Page 50 of Astrid
“Informed how?” Astrid said as she stood, and went behind the men to get a better look at the photos. This was the first time she had seen evidence of the missing women. Joyce, Morgan, and Ava joined her.
“Family members, friends, co-workers, employers who filed official missing person’s reports.” He sighed and got up to fill his coffee cup again. “I’m hoping these gentlemen can identify a few, so we know which direction to go from here. If they don’t, then I don’t know where to continue.”
“Her,” Griff said as he pulled a photo from the stack. “She was only identified as a Jane Doe in the morgue, cause of death was drug overdose.” The three men from Canada continued to pull photos from the stack, and tell them what they knew about them. Unfortunately, all of them were dead.
“Is your witness here,” Morgan asked at one point.
“No,” the three men said, then Griff looked her directly in the eye, and shook his head. “I’m not evading the question, I’m not lying, she’s not here.” He leaned up on his hip and pulled his phone. “This is rough, but this is what she looked like while she was recovering in the hospital.” He passed his phone to the others and Astrid swore.
“Shit, if she’s part of this—” She waved her hand over the photos. “—but not reported missing, then how many other women are we talking about?”
“What’s to prove that all of these women are involved in this?” Ava asked. “What if they’re missing for a different reason?”
“That’s what Boswell will have to determine.” Carl sighed and scrubbed his face. He sat back in his chair heavily, then looked at Morgan intently. “Any word about sending your people to Idaho?”
“Not yet. Uncle Chip wants to make sure it’s warranted first, but he did tell me that he’s been having detailed phone conversations with a woman named Gloria. That’s all I know, oh, and when he comes out for the wedding in six weeks, he’s going to ride over and have a face-to-face meeting with her.”
“Who’s that?” Paul asked with a frown. “If you can tell me, that is.”
“It’s Gloria Alcott,” Carl said. “She’s the woman in charge of the Idaho BCI unit.”
“The entire unit?”
“No, just the missing persons unit. That encompasses all ages and genders. It’s sad that there has to be an entire unit just for that stuff.”
“Who does she report to?” Morgan asked. “Do you know if Uncle Chip knows who’s in charge of the entire agency? You know the director or something?”
“I can call Frankie and find out, though she’s pissed at me right at the moment.” He grinned at the others. “I might have forgotten to tell her some of the details to this case.”
The women smirked, and the men frowned. It was Joyce who explained. “Frankie does what Carl does, only in the Idaho office. They’ve been working together on this case, and I’ve been able to ferret out some information that connects Idaho here to North Dakota.” She smirked at Carl. “Carl was supposed to let her know what we’ve found out, and work with her.”
The men smirked, then shook their heads. “Will you allow us to have access to that information?”
“Before we agree to that,” Morgan said as she walked around the table and took her seat again. “Why don’t you tell us where you’re currently staying? I’m only asking because I don’t want a lot of unfamiliar vehicles coming and going at the compound. We’re pretty much off the beaten path, but we don’t need any attention brought to ourselves. That’s why Carl’s moving into the compound. He can do everything he needs with his office from there.”
“That and the fact that I’ll be helping installing those kitchen cabinets at Mason’s when they’re done.”
“I can understand that,” Griff admitted. “We live about ten minutes on the other side of Mason’s. It’s just a small apartment the three of us share. We didn’t want to bring attention to ourselves by getting one of our own.”
“Don’t you think living together would draw attention?” Ava frowned at them. “Not that I’m telling you how to live or anything, but it seems like the three of you having the same address would draw suspicions to you.”
“We thought that too,” Harry said. “The other men that guard Mason’s house, you know the ones carrying the military rifles? They all live in the same house, there are twelve of them.”
“Shit,” Carl and Tom said together as they leaned forward. “Where? Who are they? We’ve only got information on three of them.” Tom said as he jumped to his feet, ran into his office, and came back with the file containing the information Astrid had given him. He tossed it on the table, and Paul opened it.
“Yeah, there are these guys.” He pointed to the photos. “Then these.” He pulled his phone and accessed his pictures there.
“Send them to my e-mail,” Astrid demanded and rattled it off. At their frowns, she nodded only once. “I’m the communications expert for this outfit. If you need anything done on a computer, I’m your gal.”
“Send it to me,” Tom said. “Send it to both of us. She can do dark web searches, while I’ll work on the law enforcement angle, see if they have any warrants out for their arrests. That’s why you’re here tonight.”
“Whatever information they gather, they give to me,” Carl said. “Then I pass it up to my superiors. Don’t think that just because Boswell Group is a bunch of women, and they aren’t an official government agency they don’t know what they’re doing. Every operative is former United States military, and they have the private backing of the aforementioned government agencies. They may not be your government, but they are ours. The best thing about it is they don’t have the restrictions that the other agencies do. They’re private and come and go as they please, and report to no one but Morgan.”
“Wow, but you know those are bogus charges, right?” Griff asked.
“We figured, that’s how we found out you were cops.”
“Shit, and we thought we had all our bases covered.”
