Page 25 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
This whole damn case was a mess.
There were no bodies, which meant the seven had left the island one way or another. Had they gone of their own accord? If not, why had they been taken? Nine people were a lot harder to control than two, and they had little value in the grand scheme of things. Nobody was talking about a bunch of unknowns when two big names had disappeared. Twenty-four hours had passed, and there’d been no ransom letter. No list of terrorist demands.
During the early hours, we’d interviewed the eyewitnesses. The cops had corralled the remaining cast and crew into an abandoned building, a wood-framed space with a palm-frond roof that had probably been a communal dining hall, judging by the dusty stacks of furniture pushed against one wall. People had dragged chairs into groups where they whispered among themselves, and one girl was asleep on the sand floor using a rolled-up sweater as a pillow. Nobody was happy to be there.
I’d questioned three people myself, wearing my “nice” mask, the friendly one that made people want to talk to me. They didn’t know anything. Two of them—both catering staff—had been in their makeshift kitchen when the shooting started. They’d hidden under a table and stayed there until the noise stopped. The third was a college student backpacking her way around the world, and when she’d seen the ad for extras in the hostel where she was staying, she jumped at the chance to earn a few bucks and also have a cool story to tell her friends. Now she could talk about her lucky escape—she’d seen the missing group heading out along the beach, and she’d almost asked if she could join them, but she “didn’t do well around new people, you know?” When I pressed a little harder, she wasn’t sure who’d suggested exploring, but that group had hung out together from the start. Did they know each other before they came to the island?
She’d cried the whole time I was talking to her, and across the room, I heard a group of men getting angry because they wanted to leave. But there wasn’t anywhere to take them, and we sure weren’t going to let them scatter to the wind until we understood what had gone on here.
The police commissioner who’d arrived early this morning had promised to look into arranging a hotel on one of the larger islands, but so far, all he’d done was pace up and down, talking into his phone. The various embassies were getting restless. They wanted to know what had happened to their citizens, and more importantly, what the Indonesians planned to do about it.
We’d set up our command post in an empty residence, and Priest also spent most of his time on the phone. Jez, Priest, and I had jumped with rations and a water purification system, portable solar panels, a power bank, and comms equipment, as well as a small arsenal. Emmy’s team had shown up similarly equipped. But right now, I felt too sick to eat, too wired to sleep, and I didn’t have anyone to shoot.
My phone pinged as I slumped onto a wobbly wooden stool. A message from Sin.
Sin
Initial intel suggests the West Papua Freedom Army isn’t involved, although they wish they were. My contact was impressed with the hostage idea and disappointed they didn’t think of it first. Ten bucks says they’ll try abducting a high-value target of their own over the next few months.
My phone pinged again, and this time it was Echo.
“What the hell is the Wild Roots Collective?” Emmy asked before I had a chance to read the new message.
“What the fuck?” Jez was staring at her phone too. Everyone was staring at their phones.
“Hoo boy,” Priest put in.
I pressed “play” on the video Echo had sent, and my chest tightened as Marc’s face filled the screen. Marc, pleading for the construction of a luxury resort to be cancelled. For the east side of Malati to be turned into a nature preserve. Yeah, what the fuck? The camera panned back, and Serena said a few words too. Smudged mascara ringed her eyes, and she’d clearly been crying. As for Marc, he looked more composed. Smooth, but when I saw him squeezing his hands together in his lap for a moment before he caught himself, I knew he was nervous. He used to do that when he talked to my dad.
“When was this posted?” Heath asked. “And where?”
There was relief in his voice. Relief that his sister was alive, even if she wasn’t back with us yet.
I read the rest of Echo’s message. “On Marc’s BuzzHub account. It’s also on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Jam.”
Jam was a new kid on the block, a European competitor to Facebook that promised not to sell your personal data to the highest bidder. It had been slow to take off because users had to pay a buck a week for access. Some thought that was too expensive without realising that when you got your apps for free, you were the product. I played the video again. Marc and Serena had been kidnapped by a bunch of environmentalists—who wanted to save everything on the planet except for humans, obviously.
And we had three days to find them.
Fuck.
A nasty deadline, but at least we had a starting point now, a whole bundle of little threads to begin picking at. We knew who the abductors were. We knew their goals, their methods, and even some of their weaknesses. We just didn’t know where they were.
Yet.
Priest was once again on the phone, directing Echo to research the Wild Roots group. I could only imagine the snarky response he’d get, because of course she’d already be doing it. Emmy was speaking too, waking staff from various Blackwood offices around the globe in a quest for information. Heath just kept watching the video over and over.
“There’s something missing here,” he said.
Emmy tilted her head to the side. “Go on.”
“Where are the others? Nine people disappeared, but only Serena and Marc are on camera. There’s no sign of those extras, not even an honourable mention. He’s got Serena there—why didn’t he line up the others for effect? Get the Australian and Canadian and Italian governments to apply pressure to the Indonesians?”
Damn it, he was right, and I should have seen that. Marc and Serena were the high-value hostages, but if I’d kidnapped a bunch of people to make a ransom demand, I’d line them all up, make them cry as they recited their names, make them plead to their families and governments for help. But they were missing in action. One assistant director and six extras who weren’t even part of the core crew.
And the girl I’d spoken with earlier said they were friends.
Emmy scowled at the same time I did. “Motherfucker.”
