Page 110 of Breaking Conviction
Phoenix shook his head, his lips now in a grim line, before half his body went off the screen to get into the van. Vlad’s big figure closed the door and disappeared. After another moment, the van revved up and drove off.
Wes immediately went to look up the BlackStone facility’s entry code access. When he saw the last name on the list, he shut his eyes and rubbed his face.
“It was Phoenix. It was all Phoenix, man.Fuck.”
“What do you mean?” Hawk asked.
“See this—” Wes pointed to the screen. “Phoenix got home late last night, but his code was used to get in this morning just before the bomb. That’s how they got in undetected. They used his damn code and then he left with them. He’s been in on this shit the whole time.”
Hawk shook his head slowly before scrubbing his fade and bringing it down to swipe his face. “That doesn’t make any sense. He’s our teammate and brother. There’s no fucking way he’d be in on human trafficking. We spent years eradicating that eviltogether. He wouldn’t do this.”
Wes shook his head, almost unable to believe it himself, but it made sense.
“Fuck, Hawk, I would’ve thought so too, but think about it. He didn’t use his headpiece and was MIA when we went to save Ellie, Nora, and the other kidnapping victims last year. What was he doing in the meantime?”
“That’s different—”
“And shit, when you guys were taking down the traffickers two weeks ago at the hotel, when you and Devil went with Phoenix to save those victims. Didn’t he knock his guy out? Making it impossible for you guys to question him?”
“There was another one, too—”
“Maybe that one didn’t know Phoenix, but the guy Phoenix took down did.” Hawk was scrambling for answers, but Wes felt like he’d already solved the riddle and it made his stomach churn from the betrayal. “He’s been getting drunk and going to the strip club nearly every night. No doubt he’s depressed, but maybe that’s because he’sguilty. He knew where Ascot was going to be and when. He refused to interrogate him with us. Man, I’m telling you... this all fucking adds up.”
Hawk tapped his finger against his lips in thought and his brow furrowed above his dark eyes. Finally, he shook his head.
“It might all add up, but none of itmakes sense. Something’s going on. I can’t believe he’d betray us like this. Not after all the women we saved.”
An anvil dropped in Wes’s stomach as he remembered what he needed to tell Hawk. “Actually, man. I’m not sure we saved a damn soul.”
Hawk’s eyes widened and he stilled before he directed his strong gaze on Wes. After allowing Wes a moment to gather his confession, Hawk seemed not to want to wait any longer. “Speak.”
Wes shook his head, defeat making his shoulders sag as he confronted his teammate, one of the most dedicated team members and leaders Wes had ever had.
“The Rahab Foundation. Ascot wasn’t lying. It’s a sham. I’m afraid every single one of those women we saved was put through that foundation and sent right back out into trafficking. I’ve looked everywhere for them, but they were conveniently disbanded the same day we were attacked in Yemen. Everything about them was scrubbed from history after that—”
“Like we were.” Hawk’s deep voice was hard as the pieces obviously clicked together in his mind.
Their team at MF7 had been psychologically discharged after their disastrous attack in Yemen, and after that, MF7 wasn’t classified, it was completely erased from government books. Like the seven years of their lives that they’d toiled and put on the line to save others was for nothing. Or worse.
“Every single one of the women was re-trafficked?” Hawk asked, stuttering back a fraction before his hand found purchase on the back of the couch. “All of them?”
Wes felt his lips thin. “I’m not sure. Too many, even if not all. I’ve been working with Marco on the information that Investigator Burgess collected over the last year. I’ve accounted for nearly all of the women, cross-referenced them with the lists I was able to find from my personal database concerning MF7. Only a handful were unaccounted for.”
“What does a ‘handful,’ mean?”
Wes clicked through the screens and pulled up the very short list he’d compiled after all his research. “These names sounded familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. I’d downloaded the MF7 database before we were discharged, so I checked the names against that. These three were ‘attendees’ at the fundraiser the year before we were discharged, and all three of them were women we’d previously saved from trafficking who had seemingly tried to get their life back."
“So some women were helped with the Rahab Foundation.”
Wes grimaced and for the first time, he registered Naomi’s hand on his thigh. He looked at the concern written all over her face before he answered. “None of the women were ultimately saved, I don’t think. While some of the women saved by us were immediately trafficked again thanks to the foundation, others seem like they were given a second chance, only to be pulled back in. That’s my working theory, anyway. But these three—” He pointed at the screen. “I can’t account for them. They might’ve actually been helped by the Rahab Foundation, but I don’t know what happened after this party, or whether they even attended.”
“So they could be safe... or they could be...” He didn’t finish, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck. Wes nodded to the unspoken question and Hawk cleared his throat before jutting his chin to the screen. “We need to figure out what happened to them. That’s our next priority. And this woman—” He pointed to the screen. “What happened to her?”
Wes shook his head and blew out a harsh breath. “I honestly don’t know. She’s the only one I have absolutely zero information on.”
Hawk turned his head and something flashed in his eyes that Wes couldn’t identify before they closed again. His leader seemed to stare off unseeing before taking a steadying breath.
“We need to understand what happened to these women. I won’t let another day go by without us putting one hundred and ten percent behind finding them and making sure they don’t need our help. Got it?”
