Chapter 15
T aryn woke early in the morning and cuddled up tight against her was Cassie. But, of Alex, Taryn had no sign. She heard voices out in the other room. Slowly extricating herself from Cassie’s arms, Taryn got up and headed to the bathroom. When she came out, she walked into the living room to find the FBI agents with furiously busy expressions on their faces, making phone calls and talking in clipped tones.
Immediately sensing the tension in the room, Taryn walked over to Alex, who smiled, opened his arms, and gave her a gentle hug. “What’s going on?” she asked.
He sighed. “So, the FBI has Uncle Jeff, still in the hospital, and he’s talking to some degree. The problem is, he isn’t in great shape mentally. We’re not exactly sure what’s going on, but it looks as if he ended up with a significant drug use habit after his living situation changed drastically, what with his wage-earning sister-in-law passing away and then his brother disappearing on his own kids and Jeff as well—which more or less allowed Jeff to fully develop into the asshole he’d always been on the inside.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “And?”
“He sold the little boys.”
She stared at him in horror. “Even though they were injured?”
Alex nodded. “Even though injured. Jeff says he told Cassie that somebody was taking the boys to look after them, but, of course, the looking after part was definitely dubious wording.”
Taryn shook her head. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered.
“Anyway, the guy who bought the little boys has been informed that we’re after him, and he says he’s happy to give up the twins, but he wants something in return.”
She stared at him, at a complete loss for words. “Giving back both boys is good, but doesn’t that mean he still goes to jail?”
“From what I’ve gathered, he wants a free pass. We get the two little boys, and he gets to walk.”
“I presume the little boys are too hot to handle in terms of a commodity for him to move on,” Taryn stated harshly.
One of the FBIs agents nodded at her. “Exactly.”
“But we want those little boys,” she declared, her hard gaze narrowing.
He nodded. “We do, indeed, though the buyer says the boys are okay but have headaches.”
She snorted at that. “I highly doubt that they are all that okay . And their asshole of an uncle? What will happen to Jeff now?”
The FBI agents were slower to answer her question than Alex.
“He’s injured, but not critically so,” Alex shared. “He’s talking, but not enough. I see a jail cell in his immediate future.”
Taryn snorted. “So Jeff’s in trouble too, and now will try to figure out how to minimize that impact.”
Alex nodded. “I hate to say it, but you’re starting to get good at this.”
“I don’t want to get good at this,” she cried out passionately. “I just want to take these kids back to Bruce and let them have a decent life, without living in fear all the time.” She frowned at that. “So, what’ll happen to Uncle Jeff? Will he try to prevent that?”
“No, he won’t get near those kids again. He’ll get jail time for sure, just from selling the kids,” one of the FBI agents confirmed, turning to her.
She nodded, then realized that Delores wasn’t here. Whether she had been moved to another case or was getting a chance to rest or was on a food-and-drink run, Taryn didn’t know. However, Delores’s absence definitely changed the atmosphere around the hotel room. Taryn turned to Alex. “So, how do we do a trade-off with this unknown buyer?”
“The trouble is, the FBI wants the little boys, but they also want Jeff and this buyer.”
“Of course they do,” she snapped, glaring at the FBI agents in the room. “That’s not fair.”
At that, one of the FBI agents faced her. “What makes these children any more important than the next to be sold, and the ones after that?”
She swallowed hard. “And yet those are all nebulous other children ,” she replied hotly. “You don’t have any others that you can rescue right at this moment. You also don’t know of any future children to rescue that today’s process would allow for. I want this piece-of-crap pervert caught as much as anyone, but we can’t risk Jack and John in the process.”
“We aren’t,” he stated shortly. “However, if we capture the buyer somehow—or take down the driver who can lead us to the buyer—we offer him a deal. And you can bet he’ll be willing to offer up all kinds of other things, once we can get our hands on him— if we let him go free.”
Taryn groaned. No way to argue with that because this unknown buyer had clearly already proven himself to be a piece of slime who she wanted nothing to do with. Yet the thought of losing John and Jack to the child trafficking system or making them spend one moment with such a horrible person was enough to make Taryn physically ill.
She felt Alex tugging on her gently. She looked over at him and glared. “You’re always so reasonable and trying to make me see reason,” she muttered, “but I just can’t. Not with this.”
Alex grimaced. “I’m just trying to do what’s best for all of us. And by that I mean, saving those two little boys, who are hurting right now, plus all the future little Jacks and Johns and Cassies out there, by taking another asshole or two off the planet.”
“But will the twins’ buyer be off the planet?” she asked. “If this goes down, there’s still a good chance that he’ll work himself free somehow, so he can do it all over again.”
“Which is what we’re trying to stop,” said one of the FBI agents. “So, we set up a deal, only—”
She interrupted him. “Only you lie.”
He winced. “Yeah. An unethical part comes into this.”
“No,” she countered quickly, “there isn’t any ethics. Not with guys like this.”
The agent nodded. “I’m glad you understand that much at least.”
The last part got her hackles up immediately, but Alex hugged Taryn to calm her down.
She sighed and collapsed in his arms. “I need coffee,” she announced.
The FBI agent snorted. “You and the rest of us.”
“Is that not something we can get delivered?” she asked.
“Somebody’s gone on a coffee run already. They should be back soon.”
“Well, I hope they bring lots,” she muttered. The agent looked over at her, shook his head, then returned to his work. She realized that she wasn’t making herself popular, but then again she really didn’t give a crap. She was all about getting Jack and John back. She turned to Alex. “Have you heard anything at all about Bruce today?”
“I did talk to Terkel, and Bruce has surfaced a little bit. Every day that he surfaces and talks is a good day,” he added. “So remember that.”
“And is he…” She hesitated, not sure how to put it.
“Is he all there?” Alex smiled at her. “Yes, he’s all there. He understands his name. He knows that he and Royal escaped from a Russian prison. Bruce understands that he is alive and free and why.”
She sighed happily. “Good, so all is not lost.”
“No, and it’s never lost in this instance,” Alex stated. “And I know you don’t believe it yet, but we are working to help him too.”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I know that. I do. Everybody’s been helping Bruce.”
At that, the FBI agents looked over at Alex. “Seriously? He was rescued from a Russian prison?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, Bruce was being held prisoner. We sent in a small team to rescue his cellmate, who was one of ours. The rescue team ended up getting Bruce out as well. He was in terrible condition, and the rescue itself was pretty arduous but came just in time, as their execution day was set for the following week.”
“Jesus,” the agent muttered. “Helluva rescue.”
Taryn didn’t say anything to that, but her sentiment was the same. “The world sucks when you’re on the wrong side of whatever asshole is trying to overpower you.” She hated to see the world as one where it was all about survival, but it sure seemed to be that way sometimes. She settled back and waited, hoping the coffee would come soon. She realized her fingers were wrapped around Alex’s, and he was gently stroking them. She squeezed his hand and sighed. “I’m okay, you know?”
“I was just thinking that,” he declared, giving her that same addicting smile again. “Because honestly, you look pretty good for somebody who was knocked out of a tree, drugged, pinballed in the back of a getaway van, then beaten senseless.”
“Yeah, thanks for that. You’re such a funny man,” she muttered. “ Not .”
He burst out laughing. “Hey, if you can get your sense of humor back, that’s worth a lot.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth anything at all when the world is still so sucky,” she muttered.
“It absolutely is sucky, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.”
“That’s why I’m fighting so hard to get these kids back to where they belong. It’s so not fair that they’ve had to go through so much already.”
“And yet they have people fighting for them. A lot of kids out there don’t,” he reminded her.
She winced. “That’s not fair either.” She frowned at him. “I can only help those I know about.”
The FBI agent added, “We’re trying to help those we know about and those we don’t know about—the ones lost deep in the underbelly, some of them there for years and years. Believe me that the more you find out about those long-lost ones, you don’t even know about yet, but you realize just how many cases are out there, you only wish you’d found out in time to do something.”
She sighed. “I get it. I do, but I can’t even emotionally begin to think about all those other children. I just know about Jack and John and Cassie, and my head’s about to explode as it is. So pardon me, but I’ll focus on them because that’s something I can do. Everything else… is just too much. Too horrific and too damaging to anybody’s sense of well-being,” she muttered. “How is it that these assholes even get a chance to live without disintegrating from their own evil before they get a chance to hurt these children?”
“They get the same chance at life as everybody else,” began one of the FBI agents. “They just don’t want to live as we define it though. They want to do what they want to do, no matter how many people they hurt,” he shared, his tone firm. “And we’ll continue to do our best to thwart them at every turn.”
Just then the door opened, and Delores walked in, carrying trays of coffee and bags of fast food. She smiled at Taryn and said, “Good thing I brought more coffee. I was thinking you might be awake by now.”
“Absolutely I am.” Taryn walked over to help her. “That’s quite a load you brought.”
“Well, there’s a bunch of us, in case you haven’t noticed,” she teased.
Taryn noted that same sense of humor from Delores that had seemed so off before, but now Taryn understood it was likely a coping mechanism. She smiled and nodded. Then, accepting two coffees, she carried one to Alex.
Delores turned to the male FBI agents. “Okay, you told me to get my ass back here because we had a development. So tell me. What’s going on?”
One of the other agents explained about uncovering the potential buyer who had bought the two little boys. He was well-known all over the world and on everybody’s watch list to apprehend. Unfortunately nobody knew what he looked like, and he used hundreds of aliases.
“Well, shit,” Delores muttered.
“My thoughts exactly,” Taryn piped up.
Delores looked over at her and frowned again. “We can’t have that.”
Taryn listened to the FBI agents as they worked on a plan, but the voltage of her glare increased.
“So, set up a sting, posing as the buyer to pick up the twins from the driver or the middleman or whatever,” Delores muttered. “Grab the driver, figure out who the hell he is, then await the buyer’s appearance, and nab him next.”
“It won’t be that easy,” said one of the male agents. “This particular buyer is pretty wily, and everybody suspects he’s been doing this for quite a while. He’s too well versed on how this black-market child trafficking works, so how do we even know he himself will pick up the kids from the driver? What if he calls the driver to circle all around Houston again? We can’t make any get out of jail free deals with this one. I don’t think lying to this one will work.”
Just the thought that somebody was so well versed on how to buy children to abuse made Taryn’s stomach want to heave. She waited while the FBI agents battled out their next moves. If it didn’t go the way Taryn wanted, she would raise all kinds of hell.
Alex understood exactly where she was coming from because he whispered for her to wait. “Just give them a chance.”
She glared at him but remained silent.
Delores turned to Taryn. “And, of course, you want us to do everything we can to get the little boys out.”
“Of course. And if you had any personal connection to those two little boys, you would want that too.”
Delores nodded. “The trouble is, both of us, all of us”—she motioned around the room—“have had way too many scenarios with way too many kids, and we know that, for every one we save, literally hundreds more are kidnapped and sold, who we can’t save.” Delores sighed in an exhausted way. “So one normal predator is worth capturing and releasing to rescue hundreds of kids instead. However, this buyer? He goes by many names, but one of his aliases is James Gordon, so that’s what we’ll call him here. Capturing and releasing Gordon is the equivalent to finding hundreds of thousands of kids lost in the black-market underbelly— only if we let him go free.”
*
Alex communicated telepathically with Terkel and Riff, asking them when all of them could share their intel, trying to get their own plan ready, while the Feds still worked up one of their own.
Riff called back Alex, conserving his energy by avoiding that telepathic conversation at the moment. “I don’t have much to add. I’ve got Merk with me, driving for now. We are tailing Jeff’s truck still, but this driver is really pissing me off. I’m not sure why he’s not stopping, just driving around, but I don’t like it, and I’ll stay on his ass because of it.”
Alex replied, “And I don’t like that we have no clue who this guy is. Terk has his people ready to run facial recognition, but this driver’s shielding his face with a ball cap or a cowboy hat or whatever.” Alex frowned and then asked, “Do you think he’s got strong instincts?”
“If you really mean energy abilities , no way to know. However, if you mean instincts, as in self-preservation, absolutely. All these pervs do. I figure he’s another pervert if he’s involved in transporting kids. These guys know what happens if they get caught, but they can’t resist the urge to keep up their nasty little habits. Unfortunately, most of the time, they risk it and get away with it,” he muttered. “But I can’t let this guy go, not until I find those little boys.”
“And that’s the problem we’re dealing with right now too. Everybody wants to find Jack and John. Yet they want to take down this driver and promise him no jail time, hoping to find the bigger buyer in the background.”
“And that can come at the risk of losing Jack and John,” Riff added, “which is the problem we’re up against. You know that the Feds will do whatever the hell they want to do, and it won’t matter what we say, one way or another.”
“That is also what Taryn’s finding out the hard way. We’ve got three agents on the three of us, so you can bet things are pretty dicey over here right now.”
Riff snorted. “What a waste of manpower. I’m surprised Taryn hasn’t taken them down already.”
“She’s not quite feeling herself yet. She took some hits physically, between the fall from the tree, the drugs, the rough getaway ride, and the kidnapper beating her. She’s a tough nut though. Yet she feels a little touchy now that the Feds are involved, who have made it clear that Taryn has absolutely no legal status where these kids are concerned.”
“Oh, crap,” Riff muttered sympathetically. “Not my idea of a fun time.”
Alex nodded at that. “I get the idea you don’t do law enforcement… or any authority at all for that matter.”
Riff’s tone was way too cheerful as he replied, “Oh, hell no. That’s the reason I do the work that I do, so I don’t have to deal with those guys.”
“We’re stuck with three here, but, other than that, I keep my distance.” Alex knew all too well that it took someone like Terkel to finesse his fairly-rogue energy workers into something usable.
“I’m staying on this guy for however long it takes,” Riff declared. “Oh, and finally now we’ve pulled into a motel, and, if I find an opportunity to grab those little boys, you can bet I’m taking it.”
Alex sucked in his breath. “Just so you know, the Feds will not take kindly to that.”
“They want their man though,” Riff countered. “So, as long as they get the driver, who can ID the buyer, it’ll be cool. I care about those little boys. So, whether the FBI gets their man or not, that should be secondary. I get the basic premise as to why it’s important we get this asshole, the driver, and I want him pretty badly myself right now, even if he’s some hired courier, some middleman, some lowly lackey—”
“I know,” Alex interrupted, “but some money trail should lead us to the buyer. So you’re on the same page as we are.”
“Because we’re all about the people, the ones we can see and can help right now,” he muttered. “It’s very different to be dealing with them rather than the others we know are out there, and they exist and need help too. Yet it’s so much harder to find them, just like any other missing person, whether an adult or a child.”
“And ultimately to help them,” Alex added, “but, when we do find the ones we can help, we need to step up.” And, with that, he rang off, then looked over at Taryn, studying everybody around her, probably trying to figure out what made them tick.
*
Everybody here seemed to already be heavily involved in this kind of work, which brought up something Taryn didn’t really understand. It was one thing to not have a detailed plan ready if you weren’t involved in this particular work. That made sense, but, if you, as an FBI agent, were involved in this work all the time, why wouldn’t you already have procedures and plans in place to make all this happen in short order?
Taryn wasn’t sure they had any workable plan at all, and, more than anything else, that worried her.