Chapter Five
Lawson sat opposite Lainey in Reed’s Café, as she clung to a cup of cinnamon-scented decaf coffee like it was a buoy in the middle of a stormy sea. Her gaze darted left and right, and Lawson eyed her with sympathy.
“Nobody’s going to come looking for you here,” he assured her. “You have nothing to worry about. Okay?”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” she admitted, shaking her head and chewing her lip.
“You trust me, right?” he pointed out. “That’s why you came here in the first place. So, talk to me, Lainey. Tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed deeply, and he could tell it came from some place deep down in her soul. She was clearly carrying the weight of something enormous on her back, and she was struggling to keep herself upright underneath it.
“I trust you,” she admitted. “I just… I’ve kept all of this under wraps for so long, or at least, I’ve tried to. I’m not used to talking about it.”
“You called me, remember. Talking about it is the only way we’re going to be able to help you,” he told her gently. “You’ve got to tell me what you’re running from.”
She nodded, taking a sip of her coffee. He couldn’t help but notice that her hands were shaking. Damn, he had seen her handle a whole lot when they had been working at the agency together, so for something to spook her this badly, it had to be big.
“I came across something strange on one of the recent accounts I was responsible for running a financial analysis on,” she explained.
“I kept running across this one particular name and the name kept popping up in some unusual places. He wasn’t connected to the accounts I was working on, but somehow, he seemed to be paying in and withdrawing from one of the connected accounts, then different kinds of accounts branching out from it. ”
Lainey took a deep breath before continuing and Lawson sat back and crossed his arms as he processed her words.
“I know it wasn’t part of my job, but I started following the different trails and some dead-ended but others continued to branch off into other accounts owned by him or shell companies disguised as legitimate businesses.
The man was apparently running several different schemes and had his hands in a lot of illegal stuff—everything bad you could think of, and probably more. ”
“Were you able to find a name? Or a main account where all the funds were flowing through?”
Lainey glanced at him again and lowered her voice even more.
“I couldn’t find them all, but I found some.
And the man’s name is Victor. Victor Granger.
He’s the head of a big crime ring and runs pretty much everything you can imagine.
Drugs, weapons and…trafficking, Lawson. He has all these young women and even girls working for him.
He’s brutal and sadistic in his punishments and revenge. ”
His eyes widened and tension ran through his entire body. It didn’t surprise him that she had caught on to something like that.
She had always been smart and observant, and able to spot when something was off. She was the last person he’d want looking into him if he was trying to pull off crimes of the magnitude she was describing.
“So what did you do?” he asked, leaning forward with interest.
“I collected everything I’d found and took it to the higher-ups,” she explained.
“Presented a case. Told them that we needed to put together an operation to bring him down before he did any more damage than he already had, or hurt any more people. I even offered to organize and lead the operation if they wanted me to.”
“And what did they say?”
“They told me in no uncertain terms to back off,” she sighed, shaking her head.
He frowned. “Why the hell…”
“Said that I was paranoid and looking for problems where there weren’t any because of my past as an agent.
Some thought I was actually looking to be in the spotlight,” she continued, and he could hear the venom in her voice.
She didn’t like being pushed off a case for any reason, and this—this sounded big.
“So what are you doing here?” he demanded. “If they told you to back off?”
“When the hell have I ever been good at leaving anything alone?” she pointed out, giving him a wry smile.
“True. You never knew how to back off or to let someone else take over,” he replied with a smirk, shaking his head.
“I continued looking into him. He’s running a trafficking and kidnapping ring along a highway not far from here, Highway Fifty.
His crew is grabbing unsuspected women off the road and he’s forcing them to work for him or selling them to clients.
I’ve even tracked a few missing women to a couple of ports to the east and then they’ve disappeared.
I assumed they’d been sold overseas. He’s got twin sons, Lyle and Nelson, who are in on it, too.
And he’s been getting away with it for far too long.
Too many people have been turning a blind eye to it all.
I couldn’t just sit back and pretend I hadn’t seen what I did. Know what I know.”
“And, let me guess. He figured out that you’d been tracking him?” he asked.
She nodded. “And it’s put a target on my back.
” She sighed. “And my family, too. That’s why I’m here.
My tires were slashed, my house was vandalized.
My husband took the kids to Florida to stay with his family.
I just have to hope that I can keep their attention on me.
I couldn’t handle if something happened to my family. ”
Her voice cracked as she spoke, the pain evident.
Lawson could see how much this was wearing her down.
Her eyes looked lifeless with dark circles underneath, and she appeared a lot older.
And not just because ten years had passed.
This was something else, something heavier, a weight that she wasn’t going to be able to shift from her shoulders until she knew the threat to her family was over.
When she said she wasn’t going to be able to leave this alone, he knew she was telling the truth. He hoped he would be able to provide the help she obviously needed.
“This has bad news written all over it, Lainey,” he muttered.
“And Granger’s not going to take kindly to someone trying to put themselves in the middle of it,” she continued.
“I know. And I’m sorry to bring this to your door, I just didn’t know if there was anyone else I could trust. I can’t help but think that there’s at least a few leadership in his pocket, or they’ve at least been threatened by him in some way to just turn a blind eye.
I can’t see any other reason they’d ignore my information. ”
“I understand. You were right to come to me,” he promised her. “I’ll do everything I can to help you with this and to protect you. You have my word on that.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. “I knew there was a reason I came to you,” she murmured, and a small smile crossed her lips. “We always made a good team, right?”
“Agreed,” he replied, and he lowered his voice and leaned forward. “So what can you tell me about this guy?”
“Hell, I don’t know where to start,” she replied.
“I think the most pressing thing is the kidnappings he’s been doing along Highway Fifty.
From everything I’ve been able to find out about him, he’s been laying traps with his goons along the most isolated parts of the roads, and waiting for a woman to come by—hitchhiking, driving alone, something like that—and they offer them help. ”
“Stopping them someplace isolated like that highway would definitely work. Not a lot around and no one to see or hear anything to report it,” Lawson mused.
“Sometimes, they don’t even seem to use traps, they just grab them as long as they’re alone. Then they sell them off or set them to work doing who knows what. I don’t even know what to think about what that might involve. Those poor women.”
He grimaced. He was pretty sure he’d heard some talk about women who’d gone missing along the highway lately, and this might explain what had happened to them.
The thought of it… God, it made him sick.
He’d dealt with a lot of evil people in his time as an agent, but the human traffickers were the lowest of the low, as far as he was concerned.
Abusing the vulnerable to make money, forcing them out into the streets to earn for them… And if this guy was targeting young women, then they could be almost certain that it was sex trafficking, too.
“I want you to pass on to me all the information you have, as soon as you can,” he told her. “I’ll go through it and see if there’s anything we can do. We’re in touch with law enforcement here, and I’m sure they’ll be willing to help us.”
“You think you can trust them?” she asked doubtfully.
He nodded. “I know we can,” he replied firmly. “We’ve worked with them on several cases around the area over the years. And in the meantime, you need to lay low. Have you got somewhere to stay in town?”
“Yeah, I have a room at a local motel,” she replied. “It’s not much, but it’s got what I need to work on this.”
“You need to get rid of your phone,” he went on. “I’ll get you a burner. Let me know the room number you’re staying in and I’ll get it delivered—”
“Who do you think I am?” she joked, raising her eyebrows. “Of course, I already got rid of my phone. Here’s the number for my burner and the info I’ve got right now.” She slid a small piece of paper with her number scribbled on it and a thumb drive across the table.
He grinned as he reached for them. There she was, the woman he had known all those years ago. The badass who would stand up for herself and others and always do what was right, no matter what the world threw at her.
“Of course, you have,” he replied. “I’ll contact you after I look through everything, okay?”
“Right,” she answered, her voice a little shaky, as though she didn’t entirely believe that he would be able to help her.
He knew this must have been a last resort for her.
They hadn’t spoken in years, but he was glad she had reached out to him.
Especially since it affected the area he now called home.
“It’s going to be alright, Lainey,” he told her with a confidence he didn’t quite feel.
The truth was, he didn’t know exactly what they were in for. The last thing he wanted was to bring trouble back to the lodge again. They’d only just finished rebuilding from their last couple of dangerous events—the fire and Jed’s destruction.
But when someone came to him looking for help, he was never going to turn them down.
That was why he and Xavier had started Warrior Peak Sanctuary in the first place—because there were so many people out there who needed some form of help.
They wanted the lodge to be that place, a safe haven where those in trouble could turn to for assistance, or stay.
“You’ll get back to your family in no time,” he promised her. “We’ll bring this Granger asshole and his sons down, and he’s not going to have a chance to hurt anyone else. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” she replied, and she grinned at him. “Maybe I can introduce you to my kids when all of this is over, huh?”
“Maybe you can,” he replied, smiling back at her.
He liked that thought. Just because they had both moved on with their lives didn’t mean that their friendship couldn’t be rekindled.
They had been through so much together back in the day.
And he’d love for her to meet the others and see the lodge, too.
But right now, he couldn’t focus too much on the future. No, he had to think about what was right in front of him, and that was making sure that they did whatever they could to protect her and shut down this crime ring.
Because he would be damned if he let someone else get hurt. He’d seen enough of that the last year or so, and if it was in his power to do something about it, then he definitely would.
Even if going after someone like Victor Granger, someone with the power to scare off the biggest agencies, was probably going to put one hell of a target on his back.