All This Distant Beauty
By Ryan David Jahn, first published in Mystery Tribune
A jaded American mercenary searches for the stepdaughter of a Mexican businessman on a remote island. After a bloody showdown with the stepdaughter's kidnappers, the mercenary finds justice and a second chance.
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Noah Beckett is a former US Army soldier and LAPD cop with two broken marriages and an estranged daughter. In an attempt to escape his past, he moves to Mexico and puts his tactical skills to use as a contract killer. He receives a message from a newspaper proprietor named Santino Garcia who begs him to find his stepdaughter, Sofia Trujillo. Sofia is a journalist who is investigating a child sex trafficking ring based on a remote island. Noah accepts Garcia’s proposal and heads to la Isla de Zapatos to find Sofia. Upon arriving, he encounters a jaguar and names it Chloe. He and the creature prowl around the jungle. They come across two guards carrying something wrapped in a tarp. One of them, a Texan, kills the other. Noah plies the Texan for information at gunpoint and learns that Sofia is alive. Noah intends to knock the man unconscious, but after unfurling the tarp and seeing a dead teenage girl inside, he kills him. Noah makes his way to the converted shipping containers where the girls are kept. Through a window, he sees Sofia kissing Jose Luis Ramos, the high-ranking politician who runs the operation. After Ramos leaves, Noah makes it into the building. Sofia is sitting with the girls, She tells Noah that she’s fallen in love with Ramos. He told her that he adopts the girls out to families in the United States. Noah sees through Ramos’s lies, though, and he tries to convince Sofia of the truth. Just then, the other guards burst in and shoot Sofia. Noah mows them down one by one until he gets to Ramos outside. Just as Ramos is about to shoot, Chloe jumps out and mauls him to death. Noah brings down the operation and is praised in anonymity. In the aftermath, he adopts one of the little girls named Luna.