Groaning, we piled into the car. Oak handed us both water bottles and we began to guzzle immediately. Oak was finished talking on the radio with the Sheriff’s crew. When she had informed them that the operation was over and all was well, she clicked off.

“That was exciting,” she said, sounding a little breathless. “Are you ok?”

I attempted to stretch my arms, but stopped when a burning sensation came into my shoulders. “I’m a little tired.”

Oak shook her head and then handed us both sandwiches, which Bract immediately dove into. I on the other hand, continued to drink water. The drug that we had ingested appeared to be mostly gone from my system, but it had left me with a pounding headache and slightly nauseous.

“What the hell was all that about?” Oak asked as we began to navigate back towards Cresel and Wiggins.

I sighed, rubbing my pounding forehead. “Not sure.”

“What was in those sacks, could you tell?”

I reached into my coat pocked and pulled out the item I had taken from the sack. It felt woody, fibrous, and was about the thickness of my hand. I raised it close to my face.

“Anyone got a light?”

“Here,” Bract said and he produced the flashlight I had lent him the night before. I clicked it on and examined the item.

“It’s…wood,” I said in confusion.

It was dark in color, around the tone of chocolate and the texture was sinewy, reminiscent of coconut bark. Bract too leaned in to view the item.

“Can I see?”

I handed it to him and he examined it for a moment, then sniffed it. “It is capa bark.”

“Capa?” I asked. The name sounded familiar.

“Yes, capa. You try before. I give you caparo. It is coffee with the bark of this tree. It can also be used to make into tea. That is our traditional use of it.”

I recalled the wonderful tasting coffee Bract had offered me that day. It seemed like a lifetime ago, though it had only been a few days.

“What on earth are they doing with hundreds of pounds of capa bark?” I asked. My head felt like someone was trying to pound a blunt object through my skull.

Bract was still examining the bark. Oak was calling Meryl to let him know we were in once piece.

“This was harvested recently,” Bract informed me. “It is heavier than aged capa bark, and darker too. In our tradition, we dry it for few months after harvest.”

“Fascinating,” I said dryly.

We had just gone undercover, put our lives in danger and hauled hundreds of pounds up a hillside only to find out the supposed mobsters were smuggling tea. But then I recalled the boat, the men with automatic weapons, the time of night and location this had all gone down in. Something wasn’t right here. Everything pointed towards this being a major criminal event.

“The Kivich. The guys on the boat were Kivich,” I said slowly. Damn whatever drugs was still passing around my bloodstream. Everything felt scattered, distant and I couldn’t make sense of it all.

“Kivich?” Oak asked, having just finished her phone call. “We have a trade embargo against the Kivich. No goods in or out.”

“I seriously doubt these guys are operating within the law.”

“Could be grounds for arrest and a warrant.”

“That’s true.”

Bract handed the capa bark back to me. I turned it over in my hand. “Bract, is there anything else that is significant about this capa?”

“Mostly we drink straight as tea, or add to coffee, like you tried. It is good for energy.”

“A mild stimulant,” I surmised. “Any other uses?”

“There is one other thing. It isn’t done much these days, but in time before Kivich are harassing and attacking us, we use as a type of ceremonial beverage. We make alcoholic drink to extract the medicine. It take a long time to sit and extract. Then it is use for the ceremony.”

“What happens when you drink it like that?”

“It is hard to explain,” Bract said. “In our ceremony, it is like we are meeting the spirits of the land. We are able to communicate with the other beings, like trees, the animals, even the mountains. Sometimes also talk to loved ones who are dead, receive their blessings and advice. It was once very popular ceremony every spring after the cold times were over.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You talk to trees? So you are hallucinating?”

Bract shrugged. “You call it this, our people say communicate with nature.”

“Either way it sounds like you’re getting high as fuck,” Oak commented.

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“Yes, high.”

“Did you ever do this ceremony?” I asked.

“One time. When I was young, before Kivich come to my tribal land, I am old enough to be called man and can take the capa drink.”

He didn’t elaborate on his experience.

“What happened after the Kivich came?”

Bract shook his head. His eyes had gone hard and steely. “No more ceremony. No more peace. We still harvest the bark, but it gets harder and harder to go to our sacred forests. Now only few have bark left. I trade Kasepo family for some over summer. Before bad thing happen to them with Lysha.”

At the mention of the lost nomad girl, my stomach twisted. I had not forgotten Lysha of the Kasepo and still hoped to find her as well. I pulled myself out of this line of thought. I needed to focus in order to be able to solve this web of mysteries. But what could possibly be the connection between a ceremonial beverage, drug lords and missing children.

We drove in silence for a time and I mulled, while trying also not to lose the battle my brain was waging to force me to sleep off the drug. Bract succumbed to it after a time, lulling right over in the back seat. Oak navigated us through dark country, of which I knew nothing. The land between Cordel and our little cluster of communities seemed to be untouched.

“How did you know you were in Cordel?” Oak asked.

“Went there when I was kid. School trip.”

“That sounds like it was a nice trip.”

I shrugged. After a moment, I said, “it was the first time I had ever been out of the city, and the first time I saw the sea. They took us in the spring, it was foggy and cold and wet most of the time. But I remembered the smell of those trees. I thought they were beautiful at the time.”

I shut my mouth. Great, now the drug had me idly chatting about my childhood, a topic I ordinarily preferred to keep under heavy wraps.

“My family used to go there over summer break for our vacation,” Oak ventured. “My dad loved to fish. We would rent a boat and go out every day for hours. We’d bring home coolers of fish and still be eating them when winter came.”

I absorbed this tidbit with little to no emotion. I didn’t have the slightest inclination what a pleasant family vacation must have been like. “That sounds nice,” I finally acknowledged.

“It was fun. I haven’t done that for years.”

“Cordel used to be a major port for smuggling,” I said, trying to draw the conversation back to the realm of relevance.

“You think they were smuggling more than this capa stuff?”

I shook my head. “I can’t see the full picture. None of this makes sense. We’ve been in so many different directions that it all feels so distant.”

I realized I was running my mouth again, but Oak smiled sympathetically. “To be honest, this is the first big case I’ve ever worked. I’m not really sure what to expect. Every turn is new and different. Is this usually how a big case goes?”

“Not necessarily.” I shrugged. For some reason, likely drugs, my tongue felt loose. “When we worked missing person cases in the capital, the main goal was usually to figure out which syndicates were most active at the time. You could expect whatever gangs or drug runners that were most active to be at the root of most cases. Sometimes we were wrong though. Sometimes some husband killed his wife, or some parent killed their child. These things happen more than you’d like to know. But the cases we got put on, it was mostly organized crimes, sex crimes or drug crimes. Anyways, we’d find the hotspots and hit them hard.”

“That sounds intense,” Oak commented.

“It wasn’t a chicken robbery,” I said, smiling grimly.

Oak hesitated. “So, given what you know about this sort of crime. Do you think we’ve still got a hope of finding Luna? Or that other girl Lysha?”

Her voice had cracked as she said it, as if she was barely holding back nearly a week of anxiety and worry I set my jaw. “I wish I could say we managed to help everyone, and every case was a success.” I swallowed. “Oak, I don’t know. I fucking wish I did. All I know is that I will keep working on this until we find her.”

I left out the alive or dead bit. Oak nodded, biting her lip.

I patted her shoulder a bit clumsily, my depth perception was off. We drove back towards Wiggins and I prodded Bract.

“Wake up mate, we’re almost back.”

Brack mumbled something indistinct and didn’t move.

“I’ll put him up for tonight,” I sighed. “Can you take us to my place?”

Oak dropped us off. We both had to drag Bract out of the truck. I waved as Oak departed, Bract slung over my shoulders, only half awake. I hauled him up the front steps and through the door. I then took him directly to my bedroom and deposited him there on my bed. I would sleep on the couch tonight. I waited long enough to see that Bract was already fast asleep, then tottered to the living room and deposited myself on the dilapidated couch. The clock on my phone read 2:00 AM. I managed to set my alarm for the next morning before I fell into deep sleep moments later.

The couch, it transpired, wasn’t actually half bad to sleep on. I awoke four hours later quite comfortably at the song of my alarm. Groaning, I switched it off, considered for a brief moment just going back to sleep, and then lurched to my feet. I was still wearing last night’s regalia, as well as my sweat and grime so I wandered to the bathroom to clean off. It was only when I exited and walked into my room that I recalled I had a guest. Bract didn’t seem to have moved a muscle from where I had laid him the night before. I dressed myself and then debated about what to do with him. Finally I decided to wake him. I shook his shoulder a few times, which produced such an abrupt reaction that I was hardly prepared. Bract jumped upwards as though spring loaded and stared around wildly, his hand going towards his knife.

“It’s ok, it’s ok!” I called quickly, holding my hands up. “It’s me.”

Bract quickly deflated, then stared around in confusion. “Where am I?”

“This is my home,” I said. “You didn’t look in any condition to get back last night.”

Bract examined the walls and ceiling for a moment, then looked down at the mattress. “Is this your bed?”

“Yeah,” I said. Then I hastily added, “I slept on the couch.”

Bract nodded, moving quickly off of the bed. “What do they make us drink last night?”

“Not sure. It was a sedative I think, but also dissociative.”

“Not feel good.” Bract rubbed at his temple, probably feeling a similar headache to my own. “Coffee?”

“You got it.”

I started heating water.

“The bathroom is there,” I called from the kitchen, indicating the only other room. “Take a shower if you like.”

While Bract showered, I examined the mess of papers I had left on the table of the Ulug file while sipping coffee. I felt a bit hungover, though significantly more able to focus than last night. Even a few hours of sleep had helped. I pulled out my notebook and began to scrawl everything I could recall of the previous evening. By the time I had finished, Bract’s bedraggled head was poking through the bathroom door.

“Do you have extra clothings?” he asked.

I found him some old trousers and a button up shirt and passed them through. When he emerged, he looked a bit odd. Without flannel or wool, the man seemed practically naked.

“You have light clothings,” Bract commented, lifting up his arms to examine the fabric.

I barely had time to respond to this bizarre house guest before I saw that Meryl was calling me. I picked up the phone. “Good morning sir.”

“Senel, you in one piece?” Merly asked, sounding haggard.

“I’m doing swimmingly sir.”

There was a snort. “Good. Look, I have the HIB Pharma audit here in my inbox.”

There was something in his voice that made my heart rate pick up. “Did we find out who the owner is?”

“Yes.” There was the sound of keys tapping. “You’re not going to like this. Or maybe you are.”

“What is it?”

“The owner and soul subsidiary. It’s Higor Igano Borsk.”