Page 34 of Hunted (Desert Island Duet #2)

Chapter twenty-two

Kingsley

L aying everything out for the agents takes us much longer than I anticipated. They pepper us with detailed questions, slowing the speed of our stories. By the end, we’re all exhausted and I can see Darla is feeling overwhelmed.

She did way better than I expected, telling her part.

I thought she might break down, especially when they asked her to explain what happened to her father.

After making them confirm multiple times that this report would be kept completely private, she explained how the Somalian pirates had arrived on the island, that they assaulted her and killed her father.

Those were her exact words, and we were all grateful that they didn't ask her to elaborate.

I think the death glares they were getting from West and Reece were enough to keep their questions short on that part of the story.

We took over after that, explaining how we came to be on the island, and Reece explained how he found us. Then we took turns talking about what happened after we left. When we get to the part about the warehouse, they start hammering us with the hard questions .

“And Richard, you are in charge of this charity division, are you not?” Agent Stavros asks, as his partner silently takes notes.

“No, it was being run by Frank Hayes. He lives in Australia, where Darla’s grandfather lived,” Richard replies calmly from where he’s seated in the armchair.

“But that’s still a branch of the Danver’s Group, which you own, do you not?” the agent pushes.

I’m honestly glad he’s putting Reece’s dad on the spot. I have the same question myself. How was he completely blind to this happening under his nose? Although Reece himself admitted to reading the annual reports every year and not seeing anything out of place.

“Yes, but after Edward died, his remaining family, Donald and Darla, were already presumed dead, so the Danver’s Group came to me, as written in his will.”

“You have to understand Donald and Richard were friends,” Reece cuts in, trying to defend his dad.

“Our families have been close for generations. My dad may have been their attorney, but it made sense that they both named him their beneficiary, since they had no other family and they were really close. Both of their wills left all their assets to their only children. But since Darla had been declared dead as well, it went to the next person listed on the will. Which was my father.”

“Yes, and when it came to me, I decided to not make any changes to the charity division, as I knew how much it had meant to Edward and Donald,” Richard says sadly, as if remembering his old friends.

“Frank had been running it for as long as I could remember. I didn’t see a reason to alter anything.

I keep asking myself when it changed,” he says with a sigh.

“When what changed?” I ask in confusion .

“The charity. At what point did Frank turn it into a front for human trafficking? If he really did try to kill Darla and her father, Donald, that means it was a human trafficking front long before any of us were ever involved. I have to wonder whether Edward knew about it. He might have set the whole thing up.”

“My grandfather would never do something like that!” Darla exclaims in frustration.

“How well did you truly know him, dear?” Richard asks carefully. “How many times have you even met him?”

Her eyes cast down as she thinks over his words, and I can see they hold some weight. I’m pretty sure she said she only met him a couple times, and the last time was very briefly.

“He wasn’t well in the end, Frank easily could have been fooling him for years,” she says unconvincingly.

“Either way, it’s clear this didn’t happen when you took over the company, Richard,” Stavros says, reigning the conversation back in. “Reece, you said you had the paperwork for the charity for us?”

Reece hands him a thick folder with all the information he and his father were able to put together.

He said it all looked aboveboard to them, and technically, maybe part of the finances were.

The other sectors of the Danver’s Group were putting money into the charity; they just weren’t being spent the way it was being recorded.

My stomach churns at the thought that this could have been going on for decades. How had nobody stumbled upon this before?

In the end, the agents tell us that from what we’ve told them, none of us has done anything wrong and we won’t be charged, and that their task force would be looking into Frank and the charity fraud. After Richard and the agents leave, we all felt a little lighter.

“That went better than I thought it would,” Bower says, breaking the silence.

“What do we do now?” Darla asks, glancing up at Reece, who’s still standing behind her, arms crossed and leaning against the back of the couch.

“They said there’s no reason to expect any attacks now we’re back home, it’s too easy for them to get caught here.”

“But…” I add, knowing he has more to say.

His eyes flick to mine and I see the worry there. “But… I don’t want to take any risks.” His eyes flick to Darla’s before they return to me. “I’m going to get some extra security in here. We’ll beef up the equipment and I’ll get some more people I trust on the grounds twenty-four seven.”

He pulls out his phone and starts making a call as he moves to the office down the hall. Glancing at Darla, she’s looking at her fingers and biting her lip nervously.

I need to distract her. It’s not right that she’s finally made it off the island and yet she still doesn’t feel safe.

West is still holding her against him, looking like he’s deep in thought himself. I see Bower fumbling with the TV, probably looking for something to distract us with. Glancing at the coffee table, I see the discarded iPad that Reece gave to her yesterday.

He had hoped she’d be excited to get to pick out her own stuff, but she hasn’t given the iPad so much as a second glance.

Maybe the thought of picking out all that stuff was overwhelming for her.

Or maybe she didn’t know what to choose.

I try to imagine what it’d be like, living the way she had for fifteen years where her choices were all about food choice and survival.

It’s probably overwhelming to come back and have to pick an entire wardrobe of clothes when you’ve been wearing the same thing for over a decade.

Picking up the tablet, I open the Pinterest app and start two new boards. One labeled bedroom, and the other clothing. Thanks to Hazel, I knew all about Pinterest and how she liked to use the app. Now, I’m hoping I can use it to make this process easier for Darla.

I sit down beside Darla and motion her to come closer to me. West lets her go as he stands and stretches. “I’m going to go check out the gym.”

“There’s a gym here?” she asks with wide eyes.

“Yeah, it’s downstairs,” I tell her as West leaves the room. Bower moves to sit on her other side as he finds something to put on TV.

“What are you doing?” Darla asks, looking at the tablet I’m playing with.

“This is Pinterest, have you used it before?” She nods but says nothing as she watches me scrolling through my search results for bedroom design.

“I thought, instead of you picking out furniture and designing your whole bedroom, we could just scroll through here and save all the ones you like. No commitment, no decisions, just saving some to get an idea of what appeals to you.” I turn to her and ask, “Is that okay?”

A small smile slowly spreads over her face as she looks up at me. “Yeah, that sounds much less stressful.” Ah, so she was stressed about the idea of making all these decisions. I file that away for later as I point to the screen. “Point to anything you like.”

We spend the next couple hours scrolling through hundreds of pictures.

Once I get a sense of what she likes, I change my search to pink bedrooms, then we try looking at some jungle themed ones.

Although she thought they were really cool, she admitted that she was worried that if she chose a jungle theme, she would have trouble ever getting away from it.

As we scroll, a design starts to form in my mind.

Not a jungle theme, but we could bring in plants and natural elements to give it more of an outdoor feel without being a full-on jungle.

She clearly loves pink, and my mind starts to wander to soft pinks, dark walnut wood, and white and green accents.

Next, we moved onto clothing. She had a harder time with this, but once I convinced her to pin everything she likes, and not worry about anything else, she didn’t hold back.

The trouble was, she seemed to like almost everything, and I couldn’t see any real style emerging from her choices.

In the end, I decided we needed to get her a sampling of different styles so she could see what she liked on her body and what she was comfortable in.

After scrolling for a while on her own, I start to think about her having her own cell phone again. I wasn’t really surprised she hadn’t wanted it in the beginning, but I did think she would have asked for it by now. Maybe she’d forgotten.

“Do you think you’re ready for your own cell now?” I ask, wanting to know what she’s thinking. She freezes mid scroll, then leans forward and places the tablet on the table before turning her body slightly to face me.

“I’m not sure. I mean, I know I’ll have to, eventually. It just feels permanent.”

“Permanent? What do you mean?”

“Like once I have that phone in my hand, I’m fully back to being Darla Danvers.”

“And that scares you?” I take a guess based on the worried look on her face .

“I just don’t know who I am anymore. Before I… left, I thought I’d go to university, get a business degree, take over Dad’s company. And I know Reece said it’s still there for me, he’ll help get it back to me, but…”

“But you’re not sure if you want it anymore,” I say, finishing her train of thought.