Page 49 of Toy

10

Mason

Four days earlier

Jazz music pouredout of the open café doors along with the aroma of cinnamon and roasting coffee beans. Hundreds of locals and tourists rushed past on the crowded narrow street, chattering loudly.

I inhaled deeply and leaned back in my seat on the sidewalk, thinking of Jolie and wishing I could run my fingers through her shiny blonde hair. Wishing she was right here with me, sipping at an espresso and nibbling at a sweet treat.

The café was nestled in between two hotels in the liveliest part of San José. It was warm with bright lights and colorful walls and tables, but I barely registered the buzzing, cheery vibe. I barely even noticed the honking drivers and noisy vendors all around me. I was too grimly focused on Jolie and my mission to find and rescue her.

“Finally got it.” Beck’s arrival was heralded by a sudden blast of warm wind as a balmy breeze kicked up. A paper flew off the top of the large black file she was carrying, and she quickly grabbed it and slammed it down with the rest. “Jeez, it’s heavy.”

“Let’s go and sit inside before it all blows away,” I said. “I’ll carry it.”

Once we’d located a cozy corner booth, I pushed the file back over to Beck. “Take a guess at how many casefiles and missing persons reports are in here,” she said, opening it up.

I raised my brows. “Judging by the size… a lot.”

“There’s over fifteen thousand.”

“Christ. Did you have any trouble getting it all?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I have a minor connection in the OIJ. He hooked me up.”

“You seem to have connections everywhere,” I said. “I know I’ve said this before, but I’d be pretty fucked if you weren’t helping.”

She shrugged. “This was barely a connection. It was more like: I know someone from all the way back at my old department in Montana, and she knows someone else who has a friend who has a cousin who works for the OIJ. Thinnest connection ever. Pure luck, really.”

“Well, that sort of luck is just what we need right now.” I gave her a faint smile.

On our flight from New Orleans to San José, I’d come up with a plan to try and narrow down the cult’s location. I figured that after they settled in Costa Rica eight years ago, the men would’ve immediately started looking for young girls to prey upon, seeing as they’d left all their other girls and women behind in the States.

From that, I thought it would be a good idea to check out all cases of missing girls in the country over the last eight years. If we could find a pattern in the cases, we might be able to narrow down a more specific location.

Right now, that was all we had to go on. When we first arrived in San José, we’d found ourselves unable to track Jolie and Danny after they left the airport approximately fourteen hours ahead of us. Danny had managed to avoid all CCTV cameras outside the airport, and we hadn’t been able to gain access to any traffic cam or street CCTV footage either. Beck’s cop connections and status only went so far, especially in a foreign country where she barely knew anyone and wasn’t officially working on anything.

I thumbed through all the paperwork inside the file and let out a low whistle. “It’s even more than I thought,” I said. I glanced up. “Your OIJ buddy can’t send anyone to help us go through this, can he?”

Beck shook her head. “Nope. I’m technically here on vacation, remember?” she said, arching one eyebrow. “So I can’t exactly ask for help on a case. Especially one I’m not supposed to be working on. The guy gave me these files as a favor. That’s it.”

“True. Did he tell you anything helpful, though?”

“A bit. He said Costa Rica has around two thousand missing persons reports filed every year. That’s in a population of around five million, plus all the tourists they get. Most of those missing people are located within a few days, and it’s usually a total non-issue. They might’ve just wandered off, or an overzealous family member reported them because they didn’t return a phone call and weren’t home when they went to check on them. Stuff like that. In the rarer cases, some are found dead. Various causes—accident, sickness, homicide.”

I gestured to the file. “So most of these are already solved.”

“Yup.” She nodded. “Out of last year’s filed missing person cases, only two hundred and eighteen are still unresolved.”

“So half our job today will just be weeding out those ones from the rest.”

“Uh-huh. I figured I’ll take half the stack and you take the other.” She cocked her head to the side. “He did tell me some other interesting stuff, by the way. Apparently the rate of people going missing has quadrupled over the last few years. More and more disappear each year. And…” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s the worst with kids under twelve.”

“How so?”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “Well, apparently, Costa Rica never used to have an issue with kids going missing. It was really rare. But over the last decade, it’s steadily increased. In the last five years alone, nearly four hundred kids have gone missing.”

“Jesus.”

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