10. 9
My office phone rings the following morning, showing Miranda is trying to reach me. Somehow, Wayne has managed to make every phone call stressful. Every time it rings, I wonder if it’s him and if my day is about to get even more fucked up again.
“Yes?” I answer.
“I’ve got Special Agent Pain-in-the-Ass here. I don’t see an appointment, but I’m not exactly sure what the policy on him is at the moment.” I can hear the smile in her voice, letting me know she knows full well what is going on between Beckett and me. And Chester. And Remy. And you know what? I couldn’t care any less.
“Send him up,” I say, barely managing to keep my own smile out of my voice. I’m a fully independent badass lady, and my boyfriend coming over should not be a reason for me to lighten the fuck up.
Only that really is the purpose of a boyfriend, right? Someone who makes you happy?
I shut down all the files on my computer. I was very actively clicking on them while not actually getting any work done. Perhaps Beckett is the exact distraction I need right now.
The door opens half a minute later and Beckett lets himself in. I blatantly stare at his jeans-clad ass when he closes the door behind him. He’s very casual today. He’s wearing a navy-colored Henley on top of his jeans and a pair of standard-issue working boots. He has his gun and holster over his shoulder. While I think there should be regulations on gun ownership, I also think that anyone who looks as good carrying a gun as Beckett does should wear one all the time.
I must be giving him a look because as soon as we lock eyes, his face changes, going from grim to burning with passion.
In the time it takes me to get up from my desk chair, he closes the short distance between us with a few giant strides. One of his hands disappears in my hair, while the other one cups my ass and it takes everything I’ve got to not just climb him like a tree.
Our mouths meet in demanding kisses, teeth clinking and fighting for dominance. Our tongues tangle and I’m having difficulty breathing. If you ask me, it’s overrated anyway.
I let my hands slide underneath his shirt and glide them over the hard panes of the muscles of his abdomen. He grunts, bites my bottom lip, and then resumes devouring me. Tracing his waist, I explore his back, feeling the little dimples on his lower back, moaning when he releases my mouth and sucks the tender skin beneath my ear. God, I was in desperate need of an office make out session.
Beckett lifts me off the ground and I automatically wrap my legs around him, shifting my hands to his shoulders. My head falls back when he licks the column of my throat. I bet he can feel my heart hammering away, but I’m in fucking heaven right now.
My heart starts beating even faster for completely different reasons because I hear the door opening again. With wide open eyes, I stare at who’s coming in unannounced, seeing a wall of blond hair above a black band tee and baggy jeans.
Who would come in without knocking if not Chester?
I start to unwrap my legs from around Beckett, but he literally whimpers and keeps holding on to me.
I’m laser-focused on Chester, who mainly looks curious.
Sensing my hesitation, he says: “I was coming in to save you from boring work stuff, but it seems like you’ve got that covered already.”
Beckett bites my collarbone so hard I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he left teeth marks.
“Stop biting me,” I hiss.
“Stop liking it,” he grunts.
I’m starting to sense a theme in being with Beckett. Somehow, I still expect him to set me down and get to business as usual, but it’s not happening. Instead, Chester walks over, tucks a few strands of my hair behind my ear before he takes place behind me and his front presses against my back.
And he just fucking starts teaming up with Beckett.
No words are spoken between them, no discussions to be held, no arguments. They just find their place in the universe, which happens to be as close to me as possible and start working together. Beckett takes the right side of my neck and Chester demands the left. Beckett keeps lifting me with his hand beneath my ass and Chester cups my breasts.
Did they have a secret meeting they forgot to send me the memo about?
When Chester manages to get his hand beneath my shirt and under the cup of my bra, he finds my rock hard nipple and takes it between his fingers, rolling it around. The moan that comes out of me almost sounds otherworldly.
“The best thing about being with a woman is boobs,” he half whispers in worship with his mouth right next to my ear, the timber of his voice giving me goosebumps.
“Funny,” Beckett mutters, taking his sweet time pressing kisses along my jaw. “I would’ve put good money on you being more of an ass man.”
Chester starts laughing, but I kiss him before he can answer. Being stuck between eternal bliss and everything I could’ve ever asked for is not the moment to start having a conversation. This is the moment to just kiss or fuck me senseless. Never mind that it’s the middle of a work day and we’re in my office. To hell with sensibility.
Right when both of them are about to go on with the great, and I do mean great, job they were doing, the door opens again. If this is Remy joining the party, I must’ve done something very good in my life.
“Wow, okay,” I hear someone say who’s definitely not Remy. “I feel like I need my rape whistle or something,” Zoey mutters.
My eyes open instantly, and I catch the tiny hacker tucking a strand of her pink pixie cut behind her ringed ears, looking lost and alarmed. Beckett puts me down when I start unwrapping my legs, and Chester moves his hands back to decent regions.
“Sorry,” Zoey says, looking anywhere except in our direction.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I say, my cheeks so red and warm they almost hurt. “If anything, we should apologize. That was unprofessional.”
“Well, it looked hot, so I don’t blame you. But we’ve found something on the little boys, and it’s going to ruin this,” she spins her finger in a circle, pointing at us, “for probably the rest of the afternoon.”
Here stands Abigail Olivia Wilder, CEO of the FIX Foundation, severely emotionally damaged, caught almost having a threesome in her office, feeling annoyed because it’s a bad time to find some missing kids. Yes, karma is definitely at play here, and she hates me. I’m so going to hell.
Chester snaps out of it the fastest, letting me go entirely and taking the heat of his body with him, leaving me with a feeling of longing.
“What’d you find?” he asks.
Zoey has finally mustered up the courage to look in our direction again. I’ve never seen her so flustered, it’s kind of cute.
“We found one of the boys in a picture. A fake account posted it, this being its first post and all, offering more than just one picture for sale.”
“Have you reached out to buy?” Chester asks, quickly walking out of my office, down the three steps of the tiny stairs and almost running towards his computer.
“Didn’t want to do that right away,” Zoey answers, following him on his heels. Beckett and I aren’t far behind.
“You buy child pornography?” he asks.
“Sometimes it’s necessary to get more information. We’re not buying it for the photos. We’re buying it because a sale gives you a money trail, and that gives us more to go on. And sometimes there are physical markers in the photos that will give us another lead,” I quickly explain.
“What did you do?” Chester asks Zoey while he rubs his Kurt Funko and unlocks his computer.
“The room the boy was in looked very specific. And you said that he’s taken at least two boys. So, new account, one boy. Where’s the other? The guys and I did a reverse image search on the dark web, using stuff in the background to cross-reference. We found five more accounts, all offering different boys. Same room though. Hell, it’s even the same message. Verbatim.”
Chester is nodding, tapping away on his keyboard.
“So now we have six accounts, all providing us with different data we can use to find these boys.”
My stomach sinks, and I swallow down the emotion that rises in my throat. It’s really good that we have such solid leads. Someone leaving behind so much on the dark web is bound to be found. But that’s not what’s getting to me.
“Six?”
Zoey diverts her eyes. “The guys are running facial recognition against the missing children’s reports. They found one of them. He’s been taken in the same manner. Sedan through the neighborhood. He had a different neighborhood though, so he didn’t come up in this investigation.”
“Fuck!”
“His name is Killian Cloves,” Zoey adds, being aware of my personal preference of knowing everyone we’re trying to save.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She grimaces. “It’s getting worse…”
Beckett lays his warm hand on the small of my back, sneaking it beneath my shirt, keeping me grounded.
“He was taken three years ago.” She looks guilty. “We’ve had him in our files for a while, but we never had any leads to find him. He was just a nameless face in a picture dump. There was no reason to think he was being kidnapped. He’s been filed away in the at-home abuse files.”
“Fuck!” I repeat. My insides are churning and I’m about ready to throw something, anything really, but feeling Beckett’s warm fingers caress gentle strokes on my back grounds me.
“He’s probably getting too old to turn a good profit,” Chester says. It’s the reality we have to deal with. Kids make a good profit, but they grow up, making them useless in the eyes of the predators. Keeping them locked up, stressed out, and underfed will make them grow up less quick, but it still happens eventually.
Killian, who has now been taken for three years, is growing up and losing all his value. That’s probably the reason why they’re taking new boys, who can make a better profit because they’re younger. This leaves Killian in an extremely dangerous situation - if they haven’t gotten rid of him yet.
“They feel semi-organized,” Zoey says, “but they’re small fish in the grand scheme of things. I think.”
“You think?” I ask.
“Yeah, I can’t tell why. It just feels that way.”
“That’s your gut feeling,” Beckett says, “learn to trust it, it’s important.”
Chester turns around in his desk chair to face Beckett just so he is able to roll his eyes at him before he gets back to work. There are black screens everywhere, a picture of one of the boys shooting by on one of the screens every now and then. I have no idea what Chester is doing other than trying to find these kids based on the lead we now have.
“IP is probably fake?” Beckett asks, and I don’t even have to wait for the answer to know that’s a fact. YouTube tutorials can teach you how to do your make-up perfectly, but they can teach every Tom, Harry and Sue how to do some basic hacking as well. Setting up a fake IP address is child’s play. Fucking criminals getting smarter isn’t making my work any easier. Good thing I’ve got the smartest one on my team.
“Faker than the average Playboy model’s boobs,” Zoey answers.
“They are probably local though, based on profiling,” Beckett adds.
“We already knew that,” I answer, staring at Chester’s screen. It was exactly what Chester and I deducted based on the basic police files. I don’t bother explaining that to Beckett though, as I gnaw my bottom lip while anxiously watching Chester’s screen. My staring isn’t magically speeding things up, so I start pacing.
After what feels like forever, Beckett yells ‘Go back!’ and startles me out of my stupor.
“Back to what?” Chester snaps. “I’ve got six screens and I don’t have eyes in the back of my head enabling me to see what the fuck you’re looking at.”
“The pictures. The pictures of the ads. There’s something about the shape of the room,” Beckett explains, leaning with both of his hands on Chester’s desk, getting his face closer to the screens as if that would provide him with any additional answers. Chester brings back the ads, one of them filling each screen.
“What did you see?” I ask, barely able to contain my impatience.
Beckett steps back, squinting his eyes, his breathing shallow but even. “It’s the shape of the room,” he finally says. I see six different boys in the same room, all in various states of undress. They’re all standing on some orange carpet, which looks old and tacky but clean. There aren’t any windows or curtains, just a plain beige wall. Nothing that would give away anything about their location.
“Here,” Beckett says, pointing to the corner of the room in one of the pictures of the boys. “The walls are crooked as if they come together like the point of an iron.”
“Like the bow of a boat?” Zoey says.
It’s like a fucking lightbulb moment.
“Keeping them on a boat would be smart,” I say. It would be easy to keep the boys away from wandering eyes and being out on open water would make escaping a lot harder.
“What are the regulations for mooring in Oregon?” Chester asks, specifically looking me in the eye.
“How the hell should I know that?” I yell, throwing my hands up.
“I don’t know! I know nothing about boats!” he yells back.
“Okay, calm down. We’re going to look up all the laws and legislations and we’re going to find something that’s monitored, so we can find this particular boat, hunt it down, and get these kids home,” Beckett says, being the voice of reason out of all of us, grabbing a chair and trying to grab Chester’s keyboard and mouse.
“What the hell do you think you’re going to do?”
“Google maritime laws in Oregon.”
“You don’t just touch my computer!” Chester yells. “I can Google shit like that for you. I don’t just pull out your gun and start playing with it, now do I? You do not touch another ethical hacker’s gear!”
“There’s nothing ethical about half the things you do,” Beckett scoffs.
“That’s not the point! The point is hackers don’t share! Tell him, Zoey.”
The tiny girl looks us all over with huge eyes. “You were just sharing, Abby, so I don’t know how to respond.”
“Oh shut up,” he mopes while I grab a chair and he pulls up some official-looking site with maritime law.
It’s funny how doing what we do entails a lot of waiting but can turn into coming into action in a split second as well. Later that afternoon, we’re standing in the marina because we know what boat these kids are on. Chester has tried to explain what kind of magic he worked to get to this conclusion, but he lost me about fifty IQ points ago. Even the other employees in hacker central didn’t have a clue what he was talking about half of the time, going as far as to cut him off from having another energy drink. I can see an epic meltdown coming in the near future. But after.
After we’ve saved these kids.
I’m checking my gear over one last time, once again concluding that everything is where it needs to be. All the guys around me are doing the same. Beckett is looking mighty fine in his tac gear. I’ve seen him wearing it before, but damn, it just hits different now. He’s talking into his mic, giving the last directions. I’m not exactly sure how he pulled it off, but he managed to get a few scuba agents in the water, making sure none of the unsubs get away by jumping overboard and swimming away. They’ve been in the water for a couple of hours now, making sure everything is ready for us to come into action. Which is exactly what we’re going to do now.
“Ready?” I ask my own guys. Alex, Scott and Dylan all came as soon as we got the semblance of a location. It’s their job, I know, but I’m still grateful that I have a team I can count on. The thing is – it’s more than just a job to all of us. It’s always been a calling, saving these kids. I even may call it a privilege, but that’d make me gag a little.
“Let’s blow this shit up,” Dylan says, giving me an earnest nod.
Alex raises his eyebrow. “How about we go save some kids and not blow anything up.”
“You’re ruining all the fun, old man,” Scott says.
“Let’s compromise. Get the kids to safety first. Blow the roof off this operation later.”
“Please don’t blow anything up,” Beckett intervenes. “The paperwork on the bomb and the drone were astronomical.”
Somehow all four of us grin at him like maniacs, but nobody promises not to blow anything up.
“Okay, so we’ll go down to the docks in two minutes. We’re going to board the boat called ‘Luna Sierra’ at the end of the pier. We believe there will be guards there, and the kids are being held down below. There are divers in the water, waiting to catch any unsubs jumping overboard. Do not worry about any of them. Make sure we can get the kids out safely. Try not to show any aggression in front of the kids if you can. They’ve been traumatized enough. We’re getting them out and to the nearest hospital as fast as we can. All clear?”
Everyone agrees, even Beckett, and they follow my lead. I stare out into the marina, where everything seems calm and serene. The sun that has just sunk below the horizon paints a picture that doesn’t match what we’re here for. A cold autumn breeze chills me to the bone, lifting the few loose strands of hair in front of my face. Being on a mission and getting kids home still makes my heart pump with adrenaline, no matter how many times I do it.
“Ches, we all clear?” I ask.
“Everything seems calm. The whole deck looks empty, so I guess everyone’s below or something. According to logs, they’re at anchor, so we’re not pursuing them in a high speed chase.”
“Shame,” Scott whispers, snickering because of his own thoughts.
“Let’s go,” I say, taking the lead while running towards the boat in a crouch with a pulled gun. My pace is even, my hand is steady, and my head is clear. I can hear my men following me by the sound of their feet on the ground.
The downside of the boat is that there’s only one point of entry. Usually, we like to come from at least two directions, but that’s impossible. The upside of this is that there’s only one point of exit as well, but the water leaves the option for jumping overboard. Hence the divers.
We make it to the Luna Sierra, and it’s as quiet as Chester has promised us it’d be. When I step on the gangway, I lower my pace and step aside until everyone is on deck. Signaling towards the door to the interior of the boat, we all move as one. Years of training together have made us able to do so, but Beckett falls in without any trouble. Maybe it’s because he’s used to working as a team. Maybe he just fits. Whatever it is, everything goes according to plan.
Turning the knob, the door gives. Are they so cocky they don’t even feel the need to lock the door, or are they so secure down below it isn’t even necessary? It’s dark inside, and I step inside, knowing the men behind me will have my back.
I’ve not even taken five steps before I hear someone say, “What the hell?!” from down the hallway, quickly followed by a ‘Fuck’ and running footsteps.
“Find a light switch!” I yell before I blindly follow the sound of the man running away, kicking it up a notch. Someone, somewhere, takes my command when the lights in a long hallway flicker on. There are closed doors on both sides of the hall, and in front of me is a middle-aged man trying to make his short legs run faster than they’re physically possible to.
“Stop or I will shoot!” I yell.
And this fucker? This brave man who takes little boys from their homes and turns them into a profit instead of a person? This genius who thinks he can outsmart all of us? He listens. He stops.
Does that make him incredibly stupid, or just smart enough to acknowledge he isn’t getting out of here? I keep him at gunpoint, tell him to put his hands on his head, and smartypants listens. When my team catches up, I ask Dylan to cuff him and get him flat on his stomach on the ground.
“How many other men are here?” I ask the rat bastard who has the audacity to murmur something about police brutality, as if we’re not treating him carefully and he isn’t some kind of evil monster who has taken children with the intent to sell their pictures to pedophiles.
“One,” he hisses, making sounds like he’s in pain when I can see that we’re not doing anything to him. He should’ve become an actor if he liked to pretend so much.
Meanwhile, Beckett and Alex are trying to open some of the doors in the hallway, but none give. The fact that they’re locked is a sign in itself. At the far side of the hallway is another door leading to the boat”s bow, which is my next target. Gun drawn again, I make my way over, glancing over my shoulder to see Beckett standing directly behind me and giving me a curt nod. He’s got me.
I open the door, and it gives. The room from the pictures, with the horrible orange carpet, sends a chill down my spine. There’s a desk, but other than that, it appears to be empty. It feels off though, it’s hinky. I squint my eyes, trying to pinpoint what it is exactly when Beckett steps around me and walks to the other side of the desk.
A loud yelp comes out from underneath it, and Beckett grabs a man by his shirt while still keeping him at gunpoint. It’s a guy in his twenties, having even less of a brain than the amoeba in the hallway. Hiding behind a desk? What’s up with all these pussy ass bad guys nowadays? First we have one that hid beneath a bed, then they’re running, and now they hide behind a desk? Fucking idiots.
The man protests while Beckett cuffs him and works him to the ground, his knee in his back. I like the way the face of this imbecile gets smushed on the floor, it makes him look about as smart as he is. Beckett seems to have him under control, so I quickly clear the rest of the room, not taking the guy in the hallway on his word that there’s only one guy, but the rest of the room is empty.
Back in the hallway, I see Alex and Scott unlocking a door by drilling it out. The guy we took out in the hallway is still whining, and damn, he gets on my nerves. But before I can snap, they’ve drilled through the lock and the door opens. Inside are three boys, all sitting on one small bunk bed, huddled together. They’re clothed and look fed, but they’re scared shitless and are holding onto each other like it’s all they can do.
I recognize all three boys from the pictures I saw earlier that day, but I don’t know their names. They’re the ones we haven’t identified yet.
“You’re okay,” I say without entering the room, keeping my distance. “My name is Abby, and we’re here to make sure you can get away from here. We’re going to take you somewhere safe.”
One of the boys’ bottom lips starts to quiver and silent tears roll down his cheeks.
“Are there any more kids here?” I ask him.
A boy with auburn hair and freckles all over his face makes eye contact with me. The color of his eyes reminds me of Beckett’s emerald green ones, only the light in these ones has been snuffed out. He slowly nods once.
“Here’s what I need you guys to do, okay?” Engaging the kids and making them feel useful. “I’m going to leave you here with Alex. That’s this guy here. He looks a little scary, but he knows a ton of bad jokes. I need you all to do your best not to laugh when he’s telling you jokes.” Add a dash of reverse psychology. “I’m going to take one of my other men, and I’m going to go look for the other kids. Once we have them, we’re all going to leave together. We’re getting you all to the hospital to check if you’re okay, and then we’re making sure you’re never going back here again. How does that sound?”
They’re mostly unresponsive, but they’re not really freaking out anymore. Alex takes a step forward, leaning against the doorpost but not invading any more of their personal space.
“So, why is a teddy bear always full?” he asks in that deep voice of his, his eyes kind and his attention solely focused on the kids in front of him. He’s got a whole arsenal full of bad dad jokes. The boys stay deadly quiet, not answering him. When I turn around and step back in the hallway, I hear Alex giggle himself, saying ‘because they’re always stuffed’. I softly chuckle. The goal is not to actually get them to laugh, the goal is to make them escape reality for a bit, while they do absolutely nothing and wait until they can really escape this hell hole.
Scott is just finishing up drilling the lock out of the other door, signaling me to open it when he puts his tool away. The door swings open, revealing a room mirroring the room we just came out of. There are small bunk beds and three boys occupying the room. These boys, I do recognize. On the top sits the older boy we just identified this afternoon, Killian, and on the bottom are the two younger boys who got abducted just recently, Victor and Paul.
The young ones seem scared out of their minds, while the older boy seems surprised for a whole other reason.
“What are you doing here?” he says. His voice is squeaky and a little awkward, which isn’t completely unexpected at age thirteen. Has he had much chance to talk over the years? Or has it mostly been silence?
“We’re here to take you guys to someplace safe,” I tell him in a calm voice. “My name is Abby, and this is Scott,” I say when he stands in the doorway with me.
Before I register what happens, Killian yells a loud “No!” and rolls over, grabbing a gun from beneath a flimsy pillow. The next thing I know, he shoots, the sound making my ears ring, and Scott collapses on the floor.
For just a second, my heart stops.
Acting on instinct, my fight instinct to be precise, I jump forward, grab Killian’s gun hand and disarm him, tossing the gun to the other side of the bed and wrestling Killian for control.
“They’re going to kill me if I don’t make them behave!” the boy yells. “You can’t take them! They’re going to kill me!”
All three boys are hysterical, but I need to make sure everyone is safe and secure first. Once I have Killian in a position where I can hold onto him despite his trashing, I can look around. Scott is on the floor, groaning in pain and grabbing his leg. His hands are red, and I can literally see the blood flowing out of his leg. The logical part of my brain registers that at least it’s not pulsing out, so it probably isn’t an artery, but fuck, it doesn’t look good.
My eyes almost fall out of my head. What the hell just happened here?
I’m about to call for backup when Dylan rushes into the room, assessing the situation and kneeling near Scott. He takes off his belt, and fastens it around Scott’s leg as a tourniquet. Scott grunts and is pale as a fucking ghost, his face contorted in pain.
“Alex!” he yells, fumbling with his hands because they’re slippery from all the blood. “Call for backup and medical attention.”
Alex starts talking in his mic, but I can’t hear what he’s saying exactly. I’m too busy holding Killian down and listening to the rushing of my own blood. There’s commotion in the hallway, and suddenly Beckett steps inside, the unsub from the bow room cuffed and detained. His jaw tightens when he sees what’s going on and his nostrils flare when he inhales sharply.
With a firm hand, he pushes the unsub to his knees and growls at him to stay there. Then he comes over, grabs my handcuffs and starts cuffing Killian.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelp.
“Restraining him!”
“He’s just a boy!”
“Just a boy who just shot one of your men, who you’re currently wrestling to keep under control!”
I huff, because I know he’s right, but fuck, he’s a victim. He’s been kidnapped, used and abused. The last thing he needs is more trauma in the form of being handcuffed by the FBI because he’s afraid he’s going to be killed otherwise.
Before we can argue any further, I hear numerous feet above me on deck, indicating that backup is here. We need to get these kids off the boat, get Scott to a hospital, and sort this shit with the unsubs and Killian out.
My insides are twisted, unsure how all of this is going to turn out, but part of me is fucking ecstatic that we found those kids. Now we just have to figure out whether we saved six innocent kids or five innocents and one accomplice.