Page 88 of Healing Conviction
“The Ascot, Rusnak, and Strickland firm?” Nora asked, referencing the high profile attorneys who had been implicated in the trafficking ring, and subsequently murdered.
Gail nodded. “Yes, it became clear that aside from the lawsuit itself, they had a completely different agenda, not to mention financial backers with endless reach. It went on so long that it was beginning to bankrupt us just to defend ourselves. One clandestine meeting in the middle of the night later, and we took their offer. All we had to do for the lawsuit to go away was let them use our shipping containers and help host a party. That was all we had to do. Initially.”
“Who’s ‘we’? Was someone else helping make these decisions with you?”
Gail clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. “I will tell you my part.”
Nora sighed. “Fine, I didn’t realize you were gonna be giving us an abridged version, but let’s hear it.”
Gail seemed like she wanted to bite back, but she held her tongue. Good thing too, because Draco had even less patience for the woman than Nora was showing.
“We agreed to play party host. There were other parties like it all over the southeast. We couldn’t depend on Ashland County being our sole, um, provider ofproduct. So the firm sent out a liaison to go to college fairs and recruit women. We didn’t think anything of it at the time. We just thought they were branching out scholarship recipients.”
“Did youreallythink that?” Nora’s razor-sharp voice made Gail flinch. “You really had no idea what direction all this was going?”
“How could I have possibly fathomed the extent of this operation? These things don’t happen all at once. They’re small, bad decisions that compound and become worse over time. I didn’t realize it until the structure inside the company changed. The board of directors started getting new members, and as a result, we lost most of our longtime employees. Those who couldn’t be deemed trusted by the board were pushed out. They were the lucky ones. Their hands remained clean. Before the party, our trucks got revamped. The nature of the patent lawsuit had given us the excuse to be even more secretive with our tech, blueprints, plans, all the way down to transportation. So we claimed that our trucks had the right equipment to protect the technology within it from overheating, and to make sure our privacy remained intact, some trucks had multiple men to protect the cargo. No one questioned—”
“No one questioned if they had odd scheduling or received morecargooff hours?”
Gail nodded with a resigned look on her face. “That was the idea.”
“And of course, no one would ever accuse a company of foul play when it devotes so much time and money to charitable causes.”
“Of course not.” Gail’s voice was almost a whisper. “Especially not with the annual fundraiser to support underprivileged, but promising, students scholarship aid to go to college.”
“Speaking of which… I met someone recently—”
“Shanna Jacobs,” Gail finished.
Nora paused, no doubt hearing the same silent alarm bells Draco had going off in his head, before finally asking her question. “How do you know that name?”
“We got a tip that BlackStone Securities was going after her. It was our security who followed you.”
Draco grunted. “They’re dead.”
Gail averted her gaze, nodding once. “I know.”
Nora sighed behind him. “Anyway, my friend said she got an invitation from the Rahab—”
“The Rahab Foundation, yes.” Gail swallowed. “The… boss… he got spooked a couple years ago. Believed that there was a whistleblower at the top of the chain. After that, the boss unraveled everything from the bottom up. Women who’d been vetted by the Rahab Foundation were contacted and told they were eligible for scholarships. Every party that year had recipients.”
Draco bit back a curse, but Nora stayed focused as she kept up the interrogation. “How many attended the Ashland County party?”
“You don’t know?” Gail asked, her head tilted in question.
“Humor me, doll.”
“Okay… um. There were three. Shanna was one of them.” Gail closed her eyes, seemingly accessing her memory. “Jasmine Thornton, and Calianne Castellanos were the other two.”
What about H. Smith?
“So…justthree women were invited by the Rahab Foundation?” At Gail’s nod, Nora continued. “Do you know where all these women are?”
Smart, Pix. Don’t let on how much we know.
Gail’s lips tightened. “I believe you know where Shanna is. But Jasmine’s… gone. The women who were taken from that party weren’t the kind who were missed, or they were already so damaged in society that the world expected them to fail. It was intended that they be, erm,taken careof. But unfortunately—or fortunately, maybe, I don’t know—the women ended up being more of a liability dead than alive.”
“What’s that mean?” Nora asked. “And what about Calianne Castellanos?”