Determination

  Determination

  Portentous Destiny Series

  Book Four

  By S. E. Rose

  Copyright © 2018 S. E. Rose

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.seroseauthor.com

  Cover design © Arijana Karčić, Cover It! Designs

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Each book in this series primarily takes place in real locations where the author has previously visited. However, aside from names of countries and cities, the places are described in a fictional manner. The author has drawn from her personal experiences to describe these locations, but also uses fictitious embellishments for the purposes of the story.

  This book contains descriptions of adult relationships and violence as well as derogatory language. If such things offend you, this book is not for you. The book is intended for mature readers.

  Author’s Note:

  Human trafficking is a serious global problem. According to a multitude of sources that this author has found through simple internet searches, there are over 20 million individuals enslaved in the world due to human trafficking. It is a serious problem that can happen anywhere, no matter how safe you think your community is. While the antagonists in this story are involved in a variety of crimes including human trafficking, the author wants to point out to readers that this is a fictionalized story and details relating to criminal activity or police investigations is purely fictitious.

  You never know when you might be able to stop human trafficking. Pay attention to your surroundings and if something doesn’t look right, speak up! Visit your local police department’s, national police’s or the United Nations’ webpages on human trafficking to learn more about this crime and how you can help to stop it.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Interlude

  Jesse’s Playlist

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated to the dreamers of the world. Don’t ever give up! Stay positive! Every time you fail, get back up!

  Prologue

  Jesse’s Playlist: “Call to Arms” by Angels and Airwaves

  Present Day

  The waves are crashing over the bow of the boat. I bring it around again, trying to get closer to the shore. The reef is thick in the shallows and I know I can’t get any closer to the beach. I look down at my cell phone. I can see the ping from Vanessa’s phone. She’s here. She has to be here.

  I glance back at the island. It’s small, maybe the size of about ten football fields. There’s a small cluster of palm trees in the middle. It’s thick enough that I can’t see to the far side. There are some large stones jutting out from the trees. I reverse the engine and pull back into the waves. The boat lists to one side and I do my best to steady it as I fight the waves, the tide, and the impending storm. I need to get closer. I begin to drive the boat around the island.

  Damn it, all I see is fucking reef. Normally, so much coral would excite me. I’ve sunk a lot of money into bringing back coral reefs and this island is proof that perhaps my funds are not going to waste. But right now, I need to get this boat to shore; I need to get to Vanessa and this fucking reef is between her and me.

  As I hug the reef and follow the water around the island, I am greeted with the sound of waves hitting the shore. Thank fucking God!! I drive the boat toward shore as I see a small alcove appear around the side of the stones that seem to jut out on this side of the island. As I coast over the waves toward the shore, I hear a clap of thunder and turn just in time to see a bolt of lightning strike the ocean less than a mile away. Shit!

  I push the boat’s throttle and I feel it pick up speed. It seems like agonizingly long minutes as the boat flies along the water and toward the alcove. Please let her be OK, please! My desperation grows by the second. I’m about to lose my fucking mind when the boat finally reaches the shore. I slow the throttle as I feel the bottom hit the soft white sand. I turn the key and jump out into the salty water. I don’t care that the key is still in the ignition; I only care about finding her.

  I look down at my phone. The software I installed on her phone gives me a precise location. I start tracking it as I step through the sandy, isolated beach. I don’t have time to take in the unbelievable beauty of this untouched island paradise. I’m a man on a mission. I traipse through the foliage as I continue past the beach and into the dense canopy in the middle of the small island. Twice I lose my footing on rocks that seem to protrude out of the earth in odd and unsuspecting angles.

  My phone screen shows me as a blue dot moving with every step as the map is zoomed in as far as the app will let me take it. I see Vanessa’s purple dot and for a split second I can’t help but crack a smile. She picked the damn color. It’s not far now, maybe five hundred yards away.

  I want to call her name. Keeping my mouth shut is killing me, but I’m not going to risk either of our lives. I look back at the screen. I press a button and allow my location to be tracked. There should only be two people that can find me now and I’m counting on them to know I’m here.

  “Come on, sweetness, where the fuck are you?” I mutter under my breath.

  The sun is all but gone now as storm clouds fill the sky and I can feel the cool wind whipping past me. Slowly, a single drop lands on my shoulder and then another and another until it’s pouring. The rain makes it hard to see, but I continue onward.

  I will find her. I continue trudging through the sandy soil. I can hear birds even with the wind whipping through the trees. After a moment or two, I come upon a rocky outcropping. It seems to go on forever and I don’t see a way around it. I sigh. I’ll have to scale the wet rock and climb over it. Visions of my sister float through my head as I remember her fall off a wet rock not even two years ago.

  I put my phone in my pocket and begin scaling the rock. I slip a few times and bump various body parts. Eventually, I make it to the top. I glance down the other side to see it’s just as steep. Shit! I slowly climb down trying to remember everything I learned in my rock-climbing gym class in college. My right foot hits the ground and I say a silent prayer. I plant my feet on solid horizontal ground and pull my phone out of my pocket.

  The purple dot is closer, maybe two hundred yards away or less. I want to call her name, although I know I shouldn’t. I keep reminding myself that I don’t know who else is here. The rocky walls surrounding me jut out in various directions. I can see caverns and caves periodically as I climb over rocks. A thick canopy of trees covers me, the daylight shining in streams between leaves as the storm begins to move past the island. I see a small pool of water ahead of me. The dot is clos
e now, less than a hundred yards.

  I look around trying to see if the water is a natural spring or if it connects somehow out to the sea. I stick a finger in the water and taste it. It’s fresh. The water is amazingly clear and I can see caverns down in the depth of the water. I follow the edge of the spring past a small waterfall. As I approach the dot, I stop. This can’t be right. I close the program on my phone and open it again. The dot reappears in the exact same place.

  I look out at the spring, at the water, at the place where Vanessa should be. Without thought, I remove my shoes and my shirt, leaving them with my phone on the edge of the water. I look again at the dot and then it disappears. No, no, no!!

  “Vanessa!” I cry out as I dive into the clear blue water swimming toward the bottom, hoping I find a phone and not Vanessa.

  Chapter 1

  Jesse’s Playlist: “Glamorous” by Fergie

  Two months earlier…

  I look out the window of my corporate jet. I can see the lightning in the distance. It illuminates the dark gray and greenish-blue clouds. The jet leers too far to one side and my glass of scotch goes flying across the cabin. I can hear it rattling on the floor somewhere, but I don’t dare unbuckle my seat belt.

  “Hold on, Mr. Ryder. The next few minutes are going to get very bumpy. I requested a new flight plan and we’ll be landing on Tahiti in about thirty minutes,” the captain’s voice says from over the intercom.

  My stewardess, Irma, clambers toward me.

  “I’m going to have to sit down for the rest of the flight, Mr. Ryder. Is there anything I can get you before we land?” she asks as she grabs hold of the back of my seat to steady herself.

  “No, no, Irma, please go sit down,” I say distractedly as I look out at the turbulent sky. She bends down, catches my glass in one hand while steadying herself again before heading back to her seat near the plane’s kitchen. She’s an excellent stewardess. I selected her myself when I bought this jet. She’s professional and endearing. I try to remember her age, fifty-five? Anyhow, something about her reminds me of my mother and she’s very calming. Irma has two grown children in their twenties and right now I’m hoping she lives long enough to see her grandchildren. God, why did I agree to go to this stupid conference? I hate flying long distances. I specifically bought this Gulfstream G650ER last year because it travels long distances without needing refueling. It’s fast, reliable, and has a private stateroom so I can sleep on long flights, not to mention all the technology I’ve installed on it that makes it more fuel efficient and also have lower emissions. My green team, as I call them, has been working on how to make flying more ecofriendly and I thought this jet would be the perfect way to practice what we preach. It makes me love it even more. Had I not had to stop in LA, I could have avoided this whole debacle.

  I sigh and continue watching the typhoon that has now decided to veer in the wrong direction and throw a giant monkey wrench in my travel plans. I am supposed to be in Sidney tonight. I am supposed to give an address at a convention for app designers and then promptly leave and meet some friends of mine in Kauai for a three-day canyon hike.

  I’m a control freak. I had to become a control freak when I started my company or else it would have floundered and I would have ended up sleeping on my sister’s sofa for the rest of my life. Fuck, I’ve always been a control freak, who am I kidding? It’s been almost a decade now and my company has bought out three other smaller media firms over the past five years. My advisors tell me to make it public, but I like the control. I’m not liking the crazy work hours and constant stress, but the control is good.

  I close my eyes and remember my first flight on a private jet. Richard Haggins had called me and wanted to discuss buying out my fledgling company. It was six years ago. He sent me his jet and flew me out to Miami. He wined and dined me, but in the end I decided not to sell him my baby. I was too invested and I still am. So one jet, two helicopters, and a few boats later…here I am, alone, on a very pricey private jet and probably going to die. Great, at least my niece’s husband can take over things if he’s not too busy with all his kids. That’s right, I’m a great uncle. I’m not even forty yet. Good thing the kids are so fucking cute.

  My sister and her late husband adopted my niece and nephew after meeting them on a trip to Colombia in their early twenties, making me an insta-uncle. After my brother-in-law died in a car crash that also injured my sister, I stepped in and played dad even though I wasn’t even thirty. While driving kids around to various events, I dreamed up an app idea. Apps were new and a novelty, but I had so many ideas. I taught myself to code them and then created my company. It struggled the first few years, but by year two I was making a profit and ended up hiring twenty staff in ten months. By year three, my profits had quadrupled from year two and so on and so forth.

  My sister now lives with her second husband, Jack, just outside of D.C. Jack as it turns out is some spy guy who got my sister entangled in some sort of international crime bust in Scotland a few years ago. She managed to come out of it alive, but the craziness followed my niece to Colombia where she was almost killed. Then just when our family thought this crime ring was done, my sister’s niece stumbled upon some secret files and Jack ended up in China bailing her out of a bad situation.

  So my busy work life and play life seems, well, boring in comparison. I work and then travel to some crazy location to go diving, hiking, sky diving, surfing, snowboarding, whatever gets my mind off the day job. I even tried base jumping a few months ago. I feel the plane begin to descend and I can just make out the lights on the island ahead of us. I wonder what I can do here. I wonder how long I’ll be stuck here.

  After a bumpy landing, my pilot, Adam, explains to me that the typhoon has grounded many flights and we likely won’t be able to get to Australia in time for this conference. I make some calls and find a colleague who is in Melbourne and can get to the conference in time to deliver my address. I ponder calling my friends to cancel our Kauai trip, but it’s two days away. I’ll wait it out and see what happens.

  I look out the window. The airport seems small.

  “Adam, is this the main airport on Tahiti?” I ask.

  “Oh, no, sir. We had to land on Moorea. That,” he says pointing to an island in the distance, “is Tahiti. We lucked out because the plane just met the maximum size for this runway. Otherwise we’d been spending the next hour waiting for our turn to land over there.” He points back to Tahiti.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Sir, Mr. Yates has booked you an overwater bungalow. It’s only a five-minute car ride,” Irma says. Of course, my personal assistant has this taken care of already. Rick Yates has been my right-hand man for, well, at least five years now. He’s amazing. He thinks of everything about ten seconds before I do. I remember when his boyfriend introduced us. Cain Learner was the president of the second media company I took over, and after I made him an executive, we became good friends. It was nearly a year later that he finally came out to me. I didn’t care, but clearly a lifetime of dealing with prejudiced people had made him leery of trusting people. I went to dinner with him and Rick and my then current frequent date, Tonya Banter. I quickly tired of Tonya. When Rick said he was looking for a job, I immediately hired him on impulse. It was the best business decision I ever made.

  I send Rick a text.

  Jesse: Thanks, man. I owe you one.

  Rick: No worries. The hotel should have a car there for you. Everything is set up.

  Yep, best decision I ever made.

  Sure enough, there’s a car waiting for me. The driver loads my suitcase and carry-on into the trunk and we drive in the now darkness along the edge of the island. We pull up to a thatched roof building and a bell boy opens the car door and leads me inside to reception.

  An exotic-looking woman, OK, probably not that exotic since she looks like she’s a local, greets me with a French accent.

  “Good evening, Mr. Ryder. My name is Yvonne. I have taken care of all yo
ur paperwork already. Here is your key. Pierre will show you to your room. Please dial one on your phone if you need anything,” she says with a warm smile.

  I nod and thank her and follow the young man down a winding path and in between cabins until we reach the beach and a boardwalk that we follow out over the water. When we reach the last cabin on the right, he unlocks the door, and placing my bags in the closet, he gives me the tutorial of the room before leaving me. It’s dinnertime, but I am exhausted. I grab a snack from the mini bar and a beer. I check my email and then crawl into the bed. I’m out before my head hits the pillow.

  Chapter 2

  Jesse’s Playlist: “Next to Me” by Civil Twilight

  The sun shines through the window when I wake the next day. I roll over and from my place on the bed I can see the opening in the floor that allows me to look at the reef below. I can’t help myself. I crawl out of bed and open the hatch. Lying down, I lean over and rest my head on my hands and watch as fish swim under my hut. I look around my room. There’s a sitting area looking over the water, a bathroom with an enormous walk-in shower, and a closet. It’s fairly basic. I have to say there is something very charming about it.

  I decide to go get breakfast and explore the resort before going snorkeling in the reef. I grab my phone and see two missed calls from Rick and then a text from him.

  Rick: Bad news. Second typhoon has formed and you are going to be stuck down there for a few more days. You’ll have to reschedule Kauai. Let me know when you want it rescheduled and I’ll set it up.

  Rick: Jack called, BTW, and he has a guy named Hank Banovich working on the security issues with the servers.

  I sigh. Damn it! I was really looking forward to a guys’ trip. I haven’t seen my college buddies in almost a year, and I could really use some R&R time. I decide to deal with schedules later. If I’m stuck here, I might as well enjoy it. The other text is something I’ll need to deal with when I get back. My company has been having issues with hackers trying to break into our servers for the past few months. At first, we started noticing small things, chinks in our firewalls. But now, I almost feel we are under attack, and I can’t figure out why or by who. I asked Jack to help with it, and he’s been using his contacts to try and figure it out for me. My niece’s husband, Lance, has also been working with IT on security issues. He’s even gotten his brother’s engineering firm to work on some upgrades to our server buildings. So far, we have no answers, but I’m hopeful. Perhaps this new IT guy will be able to solve the mystery for me.