was swirling with anxiety. She wondered if her discovery of the child and the stone were somehow connected. Had she stumbled into something more sinister than she realized? And was the man on the Jet Ski part of it?

She thought of Dillon Randall, and his assurance that she could call him at any time if she felt troubled. Beth normally shunned the outside world at all costs, but she might have no other choice than to reach out for help.

* * *

Dillon spread a large map over his desk, studying the suspected trafficking routes that were marked upon it. The smugglers’ boats had been heading up the western coast from Mexico, laden with adults and children from all over South and Central America—people who believed that decent jobs and homes awaited them in the US, but in reality they were destined to be domestic servants, rarely paid or rewarded for their hard work and left with no money to return home. The traffickers seemed to be using flotillas of small motorboats and rowboats for their journeys—vessels that were too small and dangerous for the purpose. One of these vessels had capsized four weeks previously, leading to the deaths of most of its occupants. That was when Dillon was covertly recruited into the coast guard from his SEAL base in Virginia.