Page 20 of Deny Me
Saint was right. King was awaiting response from a local FBI friend to see if there was a task force in place in their region to look for possible baby selling rings. The police investigations would move slowly. Tonight they would work in split shifts along with three additional men from the office to patrol the house and grounds, and cameras had been put in place to capture every angle of the estate. For now, their only option was to hunker down and wait for the enemy to make a mistake.
Not that he’d tell Wes that.
“Would these people not just cut their losses instead of risking getting caught?” Wes was asking.
“We can’t trust that they will,” Dain answered. “Where are we on the contact lists?” he asked King.
King gestured toward his laptop. “Elliot downloaded Charlotte’s from her cell phone and computer. Becky didn’t have a cell, but she did have e-mail and IM on the laptop Creating Families gave her for school, which will help us wade through the list she gave us of her friends. I’ve also got the information she gave me on people who may have heard from Richard.”
Wes frowned. “You think someone on their contacts lists was involved?”
Something his cousin said made King pause, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to make the thought solidify. “You can never have too much information.”
“Any overlap?” Dain asked.
“Only from Creating Families.”
Saint opened his laptop. “I’m beginning background checks on Becky’s contacts.”
Becky’s contacts.
“The question we have to answer is, who would have access and try to sell a child? We assumed it was someone close to the family,” King said slowly, feeling his way through the maze of thoughts in his head. “Assuming this attempt isn’t a one-off, which I guess is always a possibility—”
Saint shook his head. “Do we really think Richard Jones had the know-how to both find and contact a baby-selling ring to offer up his child’s baby?”
King leaned back in his chair, grimacing as pain shot through his shoulders and lower back. “So, not a one-off.” Putting his hands behind his head, he shifted his unseeing gaze to the ceiling. “These kinds of setups are usually nationwide, both for recruitment and placement of the ‘product’—too many in one area would draw attention if they went missing. But not if the mothers already intended to adopt them and all that changed was the family receiving them.”
“And that means access to places women who intend to adopt would be,” Dain said, catching his drift. A glimmer of excitement sparked in his dark eyes when King met them.
Wes muttered a curse under his breath. “You think someone at Creating Families is doing this?”
Yes.“Not necessarily,” King assured him. “It could be someone close to CF’s business—a service they use, a contractor, a…” The words faded as Wes’s face turned white.
“Someone close to Charlotte?”
“They’d need localized connections to find babies, and CF has all that they need in one place,” Saint said.
How did they find out if any other babies had disappeared?
Dain leaned forward, elbows planted on the table. “We’re going to need access to CF files and personnel records, Wes.”
His cousin cleared his throat. “A lot of those files cannot be shared. They contain private medical information, information about mothers and babies, closed adoptions.” His hands relaxed on the table, his voice going to lawyer neutral. “I can’t release those things without express permission from those involved.”
Dain sighed. “I can see that. Okay, plan B. We’ll start with personnel—I need a list of employee names and records, as well as a list of service providers Creating Families is affiliated with. We’ll move to donors after that.”
“But—” Wes stopped. His shoulders slumped. King thought his cousin looked even more weary than when he’d come in, as if the thought of someone at Creating Families being responsible for this made him sick. King understood, although it made him angry instead of sick. He’d looked into the basic background and structure of the organization Charlotte had founded, the work they did to help people. The thought that someone was taking advantage of that… Fuck.
Wes took a deep breath, rubbed his hands over his face, then stood. “I’ll need to consult with Charlotte.”
Dain’s and Saint’s protests joined King’s.
Wes squared his shoulders. “I don’t have a choice. No one knows every angle of the organization like she does.” A halfhearted smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Besides, if I don’t, she’ll kill me. This might hurt her more than the car accident; CF is her baby.”
King went to his side, laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not a definite. But it is a lead, one we have to follow through on.”
“Of course.” For a moment Wes was still under his palm; then his cousin turned to give him a chest-bump, slap-on-the-back kind of hug. “I’ll be back.”
King watched him leave, then glanced toward his teammates. Both men’s faces said exactly what he felt: this wasn’t just a lead. It was the best lead they had—and it might devastate Charlotte if they weren’t incredibly careful.
