"Where is home, Madeline?Where were you when they took you?"
"Marquette.Michigan.I'm a student at Northern Michigan.I was—I was just going to my car."
Marquette.Over two hundred miles from where they'd found the yacht drifting.Isla filed the information away, her mind already mapping the geography of this crime.Kidnapped in Michigan, transported across Lake Superior, held in a locked cabin on a luxury yacht.The picture forming in her mind was one she'd seen before, in case files and briefings and the haunted eyes of survivors who'd escaped the same fate.
"The men who took you," Isla said carefully."Did you see their faces?Can you describe them?"
Madeline's face crumpled with frustration and fresh tears."No.They always wore—when they brought food, or when they..."She couldn't finish the sentence."They wore masks.Ski masks.I never saw their faces.Not once."
"How many were there?"
"I don't know.Three?Four?I heard different voices sometimes.Different footsteps.But I was in here, and they kept the lights low, and I couldn't—" Her voice broke again."I couldn't see anything.I don't know anything."
"You know more than you think," Isla said, her voice firm but kind."You survived.That takes strength.And everything you've told me helps us understand what we're dealing with."
"What happened to them?"Madeline asked suddenly, her green eyes finding Isla's with an intensity that was almost accusatory."The men who took me.What happened to them?"
Isla hesitated.The blood on the deck above them told its own story—a story of violence so extreme that it had left the yacht looking like a slaughterhouse.Madeline had been locked in this cabin through all of it, unable to see what was happening but surely able to hear something.The sounds of struggle, of death, of bodies hitting the deck or the water.
"We're not sure yet," Isla said finally."They're gone.The yacht was found drifting with no one aboard.We believe..."She paused, weighing how much to share."We believe someone attacked the boat."
"I heard screaming."The words came out hollow, distant."Earlier.I don't know how long ago.Hours, maybe.I heard screaming, and then gunshots—at least I think they were gunshots—and then nothing.Just the engines.And then the engines stopped, and there was nothing at all.I thought..."She swallowed hard."I thought they'd left me here to die."
"Did you hear anything else?Voices?Another boat approaching?"
Madeline shook her head slowly."I couldn't hear much through the door.It was heavy.Soundproofed, maybe.I just heard...the screaming.And then it stopped."
Isla glanced back at James, who had been standing in the doorway, his expression grim.He caught her eye and tilted his head slightly—a signal that he had something to share, away from Madeline's ears.
"Madeline, I'm going to step out for just a moment," Isla said."Lieutenant Commander Frank is going to stay with you.She's going to help you get somewhere safe and warm, and we'll have medical personnel check you over.You're going to be okay.I promise."
The young woman's hand shot out, gripping Isla's wrist with surprising strength."You'll find them, won't you?Whoever did this—whoever took me—you'll find them?"
Isla met her gaze, seeing in those green eyes the echo of every victim she'd ever failed to save, every case that had slipped through her fingers.Alicia Mendez's face flickered through her memory—twenty-eight years old, elementary school teacher, dead because Isla had been wrong.
"I'll find them," she said, and meant it with every fiber of her being.
* * *
The pre-dawn darkness had begun to soften at the edges, the first hints of gray light creeping over the eastern horizon as Isla joined James on the dock.The emergency lights still strobed their red and blue patterns across the marina, casting everything in harsh, artificial colors that made the bloodstains on the Midnight Crossing's deck look almost black.
"She's nineteen years old," Isla said, her voice tight with an anger she was struggling to contain."College student.Kidnapped two days ago from a parking lot in Marquette."
James's jaw tightened, the muscles bunching beneath his weathered skin."Traffickers."
"Traffickers."The word tasted like ash in her mouth."The Midnight Crossing wasn't running drugs or weapons.They were running people.Human cargo."
She turned to look at the yacht, that beautiful vessel with her polished chrome and sleek lines, and saw it now for what it truly was—a prison ship, designed to move victims across the water to buyers who would use them, abuse them, destroy them.The locked cabin with its heavy door and soundproofed walls.The empty hold that had probably carried others before Madeline Holmes.The luxury trappings that provided cover for something monstrous.
"I've been working with the Coast Guard and running the registration," James said, pulling out his phone to reference notes."The yacht belongs to a holding company called Lakefront Ventures, LLC.Took some digging, but we traced it back to a Chicago entrepreneur named Dave Vance."
"Vance."Isla committed the name to memory."What do we know about him?"
"Real estate developer, primarily.Mixed-use properties, commercial space, some residential.On paper, he's clean—no criminal record, no obvious red flags.But the way this company is structured, the shell corporations layered on top of each other..."James shook his head."He's either directly involved in the trafficking operation, or he knows exactly what his boat is being used for."
"Is there any connection to our other cases?The Northern Dawn, the Storm Runner?"
"None that I can find.Different networks, different operations, different players.Vance doesn't appear anywhere in the weapons trafficking or drug distribution files.This looks like a completely separate criminal enterprise."
