The satellite phone was a dead weight in Kofi's pocket, its memory filled with photographs of horror, its battery dwindling with every passing hour. He lay on his bed in the dormitory, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the estate as it lurched through the aftermath of chaos. Outside, the guards were still dousing the smoldering remains of the fuel shed, their voices sharp with confusion and anger. No one had noticed his absence. No one had connected the escaped boy with the fire. Not yet. But the hunters would be returning soon, and Volker—wherever he was in the ravine—would eventually find his way back to the estate, and when he did, the story would come out. Kofi had maybe a few hours, maybe less.
He sat up, his muscles screaming in protest. His new leg, the one Dr. Nkechi had rebuilt with her injections and her surgeries and her proprietary blend of military-grade compounds, throbbed with a dull ache that radiated from his shin to his hip. He had pushed it harder than ever before, running through the forest, climbing granite outcroppings, wading through freezing streams. It had held. It had more than held—it had carried him through a nightmare and back again. But now it was demanding payment, and Kofi had nothing left to give it except the promise of rest he could not afford.
He needed to find Efua. She would know if the plan had been discovered, if the guards had linked the fire to his escape, if Okello was already mobilizing his private army to scour the forest. She would also know how to get the photographs off the estate. The satellite phone was a miracle—Volker's arrogance in carrying it had been a gift Kofi had not anticipated—but it was useless without a way to transmit the images. The estate had no internet access for residents, no phone lines that were not monitored, no communication channels that were not controlled by Okello's security apparatus. But Auntie Efua had contacts outside. The printer in the harbor district. The network of dissidents and former journalists who had been keeping Amara Diallo alive. If Kofi could get the phone to Auntie Efua, she could get the photographs to the doctor.
He swung his legs off the bed and stood, testing his weight on the healing bone. It held. He tucked the knife into his belt, the phone into his pocket, and walked out of the dormitory into the grey afternoon light. The courtyard was still chaotic, guards running back and forth with buckets and hoses, the air thick with the acrid smell of burned gasoline and melted plastic. No one looked at him. He was just another resident, another numbered boy in a grey tunic, invisible by design.
He found Efua in the laundry room, exactly where she had been the day before, folding sheets with the same mechanical precision. But her hands were trembling now, a tremor so slight that only someone who was looking for it would notice. She looked up when he entered, and her eyes widened for a fraction of a second before her expression smoothed back into its usual mask of indifference.
"You are alive," she said, her voice barely audible over the hiss of the pressing machines.
"I am alive. The others are alive too. They are on their way to the logging road. If they keep moving, they will reach the villages by nightfall." Kofi sat down on a stack of folded towels, his leg grateful for the respite. "Volker is in the ravine. I took his phone." He pulled the satellite phone from his pocket and showed it to her. "I photographed the jars. All twenty-three of them. The dates, the labels, everything. But I need to get these images off the estate. Can Auntie Efua do it?"
Efua stared at the phone as if it were a live grenade. "She can try. There is a contact in the city, a printer named Owusu. He has secure communication channels. But getting a physical object off the estate is dangerous. The guards search everything that leaves—laundry, trash, food deliveries. They are looking for exactly this kind of thing."
"Then we do not send the phone. We send the images." Kofi thought for a moment, his mind racing through possibilities. "Does Auntie Efua have a phone? Even a basic one?"
"No. Staff phones are confiscated at the gate. Only the guards and the medical staff have access to communications. But there is a computer in Dr. Nkechi's office. It has an internet connection—she uses it for medical records and research. If I could get access to it, even for five minutes, I could upload the images to a cloud server. But her office is locked when she is not there, and she is almost always there."
Kofi filed this information away, a puzzle piece that might become useful later. "What about the guards' phones? Do any of them have internet access?"
"Some do. The senior guards have smartphones. But they keep them on their person at all times. You would have to steal one, and the moment you did, the alarm would be raised." Efua set down the sheet she was folding and looked at him directly. "Kofi, even if you get the images out, what then? Okello has judges in his pocket. He has police commanders on his payroll. The photographs of the jars will be dismissed as forgeries, as the fantasies of a traumatized street child. You need more than evidence. You need leverage."
"What kind of leverage?"
Efua was silent for a long moment. The pressing machines hissed around them, filling the room with steam and the smell of hot cotton. Then she said, very quietly, "The clients. The men who come here to hunt. They are not just wealthy—they are powerful. Diplomats. Business magnates. A former minister from a European government. Okello keeps records of every hunt, every client, every payment. It is his insurance policy. If he is ever threatened, he can use those records to protect himself. But those records could also destroy him, if they fell into the right hands."
"Where are the records?"
"In his study. There is a safe behind the painting of the jacaranda tree. I have seen him open it, once, when I was cleaning the room. He thought I was invisible. Most people do." She smiled, a thin expression that held no warmth. "The safe is electronic. You need a code. I do not know the code. But Dr. Nkechi might. She is one of the few people Okello trusts."
Kofi absorbed this, his mind working through the implications. The photographs of the jars were damning, but Efua was right—they could be dismissed. Okello's lawyers would argue that the jars were medical specimens, that the photographs were staged, that the boy who had taken them was a delinquent with a grudge. But the client records, the financial transactions, the names of the men who had paid to hunt human beings—that evidence would be irrefutable. That evidence would bring down not just Okello, but the entire network of power that protected him.
"I need to get into that safe," he said.
"You need to get into the main house first. It is guarded at all times. Okello is there now, meeting with his security chief. They are trying to figure out what happened last night. They know there was a fire. They know someone escaped. They do not yet know it was you." She paused, her eyes flicking toward the door. "But they will. Soon."
As if on cue, the laundry room door swung open and Auntie Efua stormed in, her wooden spoon clutched in her hand like a weapon, her face a thundercloud of righteous fury. "There you are," she said, pointing the spoon at Kofi. "Hiding in my laundry room while the whole estate is falling apart. Get up. Go to the dining hall. They are doing a head count. All residents are to be accounted for immediately."
Kofi stood, his heart sinking. A head count. That meant the guards had discovered he was missing. That meant the hunt was no longer just in the forest—it was inside the walls.
"Auntie," he said, keeping his voice low, "I need to tell you something."
"Tell me nothing," Auntie Efua snapped, but her eyes were not angry. They were calculating, the eyes of a woman who had survived five years in a house of horrors by knowing when to speak and when to listen. "Whatever you have done, whatever you are planning, I do not want to know. Plausible deniability is the only thing that has kept me alive. But if you need something—if there is a message that needs to go somewhere—you tell me in the kitchen, during dinner, when everyone else is too busy eating to notice. Not here. Not now. Now, you go to the dining hall and you let them count you."
Kofi nodded and left the laundry room, walking across the courtyard toward the main building. The guards were still occupied with the fire, but a few of them glanced at him as he passed, their expressions unreadable. He wondered if they knew. He wondered if Volker had already been found, if the German was even now sitting in Okello's study, describing the boy with the knife who had taken his phone and sent him stumbling into the ravine in his stocking feet.
The dining hall was chaos. Residents milled about in confusion, their routines disrupted by the fire and the missing boys and the rumors that were spreading like wildfire through the compound. Some said there had been an escape. Some said the hunters had been attacked. Some said the police were coming. None of them knew the truth, and Kofi was not about to enlighten them. He found a spot against the wall and waited, his hand resting on the knife in his belt, his eyes scanning the room for threats.
The head count took an hour. The guards moved through the crowd, checking numbers against a clipboard, their faces growing grimmer with each tally. When they reached Kofi, the guard paused, his eyes narrowing. "Number Fourteen," he said. "You were not in your dormitory this morning."
"I was in the latrine," Kofi said, his voice flat. "Stomach troubles. The food last night did not agree with me."
The guard stared at him for a long moment, then made a note on his clipboard and moved on. Kofi exhaled slowly, his heart hammering. The excuse was thin, but it had bought him time. Not much time, but enough.
That evening, during dinner, he slipped into the kitchen under the pretense of helping with the dishes. Auntie Efua was at the stove, stirring a massive pot of stew, her wooden spoon moving in slow, hypnotic circles. She did not look at him when he approached, but her voice was low and clear. "The contact in the city. Owusu. He has a phone number. Memorize it." She recited a string of digits, and Kofi repeated them silently, burning them into his memory. "If you can get the images off the estate, send them to that number. Owusu will get them to the doctor."
"There is a problem," Kofi said. "I have the images, but I have no way to send them. Efua mentioned a computer in Dr. Nkechi's office, but it is locked. And the client records are in Okello's safe. I need access to the main house."
Auntie Efua stirred the stew for a long moment, her face unreadable. Then she said, "The guards change shifts at ten o'clock tonight. The new shift is always slow to settle in. There is a window of about fifteen minutes when the main house is lightly guarded. If you can get inside, the study is on the second floor, third door on the left. The safe is behind the painting. But I do not know the code, and I do not know how you will get past the locks."
"Leave the locks to me," Kofi said. "Just tell me where Dr. Nkechi will be during that window."
"In her quarters, most likely. She does not stay in the medical wing after dark. Her quarters are on the ground floor of the main house, east wing. If you are quiet, you can avoid her."
Kofi nodded and slipped out of the kitchen, the string of digits repeating in his mind like a prayer. He had a plan now, fragile and desperate and dependent on a dozen variables he could not control. He would break into the main house during the shift change. He would find the computer in Dr. Nkechi's office and upload the photographs to Owusu's number. And if he could find the code to the safe, he would take the client records too. Then he would get out, and he would not stop running until he reached the logging road and the villages and the doctor who was building a case against the monster who called himself a philanthropist.
But first, he had to survive the next four hours. He returned to the dormitory and lay down on his bed, the knife under his pillow, the satellite phone in his pocket, and he waited for the darkness to come.
At nine-thirty, the lights went out. The other boys settled into their beds, their whispered conversations fading into silence. Kofi listened to their breathing, waiting for the slow, regular rhythm that signaled sleep. At ten o'clock, he heard the guards changing shifts, the clang of the gate, the murmur of voices. The window was opening.
He rose, his knife in his belt, his heart steady. It was time to finish what he had started.
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