Page 12 of Quinn

I took a gulp of the beer and set the bottle back on the table.

“We were in the Aulani Sports Club having a drink; relaxing until our meeting was due. I was watching lakatois racing off the beach. Mala and Waigi were watching the replay of a rugby league game on the television. I heard an ear-piercing scream and jumped up in time to have Arabella crashing into my chest, clinging on for dear life and asking for help. She collapsed into my arms and Mala noticed the blood on her back. When he took a closer look, he saw it was a bullet wound and I told him to call you.”

“Did she tell you who shot her?” Logan asked.

“No, but…”

“But what?” Jake sat forward waiting for an answer.

“She has a Sangumala tattoo on her neck…”

“Fuck!” Connor, Jake, Logan, and Daly all exploded with the expletive at the same time. They knew how serious the situation could become if rumours about the secretive sect were even remotely true.

Connor sucked at his beer. “Hence your comment about us being in deep shit.”

“Yep and you can bet they won’t let her go without a fight. Arabella said she was told they stole her when she was only two. She knows her given name is Arabella but doesn’t have a clue about her surname.”

“She’s tiny so I’m guessing she’s been with them what…twelve, thirteen years?”

“Try again, that’s what I thought when I stripped off the rags she was wearing and washed her down. She’s very undeveloped, her body is covered in cuts and scratches, and her back is criss-crossed with welts. The only thing that could have caused them is whippings. Some scars are older while some are pretty recent. She was shot in the fucking back and the bullet entered through her right shoulder and came out beneath the clavicle. Barry doesn’t think it’s caused any internal damage, and by some miracle it missed bone, but he'll order x-rays to make sure. He also wants a female doctor to give her a thorough examination.”

Jake’s face was like thunder, he knew how it felt to be treated without mercy, injured beyond imagination, and his anger for what had happened to Arabella was palpable. “I want to find the fuckers and blow them into the afterlife. Hopefully that’ll be Hell. I can’t understand why you would even consider treating a fourteen/ fifteen-year-old in such a way.” Jake shook his head. “So many years spent suffering at their hands.

“Sangumala is known to be heartless and I’ve heard they steal children, but it’s never been confirmed until now. They’ll want her back, Quinn. She’s past marrying age in their culture and there’s no reason to think she hasn’t already been married for a couple of years.” Logan made a good point.

Fuck. I hadn’t considered the fact she could be the wife of one of the arseholes.

Jake fumed. “So aside from the fact she’s been beaten, she’s probably been sexually abused for two or more years.”

I shook my head and Connor tilted his head in question.

“Arabella is twenty-three years old. Twenty-four next month.”

“The fuck she is!”—Connor.

“No fucking way!”—Logan.

“If that girl is twenty-three, she’s not only been beaten and abused, but she must have been starved as well to cause that level of stunted development.”—Daly.

“I say again, I want to blow the fuckers into Hell.”—Jake.

Connor dragged fingers over his head. “So, gentlemen, what’s our plan because I agree with Jake—we need to blast these fuckers off the face of the earth. I can’t help wondering how many other innocent girls are suffering unmentionable torture at their hands.”

I agreed with the other men, I wanted to blast Sangumala off the planet, preferably after showing them what it felt like to be helpless and tortured. “We need to find out as much as we can from Arabella. Let me sp eak with her first, she seems to have some trust since it was me who came to her rescue. Hopefully she can give us a rough idea of where their village is located and some clue as to the numbers of men we’ll be dealing with when we confront them.”

Connor clapped me on the back and pushed onto his feet. “Talk to her, Quinn; get as much detail as you can and meet me in the conference room at two tomorrow afternoon. I have a few things to take care of in the morning.” He glanced around the table. “I want all of you there.”

We all left the table after taking a few more swigs of beer, and while Jake remained, the rest of us headed to our homes.

***

After I left Jake’s place, I headed down to speak with one of our plantation managers—Asagowi. Asagowi was twenty-six, three years my junior. He’d been born and raised in Moresby, or so he said. At the age of fourteen, he’d turned up at our gates after traipsing over the Owen Stanley range, half-starved and in rags. The expression ‘something the cat dragged in’ had never been more appropriate when describing someone.

Since Connor and Jake had left the same day on a delivery, Olga had called me when he collapsed at the gates. I’d retrieved the young man, brought him into the compound, and Barry had pieced him back together. He’d shown signs of having been beaten, but we hadn’t questioned him at the time, figuring if he wanted us to know about his past, he would tell us in his own time.

I’d been seventeen when he’d arrived, missing my parents who I’d been separated from since the age of fifteen. I was lonely and craving friendship from someone other than my brothers. Over the following days I’d checked on my rescue and Asagowi told me later that he’d recognised the sadness I harboured at that time. He’d wanted to make me feel better by offering his friendship.

When Connor and Jake had returned, they’d approved of Asagowi staying and suggested he be trained as one of our plantation managers. I hadn’t known at the time that whatever he’d run from could have cost him his life.