Chapter 4 Safe #2
"So Annabeth discovered the guy they call the Handler.
She hasn't found his real name, but she's sure he's local.
We've had eyes on Wilson for a couple weeks, but he never met the Handler in person.
Annabeth thinks, based on the number of girls missing from the area and the timing and amounts of the transactions, that these assholes are holding dozens of abducted girls at any point.
They rotate the stock at regular intervals. "
Flinching, Tristan gulped down the bile in his throat.
Stock.
To these bastards, his sister was merchandise, a product to buy and sell.
Fighting the urge to throw up or burst into tears, he clenched his hands in his lap and gritted out a question. "What else do you know? Or suspect?"
"We're pretty sure they're holding them at several locations within sixty or so miles from the city. We're focused on finding the Handler, figuring it's our best bet to find the girls."
Tristan forced himself to engage his brain, to do something useful besides seethe against this horrific situation. "Maybe the laptop can give us a clue as to who the Handler is, or maybe where the girls are held."
"That's the hope."
"But it's encrypted," Tristan muttered with frustration.
"Annabeth can access it. It will just take time."
Tristan rose to his feet and growled, "My sister doesn't have time! She's just a kid. She's alone and afraid, and they're using her for … selling her for …" he choked on the words and couldn't continue.
Sympathy flashed in Cade's eyes, and it made him feel less crazy, less unhinged.
"I'm sorry. We're doing all we can, I promise."
Tristan sucked in shallow breaths, trying to calm his thrashing heart. After a moment of heavy silence, Cade said, "Maybe you know something we don’t. Do you have any other info beyond what you told me?"
Thankful for the question because it required him to push away emotions and focus on facts, Tristan answered, "Not really.
I did find two other girls besides the one from the bar who disappeared within the last month, but those three and Natalie don't seem to have anything in common except their ages.
One was in foster care …" Tristan paused when he saw Cade's body stiffen at the words.
"What?"
"Nothing. Go on," Cade said, his face impassive.
Blinking, Tristan paused for a couple of heartbeats but then continued.
"And the other girl's teachers said she was abused at home.
Police believed she and the foster kid ran away, but Natalie and the girl from the bar seemed to have stable family lives.
I've been searching all the girls' socials for anything to link them together or for creepy guys making weird comments on their posts, but no luck so far. "
"That's an interesting angle," Cade replied thoughtfully. "I wonder if Annabeth has tried that yet."
"Ask her for me, will you? Can you also ask about police reports? Oh, and phone records. Do you think she could hack those?"
"I'm sure she can. I'll let you two talk," Cade said, dialing Annabeth.
Tristan spoke with Annabeth, mentioning every approach he could think of to tie the missing girls together or reveal new information about their cases. However, as Cade guessed, Annabeth was very thorough.
She told Tristan the girls he identified were on her list of likely victims, along with dozens more, and that she had written programs to check for commonalities in the girls' socials with no luck.
She had electronically scanned or hacked police, jail and court reports, and phone records of victims. Annabeth had also deployed a spider to automatically search online for info related to any missing girls in the area, but so far had found nothing tying any of the girls to a common person or location.
"What about the guy that took the girl from the bar? Anything on him?"
"Hold on, let me pull Amy Anderson's file.
Okay, friends say the guy was named Brandon or Brendon.
Early twenties, medium height, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes, wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
A police artist tried to sketch him based on the friends' descriptions, but they didn't find any reliable matches. "
Tristan considered the new information. "Were there any guys with those names on their socials?"
"Yes, several, but the profile pictures didn't match the sketch. Not too surprising since social media pics aren't necessarily good images of the account holder. Also, he could have given a fake name."
"I had been searching for guys making strange or suggestive comments on their posts.
I could continue doing that and see if any guys look like the sketch.
Maybe I could also investigate the Brandons and Brendons myself, check out their pictures, see what kind of interactions they had with the girls.
I might be able to spot something your program couldn't find. "
"That could be useful," Annabeth said. "I'll send Cade the sketch and a list of names to check."
"Thanks, Annabeth."
Tristan disconnected the call, finally feeling as if he was doing something constructive to aid in the search for his sister.
For the next few hours, Tristan sat on the sofa, bent over the coffee table, eyes fixed on the laptop Annabeth had provided.
He hardly moved from the spot, only breaking briefly to eat a sandwich.
He was so absorbed in his work, he jumped when Cade called from the kitchen, "Your posture sucks.
Your back's gonna hurt like hell. You should sit at the table. "
Tristan turned his head to stare. He didn't expect an assassin to be worried about his back aching, another thing about Cade that surprised him. This man saved his life twice, worried about his well-being, and looked cute when he was annoyed.
But he was also a confessed killer.
One who killed predators to protect innocents.
Reconciling all of these facts about Cade started to hurt his brain, so he stopped trying.
Part of him wanted to take the other man's suggestion, but his stubborn, contrary attitude prevailed. "You're probably right, but I think I'll stay here."
Cade shrugged and continued to lean against the counter, drinking water with his feet crossed at the ankles. He had no right to look so casually handsome.
Tristan grimaced and stretched his arms over his head. His shoulders and neck were a little sore, not that he'd admit that.
A moment later, Cade dropped onto the sofa next to him, leaned back and unfurled his long legs in front of him.
God, he was unfairly tall.
"You didn't find anything?"
Dragging his eyes away from Cade's muscled form, Tristan answered, "No."
"What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know. I thought about searching for articles or police reports about missing girls or runaways in a larger area around the city, but I have to ask Annabeth how wide a net she's cast."
"You know how to find that on the internet?"
"Most of it, yeah. Police reports and logs are public information, and sometimes they're online. The rest is just internet searches, but you need to try a bunch of combinations of keywords to see if anything pops up. Don't you know all this from your job?"
"I don't do computer shit. That's all Annabeth and sometimes Young."
"Oh, well, it's not that hard. See?"
For the next few minutes, Tristan showed Cade how to search for police and court records.
It was nice to feel like he was doing something useful to find Natalie, that he could be of some value to the investigation, and he hoped that explaining things out loud might magically give him some insight or ideas to help his search.
But he struggled to concentrate as Cade leaned into his space, their faces mere inches from each other as he studied the screen. Tristan's body was tingling from the closeness, from the brush of Cade's thigh against his own. He managed to arrange words into sentences, but just barely.
"How'd you learn how to do all this?"
Tristan turned his head to see Cade pinning him with a serious stare. God, they were close. His eyes dropped to Cade's full lips before he caught himself and jerked his gaze back to the screen.
"Most of it is just general computer knowledge, but I did learn some tricks in my college classes," Tristan said, relieved when his voice sounded normal.
Cade hadn't yet moved. He was still close, too close for comfort. "You went to college?"
"Yeah. I have a degree in journalism."
"So you're, like, smart," Cade concluded, looking mildly impressed.
"Who me? Nah, not really," he answered honestly.
"I wasn't the greatest student, but I got by.
What about you? You said you dropped out of high school.
How come?" He wasn't confident Cade would answer, but thought he'd try to satisfy his curiosity.
Cade shrugged, and Tristan was starting to think the gesture was his go-to when he was about to deflect.
"Why does anyone? I hated it."
"Yeah, I think that's pretty common. What did your parents have to say about it?"
Cade's demeanor shifted, and Tristan instinctively knew he'd pushed too far.
"Nothing at all. I'll let you get back to work."
Tristan watched the other man's back as he retreated to the kitchen, knowing he had hit a nerve. What kind of parents didn't care that their kid dropped out of high school? That tidbit left Tristan with more questions, but he knew no answers would be coming anytime soon.
He went back to searching the web, trying dozens of different word combinations to target any information related to missing girls in a larger geographical area around the city.
He should have waited to see if Annabeth had already done it, but he wanted to feel like he was doing something.
When that went nowhere, he refocused on the girls' socials until the nonsense abbreviations and emojis started to scramble his brain.
When another couple of hours passed without success, Tristan threw up his hands in disgust.