Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) (12 page)

“I was thinking that on your end, Hannah needs stuff - clothes, a cell phone, books, etc. I’ll supply her with a tablet for games and school. I’m going to make its IP address bounce around the world so she’ll be safe. I’ll also provide you with a water gun that you’ll not be able to take to school, but that both of you should keep with you at all times except at school.”

Ariana smirked and said, “Water gun?”

“Before you laugh too hard, Ariana, let me tell you it’s a modified gun. I found the perfect polymer to coat it with and so it’s strong and has a considerable range. I fill the water chamber with a red chili mixture that disables your eyes for about four hours when hit with the stuff. My friend, the retired detective was fired upon by a gang thug and he missed, but she didn’t and he’s sitting in jail now. Would you like hot pink or lime green?”

“Hot pink” and “lime green” were chorused together by the two women.

“Hannah, I need your house address and the location of the creek where you dropped the cell phone.”

“Is it safe to go inside Hannah’s house?” Ariana asked.

“I’ve got infrared technology so I’ll be able to see any heat sources before I enter. The difficulty will be in not alerting the neighbors. So you have any ideas for that Hannah?”

“You’ll need Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak,” was her response after thinking about it for several seconds.

Damian thought of the bullet proof fabric he’d provided Natalie’s family and decided that at night it would serve the purpose of invisibility. He pulled a Google Earth street view picture of Hannah’s house up on his laptop and they discussed the house and where her pictures were located. Ariana, Miguel, and Hannah would escort Damian back to his island and he would go from there. Ariana’s boat provided a comfortable ride and he thought about getting something similar for himself, but he could get to her house on the jet ski or more slowly in his rowboat with the small motor. Having a boat like her would require a permanent dock and remove the look of his island being uninhabited, so he’d pass on a new boat. They dropped him off at his dock and as he waved good-bye he knew his life had changed forever. He went into his lab to gather some gadgets and while he was there he took a look around his lower level trying to decide where to build Hannah her own bedroom. He had space that wasn’t in use, but there were no windows down here. Maybe her parents would be found later today and then building her a bedroom would become a moot point, but somehow he doubted that. He’d arranged to have Mike pick him up in a few hours. He wanted the sunshine of the day to look for her cell phone, but the cloak of darkness to visit Hannah’s house.

Chapter Twenty

With his supplies sorted and ready to go for Mike’s pick-up later, he went to look for Bailey and Bella. They were miffed he missed a second night on the island, but warmed up to Damian with the smell of fish. He stood looking out his kitchen window at the bay and thought, ‘I’ve become a father again; how weird, okay maybe not a father but an uncle.’ He’d protect Hannah as he hadn’t been able to do for his daughters.

Then he thought, ‘first order of business. Damian, is to get over your morose thoughts and move on to getting the child what she needs and trying to find her parents like you’re trying to solve the cold cases. He was grateful Natalie hadn’t called him during this time that he was dealing with Hannah’s situation.

He went back to the runs he was doing concerning who in the Aryan Brotherhood had put the original kill order out for Natalie. Going through seven years of some twenty thousand inmates and ex-inmates was challenging for his computer; it wouldn’t have been something he could have done manually. Once he had the emails that were spoken in their code, he also had the computer go back and look at those emails from the same address written in plain English to assure there were no messages about Natalie. So far he hadn’t figured out where the kill order had come from, but hopefully, he armed Natalie with enough of the Brotherhood’s secrets that she’d get somewhere with their leadership. If not, he was ready to leak the first fifty or so emails to the black guerilla gang. He hoped he wouldn’t have to do that as he didn’t want to encourage a race riot in any of the state’s prisons. It was time to check in with her.

“Hey, Damian, we were able to tow Avery’s truck from the salvage yard down to our lab and the techs are going over it now. If they find evidence, it will be hard to prove the police did not plant the evidence.”

“If the police don’t have Debbie Altman’s DNA or fingerprints, how could they plant evidence in the car?”

“The DA needs to hear that reflexive answer from you; he thinks because of the nearly thirty year delay in finding this car, we’ll be accused of planting evidence. I wish Kevin had thought of the appropriate response when he spoke with her.”

“The DNA you’ll have for matching will be that of siblings. Close enough that you know you’re dealing with close blood relatives, but not so close that you would have an exact match.”

“I know, Damian, you’re preaching to the choir, here.”

“I can’t find who ordered the hit on you for your meeting with the leaders of the Brotherhood, but I have fifty emails so derogatory and inflaming, that the prisons will have riots on their hands as soon as we post them,” Damian said. “I hate to cause riots, but we must get them to back off you and your family.”

“Maybe we should let the wardens know at the various prisons of the impending storm.”

“They might react by turning off the email system to bide themselves some time and remove the inflaming emails if they have advanced notice. Most of these riots result in inmate deaths rather than guard deaths.”

“I’m really torn on this one. Since so much drug use and trafficking occurs inside prison, the guards have to be part of the distribution system; they just haven’t been caught yet,” Natalie paused a moment to think and then said, “It’s my life and my family’s that I’m fighting for, give me five of the fifty emails so I can take them with me and share with whomever I’m meeting.”

“Will do.”

“Eddie and I are looking forward to your meeting with Trevor and Haley this weekend. We really like her and you’re like the final approval for him.”

Damian had completely forgotten Trevor coming that weekend in the last twenty-four hours of solving Hannah’s problems. He’d have to talk to Ariana about it. He planned to have the two of them over to his home after Trevor was there so he could work on Hannah’s identity and get her approval for a small bedroom he could build her.

Instead he lied to Natalie, “I’d forgotten about the visit, in the wake of your shooting, but at least this is a safe place for him to relax. Do you and Eddie want to join them in a visit to my house this weekend? It’s pretty safe here.”

“Thanks for the offer but it’s good for you to have some alone time with them for this first meeting. After that, you can invite us anytime.”

“Okay I’ll trust your opinion on the matter. How is everything working there? Have you experienced any problems with my technology or with any thugs?”

“Only the postman and our neighbor. Eddie filed a hold card at the post office and we put a sign up about stepping on the property, as it was dangerous. One of our neighbors with young children was outraged, but we explained that someone that I sent to jail was rumored to be looking for me, and we had set traps that would contain but not kill someone. She debated sending over her oldest for the day.”

Damian chuckled at the image of the parent being pleased with their child being caught up in a tree net for a few hours. “Maybe we overreacted, but it’s better than being dead.”

“I don’t think we overreacted. We all especially appreciate the bullet proof fabric. I checked in with Andy and Sherman and they thought we did the right thing, so don’t worry about it. Damian, thanks for your help with both the cold case and my own protection and I’ll drop you a text if I hear anything new.”

They ended the call and he wondered how Hannah and Ariana were doing with their shopping trip. What a complete flip of his life that he was suddenly worrying about people after spending nearly seven years in isolation not giving a rat’s ass about anything or anyone. He laughed at himself and the stress he was feeling for Natalie and her family, and Hannah.

He moved into another area of his workshop containing lots of weird toys. He owned a forward looking infrared sensor. He used it to understand this rock of an island and the water flow around it. Tonight he was going to use it to see if there were any heat sources near Hannah’s family home. He could sit several blocks away and yet still see any heat sources at her house. He would modify the technology so he could spot cameras that were connected to somewhere, be it the family’s hidey holes or to the bad guys that took Hannah’s parents. He had another device with him that would scramble all cameras while he was near or in the house.

This was all assuming that the coast was clear and the house empty. If he found heat sources, then he planned to wear a gas mask and fire a Halothane bomb at the heat source. Halothane was cheap and still in use in developing countries and veterinary practices as a quick acting sedative. The heat source should hit the ground in about fifteen seconds after breathing the stuff and stay down while Damian retrieved what he needed from the house. He wanted Hannah’s stuff, any records or computer drives and any recording devices. He’d have his water gun as a weapon, but hopefully just be able to knock out the heat source, and scramble any security devices before his heat source notified anyone of Damian’s intrusion.

Ariana dropped him a text with Hannah’s new mobile number and just said the day was going well, and what time should they come tomorrow to work on Hannah’s school records? Damian thought Trevor and Haley would be gone by three and so he had her plan for a four o’clock arrival. She knew he was having guests and if they wanted to keep Hannah’s presence hidden until they had a good story in place, then it was better not to introduce her to anyone either of them knew closely. Fortunately Ariana’s family and that of her dead husband’s were all on the east coast.

He had an early dinner with the cats, sharing his chicken. They also were going to have their lives disrupted whenever Hannah stayed with them. The days were numbered as loners for all three of them. He cleaned the kitchen up and got ready to meet Mike down on the beach. He hoped to be back tonight, but he’d made no arrangement with Mike. Once at the harbor, he made plans with the harbormaster to borrow his boat. He’d leave it parked overnight at his lower level dock and take it back in the morning to do some grocery shopping then meet Trevor and Haley for his trip back home.

Plans in place, he turned his truck toward the creek where Hannah had dropped her phone. He had a fish net and some wellingtons to wade in, but he wasn’t sure what kind of water he’d meet up with. Closer to the time that Hannah had crossed the creek, it might have been raging from a recent rain storm, or maybe she was wet and cold and the battery was dead anyway. Maybe she’d crossed in the dark and couldn’t see anything in the water. Regardless, he’d do his best to find it. He parked in a county park and got out of his truck to begin walking the creek. How terrifying it had to be for a girl who had thought her parents were dead. Using the metal detector he began walking along the creek. Fortunately, no one seemed to be patronizing the park at this time of day to wonder what he was up to. After searching about three hundred yards of creek bed, his detector went off for the thirtieth time and there was Hannah’s phone. It was a droid in a case of bright green, exactly as she described it. He picked it up took a picture and texted it to her new mobile phone for confirmation and Hannah confirmed that it appeared to be her phone. Great now all he had to do was try to save components that had been in the water for several days. He’d brought a bag of rice with him to start the drying process. After drying off the phone, he opened the inside and planned to toss the sections into the rice, but he stared at the extra piece inside. It was a tracker bug and he dropped it into a metal lined film pouch. He didn’t know if it was working or who had put it there, Hannah’s parents or the bad guys.  

Now it was time to move on to the far more dangerous job of getting inside Hannah’s home. He had the key and the code to shut the alarm off, but that was after he surveyed the property with an infrared scan. It was still daylight, so he couldn’t try to get into the house yet, but he did do a drive-by to see what the neighborhood situation was. While all of his technology would work for a daytime invasion, he was hoping if there was an intruder in the house, he would have a harder time staying awake after dark. He’d checked the statistics on burglaries and most occurred in the daytime while the homeowner was at work, but as a novice he just felt better under cover of darkness.

His impression was one of million dollars and up homes on a quiet tree lined street. There were no cars in the driveway of Hannah’s home. There was a mailbox close to the street end of the driveway. Elsewhere, there were no kids playing in the street. He pulled the truck underneath some trees along the front of a property upon which no house was built. He set up his scanner to look at heat sources in the house.