Карен Кингсбери - A Distant Shore [calibre]

Whatever. Jack looked at the airline information again.

Belize.

Ten years ago he and his brother and their parents had flown first class, too. Jack stared at the distant clouds. A storm was inching closer. He closed his eyes and he could still hear Shane calling to him from down the beach. You might have a little competition at quarterback, big brother. He was so young. Just fourteen.

Why didn’t you stay on the shore, Shane? I told you to stay on the shore.

Jack opened his eyes. No, Belize wasn’t going to be a problem. The country owed him one. This one’s for you, little brother . Jack breathed deep. If only he believed in God the way he had back then. Back when his biggest problem was figuring out whether he was going to be a Navy SEAL or a politician like his father.

That endless summer all those years ago.

In the rare moments when he did still think God was possible, Jack could only ask the obvious question. Why? Why did Shane follow him into the water and how come Jack hadn’t been able to swim fast enough to save them both? The little girl and Shane. His best friend. If God were real, He had to have the answers. But Jack never asked. If God was there, if He was real, then He didn’t listen to Jack Ryder. Otherwise Shane would’ve lived.

The truth about God was that simple.

Jack stared at the sky again. The purpose he had felt that day—the way it felt to save the little girl—was all that mattered now. It drove him and compelled him to notch one successful mission after another. He lived for it. The feeling he would have at the end of the week when he returned home from Belize, sixteen trafficking victims and Eliza Ann McMillan free from the Palace forever.

The face of the little blond girl came to mind, the one Jack had saved instead of saving Shane. Some tourist, no doubt. Probably from Europe. Sweden, maybe. No big deal to her family, Jack guessed. The rescue was probably something her mother brought up every now and then at family parties. Like a favorite story.

Remember the time when…

Did the girl’s family even realize that Jack’s brother had died that day? Jack was never sure. But something had struck him about the girl’s mother. Something that had always rubbed him the wrong way and made him question what kind of person she must’ve been. Even now.

Jack distinctly remembered the look in the mother’s eyes. More anger than fear, a fact that still didn’t make sense. The woman had made eye contact with Jack as he brought the child up the beach and as he handed her over, just before he turned and ran to Shane. But something had been missing from the exchange. It was still missing.

Her mother had never said thank you.

CHAPTER FIVE

Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed.

—Lamentations 3:48

At eighty-six years old, Ike Armstrong knew everyone in the hillside Mennonite community of Lower Barton Creek, seventy miles west of Belize City. Most of them thought he was losing his mind, that he wasn’t as sharp as he had once been and that the stories he told were more fables than fact.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, Ike talked slower than he had in his prime and he didn’t always remember what he had eaten for breakfast. But he could tell you the history of the Mennonite settlements in Belize without missing a name or a date. He had been the historian of Lower Barton Creek since its founding.

Children of the settlement considered history nothing more than a list of facts. Ike knew better. For five decades, he had been not only keeper of the facts… but keeper of the stories. The heart of life here in Belize. Passing on the more detailed village history was up to him, and to that end, he was sharper than anyone in the settlement.

The Belize City police chief knew that Ike had more information about Lower Barton than anyone. It was why the chief had dropped in on Ike yesterday, and why the man had arranged for the young FBI agent to come by today.

Ike was forbidden to tell anyone the truth about the agent. So he made up a reason for the young man’s impending visit. “My great-grandson from the States is coming,” he had told the elders of the village yesterday after the police chief stopped in. “Chief just wanted to let me know.” Ike had smiled. “You remember my son, Ezekiel, who moved to the States in 1983. It’s his grandson. Luke.”

“That’s nice.” The elders had smiled and nodded and tipped their hats. “Should be a good time, Ike.” Visits like that happened now and then. Mennonite family members coming to Belize from the United States or Canada. No one took much notice.

Which was why no one suspected the truth about today’s visit.

Good thing, Ike thought. He wasn’t sure what the FBI agent would want with him, but the conversation would be secretive, that much he’d been told. Secretive and serious. Ike lifted his face to the sky. He was willing to help. Whatever it took to aid officials in cleaning up the crime that had plagued Belize City in recent years. Today killings happened at an alarming rate, especially in and around the capital city. Robberies and home invasions were symptoms of a bigger problem—the international drug cartel that used Belize as a gateway to Mexico.

The increasing crime in Belize was personal to Ike. His granddaughter, Susan James, and her children—Lizzie and Daniel—had disappeared more than a decade ago. Just after Susan’s husband, Paul David James, left his family in the dead of night. No telling what Paul David was into or why he left. Villagers had their suspicions. Another woman, maybe. Gambling trouble. Whatever happened to Paul David, Ike was almost positive Susan and the children had been victims of a crime.

Ike sighed. Maybe the FBI agent had a lead on their disappearance. Ike would do anything to help with that. He gripped the arms of his rocking chair and stared at the road that wound its way into Lower Barton. These days, he spent most of his time here on the front porch of his thatched-roof home. Rocking back and forth, contemplating the history of the village.

Praying about the future.

He set the chair in motion again. Yes, the disappearance of his family was the darkest time in Ike’s life. He remembered how upset Susan was, and how after her husband left, she and the children stayed indoors most of the time. No one in the village knew what to say or do. Mennonite men didn’t leave their families. They worked hard and helped each other and found a way to stick it out. Ike didn’t know another man who had left his family the way Paul David had. Everyone expected the man to come back.

Instead no one ever saw him or his family again.

Sometime after their disappearance, word returned to Lower Barton that Susan and her children had drowned. A tourist had seen the trio head for the water at a Belizean Beach just south of the city. Right before Ike’s family disappeared.

The conclusion had been sad and simple. Susan and the children had drowned. No telling about Paul David. Terrible thing, people of the village would say when the topic of Paul David, Susan, Lizzie and Daniel came up. Everyone but Ike agreed about what must have happened. Paul David must have run off with another woman, and his family was probably swept away in one of those awful undercurrents. The ones that plagued the eastern coast of Belize when a hurricane was moving through the Caribbean Sea—as it had been the day the three disappeared.

Ike had a different theory, and he was fairly sure that’s why the FBI agent was coming to Lower Barton Creek today. Not to talk to the elders and leaders of the community, but to a tired old man rocking on his front porch.

Because Ike was the keeper of the stories.