Page 13 of Healing Conviction
And Nora. Draco thought, wondering why she always seemed to be missing from his teammates’ accounts. He was about to point that fact out to Hawk, but his leader kept talking.
“—Some of them were caught. But we found out it’s a much bigger operation than the group fundraiser party hosts. Affluent members of society are deeply embedded, as is the local government. Now we’re trying to figure out how high up this operation goes.”
“We don’t know how far reaching their influence is,” Snake continued as he put the rest of the team back to take up most of the screen with the four women in the center. “We’re honestly grasping at straws with these women and the most telling thing we know about them so far is that they’re already part of our database—”
“Which means…” Draco asked.
Snake’s lips thinned before he spoke. “Which means we’ve already saved them once before.”
“What the fuck?” Draco’s rumbled question was so low it made his throat hurt, but no one else on the screen seemed to be as surprised as him, not even the quiet newbie, Officer Brown. “We already saved them? As in MF7 already saved them?”
“Yes,” Snake answered with a resigned sigh. “MF7, this party, the trafficking ring, these missing women… we’re all connected, and we need to figure out how. Unfortunately, these women have already been missing, or unaccounted for, for two years. Putting so much effort into searching for them could be problematic.”
“How so?” Jaybird asked.
“Well…” Snake held up his fingers to tick off his points. “One: we don’t know if these women are even relevant to this particular trafficking scheme that occurred at these parties, although the circumstantial evidence is really fucking damning consideringwe’reconnected. Two: even if theyarerelevant, we still don’t know if they can tell us anything. And three: spending all our efforts on essentially four cold cases could frankly waste time that’s better spent searching for other, fresher leads. Especially since these women might not be a lead at all. It sounds callous, but I’m not sure if all this is a worthy use of our dwindling resources at the moment. These women could be another dead end for all we know.”
“Fucking phrasing, man,” Jaybird ground out, and Snake’s pale cheeks reddened.
“Shit, I always do that. Sorry. Anyway, the point being: we don’t know where to begin. We’ve got a human trafficking ring that connects a murdered, corrupt investigator, a global charity corporation that’s somehow on the hook, a missing scumbag lawyer, twoassassinatedscumbag lawyers, a traitor teammate, MF7, and these missing women. It feels like we’ve got huge pieces to an abstract puzzle that doesn’t have any corners, edges, or center pieces. Then again, on the other hand, finding these women should be a relatively benign task, so if we can swing it with our budget, maybe we can figure at least this one thing out while we look into all the other shit pieces.”
Devil cleared his throat. “So what do we need to do?”
Snake huffed and pulled up the photos of the women. “This is the easiestleadwe’ve got so far… Shanna Jacobs.” The first photo in the center of the screen enlarged to a more detailed picture of the young woman with long bleached-blonde hair, a nice smile, and haunted eyes. “This picture is fairly old, as is everything we know about her. Jacobs attended the party two years ago. MF7 rescued her years ago, when she was only twelve. By the time we got to her, she’d already been missing for two years.”
A chorus of grumbled curses filled the speakers and Draco glanced at Nora. Her green eyes were glassy behind her wire glasses, and her teeth worried over her snake bite studs. She’d crossed her arms, and the way she was sitting made it look like the large couch was swallowing her up. After staring a second too long, she caught him looking. A stiff smile appeared on her face before she averted her gaze to the TV screen.
Snake continued on, and Draco returned his attention to the TV. “What’s amazing is once we saved her, she thrived, despite the home she went back to. The girl lived in a single-wide trailer with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and her three younger brothers, about two hours north of Ashland. Terrible relationship with her family. The police were called out to solve a disturbance at one time a few years before the party. It’s unclear who—if anyone—was at fault for anything. But other than that? Straight-A student. On the softball team. Probably wouldn’t have even known she was trafficked—”
“Yeah, I fucking doubt that,” Nora whispered beside him, too low for anyone else to hear.
“—it all changed after she went to the party. We think she attended thinking she could potentially receive a scholarship. But after that, there’s no record of her.”
“What the hell do you mean, ‘there’s no record of her’? What about school?” Devil’s grumble was low, but Draco still felt the weight of his friend’s carefully controlled outrage. It’d always been like that between the two of them. Neither of them said much, but they were always on the same page.
Snake sighed. “Her family moved suddenly, right after the party, to a nice house hours away. I don’t think the school asked questions—or even knew to ask questions—since she was no longer considered a student in their district. They lived there for a little while, but then they left that house and that’s where the trail stops. I don’t know how we lose a whole fucking family in the twenty-first century, but here we are. Since then, I’ve only been able to find that Shanna Jacobs might—or might not—work at a Pancake Park on the coast. Nora can vouch for that info.”
“Yup. That’s all we got.”
Draco nearly swallowed his toothpick as he swiveled to look at the woman now playing nonchalantly on her phone beside him, like she hadn’t been on the verge of tears moments before. “How the hell did you get involved in all this?”
She frowned at him briefly and placed her phone in her lap before turning to the big screen.
“Thanks for the tag in, Superman. I helped him and Naomi with the party guest list. Naomi was able to get the list from her former employer, Charitable Technologies International.”
“Before I was freakingfired.” A woman with dark auburn hair, who Draco assumed was Naomi, appeared behind Snake. “If I never see Gail Haynesworth again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Who’s she talking about?” Draco rumbled to Nora.
“Her former boss. She’s the CEO of the company that helped throw the party that these women apparently disappeared from. Gail fired Naomi forquestionablereasons after Naomi helped us out.”
“Hopefully, Gail figures out she’s gotta get out of there. But I’m bettin’ she’s in too deep to escape without a scratch now.” Naomi squeezed Snake’s shoulder a few times before he seemed to do the same to her hand. She waved her goodbyes to the crew and her voice faded as she walked farther from the TV. “Gotta go negotiate with my daughter about what show she can watch during lunch. One guess as to which one it’ll be.”
A little girl screeched on the other side, cut off abruptly as Snake grinned from ear to ear and seemingly muted his channel.
“Nora,” Hawk brought them back to their meeting. “You were saying that you helped find out information on these women?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, when I tell you we looked everywhere, I meanev-er-y-where. We’ve exhausted all techie options, so if you guys are interested in learning more, it’s looking like one of you ragtag bunch of misfits is gonna have to go a’searching. By the way, thanks for the halfhearted invite, Superman. If it weren’t for Drake here, I wouldn’t have even known about this meeting.”