“Go ahead.”
“We’ve completed an initial sweep of the primary search grid based on the filed flight plan and estimated fuel range. No wreckage, no debris, no emergency signals detected. We’re expanding the search area and coordinating with Dutch Caribbean authorities out of Curaçao.”
“You might be searching the wrong area.”
Pause. “Sir?”
“The plane was sabotaged. I have security footage showing an unidentified individual on the departure property the night before the flight. The hangar where the aircraft was stored had no camera coverage. Someone could’ve tampered with the GPS or the fuel system.”
I could hear him processing that. “Mr. Banks, if you have evidence of criminal interference with an aircraft, I strongly recommend you contact the FBI and the NTSB immediately. This would escalate the investigation to a federal level.”
“I’m making those calls as soon as we hang up. But I need you to understand something. My brother is out there. His fiancée is six months pregnant. They’ve been missing for days and you’re searching in a grid that was calculated off compromised instruments. I need you to widen the search and I need you to do it today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today.”
I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t need to. A nigga like me had learned a long time ago that calm was more intimidating thanloud. Loud lets people dismiss you as emotional. Calm makes them realize you mean every single word and you’re not asking.
“Understood, Mr. Banks. We’ll adjust our parameters and I’ll personally keep you updated.”
“Appreciate it.”
I hung up and stood in my brother’s office. Through the window, the hangar sat two hundred yards away in the afternoon sun. Somebody walked into that building, crawled under my brother’s plane, and tried to kill him and his pregnant fiancée. And they did it on property that was supposed to be safe. The one place Quest went to get away from everything. They violated that. They turned his sanctuary into a weapon.
I was going to find out who. Not because I needed revenge, although I did. Because I needed my brother to come home and the only way to make sure nobody finished what they started was to identify them first.
I walked out of the main house and across the gravel toward the hangar. The doors were unlocked, which was wrong because Quest always locked them. I pulled them open and stood in the empty space where a Citation CJ3+ used to sit and looked at the concrete floor and the tool bench against the wall and the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead and tried to see what was missing. What was moved. What didn’t belong.
There was a grease smear on the floor near where the nose gear would’ve sat. Fresh enough that it hadn’t dried into the concrete yet. Could’ve been from Quest’s pre-flight check. Could’ve been from somebody who was under the plane doing something they had no business doing.
I took a picture of it. Added it to the file I was building on my phone. Screenshot of the motorcycle, photo of the grease smear, the flight plan, the Coast Guard case number, everything organized and timestamped the way I organized everything because that’s who I was. Even in a crisis, I kept receipts.
Whoever did this left a trail. Might be faint. Might take time. But trails don’t disappear just because the person who made them thinks they were careful. They were careful enough to avoid the cameras. They weren’t careful enough to avoid me.
11
Quest
I already had the knife in my hand before the boar finished deciding it wanted smoke.
I kept that blade on me at all times on this island. When I went to the waterfall, when I went fishing, when I walked the shoreline with Mehar every morning. It was the only real weapon we had and I treated it accordingly. I stay ready so I don’t gotta get ready, and right now, standing at the edge of camp with two hundred pounds of pissed-off wild boar staring me down like I owed it money, ready was exactly where I was.
The boar was bigger up close. Way bigger. Built low to the ground, wide through the shoulders, dark bristled fur that looked like it hadn’t been washed since the animal was born, and two curved tusks poking up from its bottom jaw that were definitely capable of opening me up if I let them. Its little black eyes were locked on me and Mehar and it was doing that thing where it lowered its head inch by inch, huffing through its nose, and I knew what that meant because I’d spent two weeks on this island listening to this thing move through the brush at night. This wasn’t a warning. This was a countdown.
“Quest…” Mehar’s voice was tight behind me.
“Go. Toward the waterfall. Now.”
“I’m not?—”
“Mehar, take your pregnant ass toward that waterfall right now. I’m not asking.”
She hesitated for a second and I could feel her weighing whether to argue with me or listen and God bless this woman, for once in her life she chose to listen. I heard her feet moving backward through the dirt, slow at first, then faster, and the second the boar’s eyes tracked her movement I charged at it.
I charged at a wild boar. On purpose. With a folding knife. My heart was pounding in my chest because I only had one chance to get this right. This muhfucka could kill me easily and then run after Peach.
The boar met me halfway because it had been wanting this fight since we showed up on its island and now it was getting it. It came in low, head down, tusks forward, and I sidestepped just enough to avoid the full impact but its shoulder caught my thigh and the force of it knocked me sideways. I stayed on my feet because falling down meant dying and I wasn’t interested in either. I grabbed a fistful of the bristled fur on its back and drove the knife into the side of its neck.
It squealed. I’m talking a sound that I never want to hear again for the rest of my natural life. High-pitched, guttural, furious. It thrashed so hard it ripped the knife out of my hand and I watched my only weapon go spinning across the sand while two hundred pounds of wounded, bleeding animal spun around to charge me again.
Cool. No knife. No weapon. Just me and this pig and the audacity I was born with.
