Page 44 of Intertwined Souls

He glances at her and narrows his eyes. He starts to speak, but she shakes her head.

“Just give us an hour or something. I know this is your space, but we need the room,” she demands, never breaking eye contact with him.

Nerds blinks a few times before scooping up his laptop and walking to the door.

“Thank you,” Harley says softly.

He stops and spins around with his hand on the doorknob. “You’re welcome?” he says like a question before shutting the door behind him.

“Sit down, Gray,” Harley orders, pointing to my desk chair. She grabs another chair and pulls it in front of me. “Talk to me.”

I huff out a breath. “This is just driving me insane,”

“No,” she talks over me. “Walk me through everything you are doing and just talk it out with me. You're the one who taught me that. Anytime I couldn’t get something down with a class, what did you always have me do?” she asks with a raised brow.

Fidgeting with my fingers, I respond, “Have you talk it out with me because sometimes we get stuck in our heads, and when the words actually come out, we are able to view it differently or get a different perspective from the person you're talking to.”

She nods, and leans back in the chair, waiting for me to begin. Running a hand through my hair, I sigh.

“I’ve been tracking everyone. There have been five trackers I have been able to remove from our list. They have never deviated from their normal routines, and everything checks out with them. But the other twenty have something suspicious or weird about where they go, and I am trying to sort through it all. There is one address that a lot of these people have gone to, but they never stay there longer than five to ten minutes. Tammy’s car has only been there twice since we placed the tracker, which you’d think if it was connected to the trafficking ring, she’d be there more often.”

“Okay, so let's go through each name together. And then at the end, we can put all the pieces together for where they match up and form a list,” Harley says, growing determined. “Who do you want to start with?”

Taking a deep breath, I reach forward and cup her face between my hands, searching her eyes before I lean in and kiss her.

She gasps softly, allowing me entry to her mouth. Our tongues twirl together, and she moans softly, gripping my shoulders and moving closer. Before it can go farther and I get an even worse hard-on, I pull back.

“What was that for?” she breathes.

“How could I ever be in a room with you and not give in to the urge to kiss you? Especially when I am one of the lucky ones who gets to touch you,” I murmur, feeling my cheeks heat.

Scooting back without looking up at Harley, feeling more vulnerable than I wanted, I bring up the list of trackers on my screen, each one labeled with a name, and click on the first one.

District Judge Paul Whitlock. “This is a local judge in Jacksonville. He lives in a gated community about five minutes away from Main Street. He has been in practice for fifteen years. He ended up on our list to be tracked because he had some sketchy proceedings. Like a few child custody cases where the kids were all placed in the same group home, all teenagers, and they went missing within six months of being placed there.

“Nerds contacted a CPS worker to discuss one of the cases by lying about who he was, and she said that there was nothing wrong with the foster home the teens had been in. She doesn’t know who called in a report of abuse, but it landed with Judge Whitlock, and he ruled it an unsafe home and sent them to the group home.”

“You think he is setting up these teens to be taken and sold through the group home?” Harley whispers.

“Yeah. We got access to two of the teens' names, Whitney and Jared. They both became orphans within a year prior to them ending up in court with Whitlock and then being moved to the group home. All under the false pretenses from an anonymous caller that their foster homes were violent or unsafe.”

“Holy shit. Are these the only few cases you’ve found?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No. There are definitely more dating back at least ten years, but we can’t access all of the records. We think he had a few different ways of getting these teens into the wrong hands.

“But it gets worse,” I say softly, checking on Harley to make sure she is handling this alright.

Her fists clench, but she nods, rolling her shoulders back.

“The cases where we found that this happened and then the teen went missing a few months after—” I hesitate before continuing, “—there have been four of them since we started tracking his car and after each kid disappears, Paul drives to this location.” I stand and walk over to the map, pointing out an old park in an older, run-down neighborhood. “He’s there for about ten minutes before he leaves.”

“After every kid he had in his courtroom? They then go missing and he goes there after?” she clarifies.

I nod. “Yeah, within three days of the teen going missing, he visits this park. He also is one of the ones who drives to this address.” I point on the map to the one location that most of these cars seem to go to but never stay for long. “He has gone there twice since we started tracking him, and they were at random times for less than five minutes.”

Harley nods and bites her lip, deep in thought. “Okay.”

She goes back to the desk and grabs a notepad and starts mapping out everything about Paul Whitlock on it. Once she’s done, she rips the page out and lays it out on the desk in the middle of the room.

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