Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
VES
Racing through the station, I head straight for my office.
“I need you to brief the department. I want everyone to have all of Calista’s stats, I want them to have Tiffany’s description, photo, and a copy of her record.
I want them to know every fucking detail and be on the lookout for that stupid bitch. ”
“Got it,” Walker says as he speed-walks beside me.
“Flyers are being printed now, state troopers are organizing volunteers for a search and rescue. We have the state and national news stations, as well as a few podcasters and social media influencers repeating the amber alert with both photos. It’s been blasting cellphone service providers, and we’re playing it on the radio along with a few streaming services who agreed to run it instead of their ads. ”
“The flyers will have the make and model of the car?” The car that stopped next to Baron when he was on the side of the road, the one driven by the woman both he and Arlo saw who matches my ex’s description.
“Make, model, estimated year. It’s all been added to everything and should be circulating soon if it isn't already.”
After we searched the park, Arlo tried backtracking, retracing their steps to see if he could remember anyone who might have stuck out and when he did, he made a casual comment about how there hasn’t been anyone who jumped out at him since he was at the grocery store but since that was before Cali came home, he didn’t think anything of it.
Not until Baron said he saw the same woman.
I had managed to keep my cool with my pack until that point and while I didn’t necessarily lose my shit on them—this isn’t anyone’s fault except that piece of shit I knocked up six years ago and the last thing I want is for my pack to blame themselves—I did proceed to lose my shit.
I went right into FBI mode and started interrogating my alphas and omega, pumping them for info on that woman and once it was established that she resembled Tiffany, all bets were off.
I called my team, the local PD and sheriff, and I had the amber alert broadcasting before we left the park.
I even attempted to get a hold of Butler to see if maybe he’d send more men or some shit but that fucker couldn’t be bothered to answer his phone.
Not that I expect anything different, but still.
I’ve been down this road before, I’m not fucking around.
As a matter of fact, I’m seconds away from calling the goddamn president myself to see what he can do to help find my daughter.
I will stop at nothing to bring her home, and no one is safe until I have her back in my arms.
“You’re sure it’s Tiffany?” Walker asks as I round my desk and immediately start trying to find her cell information. “Not that I don’t agree with you, I don’t put a damn thing past that crazy bitch, but you don’t think—”
“It’s her,” I snap, then take a deep breath as I continue to type.
“I did my research before we rented the airbnb. I made sure there wasn’t anyone within a seventy five mile radius on the sex offender’s registry or had any kind of related criminal record.
I made sure she was going to be as safe as possible when she came back and…
” I shake my head because I fucking failed my little girl, again, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for it.
“She was with my pack, in the safest place I could find. There isn’t anyone else who would have done this. ”
Cali hasn’t been sheltered, she hasn’t been hidden away from the world, and while I’m several levels past overly cautious when it comes to her, I’ve made sure her life is just like any other six year old’s. Despite having one horrible reason to do the exact opposite.
I’ve done everything in my power, everything humanly possible to protect her while making sure she’s healthy, happy, and well adjusted.
She’s not spoiled but she wants for nothing.
My little girl is compassionate and caring, she’s smart and guarded but wild and carefree at the same time.
I’ve nurtured every bit of who she is, taught her to embrace it wholly, and made sure she has a comfortable, secure and normal childhood while still being able to discover herself as well as how big and beautiful the world is.
And up until very recently, I’ve managed to do that on my own and successfully.
I’m not on my own anymore, and that’s something both of us have welcomed with open arms, even if it took me a little longer to get there than it did Cali.
I’m so grateful for the three men in our life and how deeply they care for us.
They’re in town right now, showing Cali’s face to everyone, waiting for the search and rescue to get under way so I can be here doing this without feeling like I’m not out there helping.
Knowing they’re out there doing what they can helps ease the sting of failing my daughter.
That’s the other thing that changed.
I made sure Tiffany couldn’t find us, that she had no clue where we were for years, and I fucked up the second I let those vultures get my face on camera.
That’s on me and this new, terrible compulsion I’ve developed. The one that’s growing at a rate that has me more concerned about my sanity than I’ve ever been.
The urge to raid the FBI database and find all of the perverted bastards, to roam the streets hunting for the scourge of society, to eliminate everyone who’s ever considered harming a child is getting out of hand.
It’s sitting right under the surface, watching and waiting for an opportunity to claw its way out.
And while I’ve only entertained it twice, I want more.
I want so much more, and that’s where I got fucking careless with the most precious thing in my life; I jeopardized my daughter because I’m spiraling out of control.
“You have to see this,” Chandler says as she rushes into the office with her laptop. “I was trying to get a hold of Butler and when I couldn’t…” Her words trail off and she shrugs before setting her computer down and turning it toward me.
When she couldn’t get a hold of him, she went digging.
Marley is a great person, one of the best people I know, and she’s a top notch CSI with an affinity for profiling. That said, she’s not above using her skills and talents to track someone down, suspect or not, and Butler is someone she’s had to cyber stalk more than once.
Which means, if she found something worth running in here to share after snooping on him a few times over the years, it’s not going to be good.
I start scrolling through his call logs, seeing a familiar number come up three times in the last twenty-four-hours, then click on the corresponding location tags.
With a frown, my eyes shift from Chandler’s screen to mine, noting the similarities there before clicking a few more things that have my blood pressure rising.
I look up at Marley and she nods, “He’s been talking to her. Not very many times. Two minute conversations and a couple of texts, but he’s been communicating with Tiffany.”
“Can you recover the texts?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“I’m working on it, but that’s not all.”
My heart starts slamming against my ribs as I go back to her homepage, minimizing the open tabs until I’m staring at a screenshot of a file folder labeled toys.
“Do I want to know what’s in that folder?”
Chandler purses her lips and narrows her eyes as Walker joins me on this side of the desk, leaning over my shoulder as she responds.
“No, but you need to see. Butler had all of that hidden in a secondary hard drive, encrypted in code so no one would know what he had on here. He’s a bigger problem than we imagined. ”
Sure as shit, Marley is not wrong.
There are several more folders inside the main one, each labeled with a number and what could be a name or at the very least, a code word, and as I continue scrolling through the slideshow, I start seeing fucking red with each image that passes in front of me.
The first set is all dirt he has on multiple high ranking members of the FBI, CIA, and various other branches of the government, and he even included their email and text exchanges as well as copies of any paper trail there was originally.
The next shots are of bank statements for offshore accounts, highlighting massive wire deposits along with the transaction ID and some of the codes from the earlier shot I’m sure Butler used to keep track of who it came from.
My eyes find Marley’s again over the top of the screen. “He’s so goddamn dirty industrial bleach wouldn’t make a dent, but I don’t see—”
“Keep going,” she says, her voice laced with a tone I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before; one dripping in disgust and an anger so hot she’s turning red.
I do as she says, sliding my finger over the mousepad to bring up another row of numbered and labeled folders, but these look more like dates and what could be last names.
My pulse pounds in my ears, my muscles go rigid, and I clench my jaw so hard my molars scrape against each other as the image of a little girl fills the screen.
Between five and seven years old, dirty blonde pigtails, big blue eyes.
Tear stains on her cheeks, bruises on her wrists, and she’s not wearing anything except a soiled pair of underwear.
I shoot up from my desk and fly out the door, running through the station as fast as I can until I’m jumping into my SUV, starting it up then tearing out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I know Chandler and Walker will make sure I have a location before I’m even five minutes down the road, and once I do, I know they’ll make sure I’m the only one who has it until I say otherwise.
And I’m not going to say shit until there’s nothing left of Craig Butler except a pool of blood no one will ever be able to identify.