Page 33 of Gabe

Everyone was okay. In fact, they were more than okay. Newt and Sebastian were ecstatic when Frankie and I returned and were equally horrified when I recounted what had happened to me.

I waited a few days to ensure that our location at the safe house hadn’t been compromised, but when no one came banging on our door trying to arrest us, or worse, I figured our hiding place was still safe for now.

Only then did I try contacting Lily. She may be the director’s secretary—former director’s secretary—but she was still one of the only people in the agency I trusted absolutely.

Our conversation had been brief. Apparently, there was chaos among the higher-ups as they scrambled to assign a replacement director. The only thing she was able to give me was a promise to eventually have more information about the situation, and a warning to lay low for a while. The director’s death was, unsurprisingly, being blamed on me. My name had jumped to the top of the list of the FBI’s most wanted people, and if I showed my face anywhere, an army of FBI agents would probably drop from the sky to arrest me.

Overall, things were not looking good.

I tried not to think about it as I focused on healing while I waited.

For the first time, I could truly sympathize with Sebastian’s frustration. While I could still move around freely, my arm was kept in a sling to stabilize my shoulder while it healed, and even that small limitation was driving me up the wall.

“You’re lucky,” Frankie admonished me when he noticed my agitation over the sling. “The bullet managed to avoid hitting any bones. If it had, you’d be looking at a much longer recovery time.”

I knew that. Bullet wounds had been one of the most common injuries I treated when I was in the Army Rangers. I knew everything there was to know about bullet wounds, but that didn’t make it any easier whenever I instinctively tried to reach for something with my right arm and found it trapped against my side.

Several weeks passed in this way, caught between frustration and confusion.

Sebastian was able to move around the house with the help of a wheelchair, which had been a whole other adventure to procure, and had thrown himself back into the case of stopping the pedophile ring and finding the missing children.

With nothing better to do, I helped. We moved my makeshift office from the bathroom into the kitchen, resolutely ignoring the glares from Newt and Frankie who would prefer we spend our time resting. Neither of us could sit still any longer, however, and we went over every detail we knew looking for some new thread to follow.

“So, this man, Robert McLeod, is supposedly the one running the pedophile ring,” Sebastian reiterated for the thousandth time while pointing at a picture of the man. “A fucking Senator who is able to manipulate the very laws of this country, is the one behind everything. No wonder we were never able to get a strong foothold on this case. Our enemy has literally every advantage. Although, that does make me wonder. If he’s got all this money and all this power, why is he relying on the Mariano family for funding?”

I spread the various files and photographs over the table like a collage of crime, trying to piece together a larger picture from all these pieces. “Because he’s such a public figure. All that money and power comes at the cost of anonymity. People would notice if he was spending large sums of money on seemingly nothing. We’re never going to get anywhere focusing on the leaders of this ring. They’re too well protected. Our best bet will be to focus on the underlings.”

I moved the picture of Tansie Bell’s son to the center of the table. “This boy. We need to focus on this boy. He’s an anomaly.”

Sebastian picked up the picture, studying it as if he’d never seen it before despite being just as familiar with everything on the table as I was. “What’s so odd about him? It fits everything we know about how this pedophile ring works. A disadvantaged mother gives her kid up for adoption, and certain hospital administrators are paid to erase paperwork and make the child disappear from the system. The only odd thing is that Miss Bell happened to run into the kid by accident. Assuming he actually is her son, which we don’t know for certain, that still doesn’t tell us anything.”

“Maybe it does.” On my laptop, I brought up a map of the area where Tansie Bell’s son was seen. “Why was the boy brought out in public? I could understand if there was a hotel nearby and they were bringing the boy to a... client.” Sebastian and I both made a disgusted face. “However, this area is mostly historical buildings where tourists gather to take pictures, along with a bunch of shops and restaurants. If this kid is a victim of a pedophile ring, to them he is basically chattel. He’s a product for them to sell, and this doesn’t seem like the kind of place worth risking their product by bringing the boy out into the open.”

Sebastian turned my laptop around so he could get a better look at the screen. “You think there’s something special about this area?”

“I definitely want to go and visit the area myself. Get a look with my own eyes. A map can only tell us so much.”

“And that’s where I’m going to have to cut you off,” Frankie’s voice interrupted us. He stood over the table, his shadow falling across the collage. “Neither of you are going anywhere.”

Over his shoulder, I could see Newt standing just a few feet away, arms crossed and tapping his foot with a disgruntled expression on his face.

Sebastian must have noticed Newt as well, for he immediately turned placating. “We weren’t planning on going anywhere right now,” he said, waving his hands in front of himself like a shield. “We just mean that eventually we want to visit the area.”

I re-stacked the pictures into a more orderly layout. “There’s nothing stopping me from visiting it right now.”

Frankie snatched the picture of Tansie Bell’s son from my hand. “Nothing but that hole in your shoulder. You’re not going anywhere until you’re healed.”

I tried to grab the picture back, but he danced out of my reach. “It’s been weeks. I’m fine.”

“You are better than you were,” Frankie agreed. “But that is not the same as fine. Now, go wash up so we can have dinner. Take a break from all this.”

He stormed away from the table, taking the picture with him.

I followed after him, hissing under my breath when the sudden movement jolted my arm. Maybe I wasn’t as fine as I claimed, but I wasn’t about to let anyone know that, and refused to let the pain show on my face.

“This is my job,” I said as I followed Frankie into our shared bedroom. “I can’t just take a break from it.”

“Well, maybe you should. Your job almost got you killed, and your own coworkers are now the ones hunting you down. As if being targeted by a mob-funded pedophile ring isn’t bad enough.”

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