Page 39 of Deny Me
He tried again. “Kim, you’re right. I don’t know what’s going on here.” Not that he wouldn’t try to find out—he needed to know what this was, the unknown that had ripped his heart apart mere minutes ago. “But for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know my decision hurt Charlotte, but…”
“It’s not worth much.” Kim dropped her hands. Shook her head. A heavy sigh left her. “That was…uncharitable of me.” Cleared her throat. “I apologize. I should never have spoken of—”
“Of what?” Fear rose once more. “Kim, I can’t fix what I don’t know about.”
Her smile was sad. “There’s no fixing this.” Her gaze met his once more, unflinching. “And maybe that’s why we can’t forgive you. You weren’t here when she needed you, King. You weren’t here, and that, more than anything else that went before it, is inexcusable.”
She turned and walked out, leaving him alone in a room echoing with the pain of the past.
Chapter Eighteen
King’s lungs hurt by the time he made it back into the office. The rest of his team waited, each of them giving him knowing looks, but only Dain spoke.
“Anything I need to know about?”
He rubbed at the ache in his chest as he shook his head. “No,” he croaked, then winced. “No,” he said again, steadier this time. Whatever was going on with Charlotte—or whatever had gone on with her ten years ago—he couldn’t change it now. Work waited. Keeping her safe. The reason he was here in the first place. “Saint brought you up to speed?”
Dain nodded. “We’ll go over plans later, but for now, you got a call from your contact in the FBI. Figured we could all use that intel before Elliot assembles the family and Becky for a meetup.”
King was already moving toward the phone. Dennis Hawker, a longtime agent at the Atlanta FBI field office, had been a friend of King’s back in college and still kept in touch. King had put in a call to him on Monday, but Dennis was out of town on a case. He must finally be back.
“Dennis,” he said as the agent answered his phone. “I’m putting you on speaker, my man.”
“Since when do you prefer an audience?”
And those were the joys of working with people who’d known you since you were still figuring out your path in life. Of course, Saint hadn’t known King back then, and he never hesitated to give him a hard time, even now.
“He always prefers an audience,” his friend joked. “Builds his status, ya know.”
King growled at Saint. Dain cleared his throat. “Dennis, good to speak with you again.”
The mantle of responsibility fell over them, wiping away the congenial atmosphere. Even Dennis seemed to feel it. “Dain,” he said, more formally this time, “likewise. You all have an interesting case going on over there, huh?”
“You got my e-mail?” King asked.
“Sure did.”
“We believe we’ve stumbled onto a baby-selling ring that has gotten its tentacles into an adoption facilitating organization here in Atlanta,” Dain explained. “We have two women we know definitively who’ve been targeted, one whose child was taken, one whose family was paid for her unborn child. There are likely more.”
Dennis grunted. “Makes sense. We plugged into a national task force last year investigating a nationwide ring. They traced a couple of their contacts here, and it took off from there.”
“So there is a known ring operating here in Atlanta?” Saint asked.
“Given its location, Atlanta is a hub for all sorts of trafficking, but as far as a baby-selling ring…a branch of one is being tracked here, yes.”
Some of the weight they’d all been carrying lifted; King could tell by the easing of the tension in his team members’ bodies. Knowing they had heavy-duty firepower already at work on the selling end of this ring gave them not only backup, but hope.
“About the image I sent over yesterday,” King said. They’d managed a clear screenshot of their intruder, and if he was part of the network Dennis’s fellow agents were investigating, that could give them some leads on local connections.
“About that…” The sound of rustling papers came through the speakerphone. “The guy you’re looking for is Jason West. A mid-level East Coast enforcer. We’ve tracked his movements primarily in the Southeast—”
“Not enough hard evidence to pick him up?” Elliot asked. Her game plan consisted of identify and eliminate, a fact she’d demonstrated with lethal accuracy when they’d gone up against her father, Martin Diako, a few months ago. Tolerance for wait-and-see operations wasn’t high on her priority list.
“No, there isn’t,” Dennis said firmly. “Not to mention any hint of observation could send the rats running. The fingers of this thing spread out nationally; tag and release is the game right now.”
For how long? If any more of Charlotte’s calls panned out, they could prove this ring had been operating here for years.
King met Elliot’s narrowed gaze and knew she was thinking the same thing. The good news was, Dennis and his team were responsible for investigating the selling end, the ring that took possession of these babies and found new, wealthy homes for them, but King’s team was focused on the other end: cutting off supply. Whoever had latched on to Creating Families as a source couldn’t be allowed to continue. This person or persons had attracted the wrong attention, and now that King’s team was on the case, that person’s time was up.
