I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My mouth felt incredibly dry, and my mind was a blank. We were still involved with the Four Horsemen, weren’t we? Was this Shafer’s play? Had he known we’d eventually find this place in the hills? Had he set a final trap for us?

We arrived at an old green house with tattered white cloth over the windows and a burlap bag for a front door. Four men immediately came outside, all of them sporting dreadlocks.

They walked toward us, their mouths set hard, their eyes blazing with distrust. Sampson and I were used to the look from the streets of Washington.

Two of the men carried heavy field machetes. The other two wore floppy shirts, and I knew they were armed beneath the loose-fitting clothes.

“Galang. Go back, mon,” one of them shouted loudly at us. “Nah woman here.”

Chapter 122

“NO!”

Detective Anthony got out of the car with both hands held high. Sampson, Jones, and I followed his lead.

We could hear the beat of traditional drums coming from the woods directly behind the main house. A pair of lounging dogs raised their lazy heads to look at us and barked a few times. My heart was thundering faster now.

I didn’t like the way this was going down.

Another one of the men called to us, “I and I would like you to leave.”

I recognized the figure of speech: the double pronoun represented the speaker and God, who live together in each person.

“Patrick Moss is in jail. I’m Detective Anthony, from Kingston. This is Detective Sampson, Detective Cross, and Mr. Jones. You have an American woman here. You call her Beatitude.”

Beatitude? Could it be Christine?

A man wielding a machete in one hand glared and spoke to Anthony. “Galang bout yuh business. Lef me nuh. Nah woman here. Nah woman.”

“This is my business, and we won’t leave you alone,” I said, surprising the man with my understanding of his dialect. But I know Rastaman from D.C.

“Nah woman here. Nah American,” the man repeated angrily, looking directly at me.

Andrew Jones spoke up. “We want the American woman, then we’ll leave. Your friend Patrick Moss will be home by tonight. You can deal with him in your own way.”

“Nah American woman here.” The original speaker spat defiantly on the ground. “Turn around, go back.”

“You know James Whitehead? You know Shafer?” Jones asked.

They didn’t deny it. I doubted we’d get any more from them than that.

“I love her,” I told them. “I can’t leave. Her name is Christine.”

My mouth was still dry, and I couldn’t breathe very well. “She was kidnapped a year ago. We know she was brought here.”