Wild Rebel

by Laurelin Paige

  That was odd since it was a quarter to nine. Donovan was generally in before eight, and I’d messaged him that we’d be here.

  Simone came around her desk and headed to his office, a key in hand. “He said you could wait in here. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Latte? Muffins?”

  “We’re good.” I shooed her off as soon as she had the door unlocked. When it was closed behind us, I set the briefcase on Donovan’s desk and apologized to Jolie. “I suppose I should have let you answer before sending Simone away.”

  “I’m happier with her gone. Thanks.”

  I’d seen her jealous before, years ago. When I’d made a spectacle of myself with another girl in an attempt to try to distract myself from the very forbidden Julianna Stark. She’d had the same upward tilt of her chin, the same triumphant gleam in her eye when I’d ended that mockery of a relationship as she did now.

  Fuck if it didn’t make me want to kiss the hell out of her.

  I settled for taking her coat and then getting her a bottle of sparkling water from the mini fridge. Only when I sat down in the chair next to her and a few silent minutes had passed did I notice the cloud of things we needed to say hanging in the air between us.

  Coward that I was, I ignored it.

  But Jolie had always been braver. “Since we might not get the chance later...something should probably be said.”

  Her awkward approach encouraged me to grow some balls. If she could be hesitant and still take on the minefield, then so could I.

  “Look, um.” I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my thighs, steepling my tattooed hands together. “I’ve been unreasonable. Holding you responsible for the past. We were kids. Holding a grudge for something that occurred when we were teens…” I cleared my throat. “I apologize for being immature.”

  I hadn’t been facing her while I talked—because, chickenshit—but now I turned my head to her. The corners of her mouth weren’t exactly turned down, but her forehead was wrinkled, as though she found what I’d said troubling, or at the very least, puzzling. “Is that what that was? Immaturity?”

  “On my part, yes. What else would it be?”

  “I was hoping it was…” With a shake of her head, she let out an embarrassed sort of laugh. “I guess I was hoping it meant you still had some sort of feelings for me. Ridiculous after all these years. After what I did. I’m the immature one it seems.”

  Just like that, everything stopped. My heart. The clock. The air in my lungs.

  If she’d been hoping I had some sort of feelings for her, did that mean that she had some sort of feelings for me?

  I was half a second away from pouring out every emotion I still very much felt for her when Donovan rushed through the door.

  “You have the case?” He saw it on his desk before I had a chance to answer. “I’m a bit late coming in. Sabrina and I are leaving early today for Washington, and I needed to get some things taken care of on the way in so that our weekend would be possible.”

  “Going home?” I asked, knowing that Washington, Connecticut was where he grew up and seemed the more likely location for a getaway than Washington state, especially in the middle of December.

  Though taking the girlfriend to meet the parents meant the guy was in deeper than I’d realized.

  “Don’t say it,” he said, correctly guessing that I’d been about to mock him. He threw his coat on the back of his chair and reached for the case, but before he opened it he studied us, his eyes darting from me to Jolie to me again. “You’re in no position to talk.”

  I felt my face heating although, seriously, there was no way he could know shit. Not just from glancing at us.

  Moving on, he opened the briefcase and retrieved the hard drive. After a quick inspection—which, what? Did he think it might be a bomb?—he plugged it into his computer and sat down at his desk.

  “These guys you had me hook up with...” I said, remembering I hadn’t talked to him at all about the insanity of the meeting. “Don’t be surprised if that hard drive is blank.”

  “It’s not going to be blank.” He was more sure than he should be, in my opinion.

  While he booted his computer, Jolie turned to me. “Did you tell him—?”

  “That’s a more in-depth conversation than I want to have at the moment.” Mostly I was protecting her. I was sure he’d lay into Jolie if he knew she’d been there.

  But later, I’d be sure to tell them these dudes were scary.

  Of course Donovan missed nothing. He stopped typing. “What happened?”

  I waved him off. “Not now. Let’s just see if it was worth it.”

  He frowned, his expression skeptical. Then his curiosity about the contents of the drive seemed to overtake his curiosity about the meeting, and he turned his attention to the screen.

  My own curiosity got me out of my chair and circling his desk to peer behind him. He located the hard drive on the search panel, clicked it, then paused before entering the password. “Do you mind?”

  I did mind. Very much. After what we’d been through to get the stupid thing.

  But that was Donovan, with his secrets and his need for control. I wandered back to the other side of the desk where Jolie was now standing too.

  “Maybe it’s porn,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. “Kinky-ass porn.”

  “Like with horses, you think?”

  “Furries. Guaranteed.”

  Donovan shot us a look, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely unamused. “The drive’s not empty,” he said. “And the folder with the info I’d asked for is on it.”

  He clicked his mouse, and I came around again to look over his shoulder, propping my arm on the desk as I leaned in. A second later, I felt Jolie pressing against my back, and I lifted my arm so she could come in front of me. When I lowered my arm again, my hand landed on her back.

  Purposely.

  As always, touching her was distracting, but what was on the screen was compelling enough to grab my attention. A list of Word docs showed up in the directory, each with strange names.

  F-17-V-09

  F-17-V-11

  M-16-U-11

  F-15-V-07

  F-16-U-04

  * * *

  The list went on and on. Twenty-five of them? Thirty, maybe.

  The codes meant nothing to me, yet I had a bad feeling all the same.

  “Click on one,” Jolie said.

  Instead, Donovan changed the view. A preview opened up, and now there was an image of a teenage girl I’d never seen and a bunch of stats—height, weight, hair color, birthdate, dollar amounts.

  He scrolled down to the next doc which had similar info. And the next, this time a teenage boy.

  “The M and F are their gender. And the first number is their age.” Jolie was figuring out the code of the document titles.

  Donovan scrolled down again.

  “I recognize her.” Her eyes scanned the info. “She disappeared soon after I graduated. That last number is the year she went missing.”

  Donovan scrolled to the next. And the next. And the next. All held similar images, similar stats, similar dollar amounts.

  “There’s Bernard Arnold,” I said when we got to the boy who’d gone missing the year I’d been there. When Jolie identified more of the pictures as students that had disappeared from Stark Academy, it was clear. “These are missing person reports.”

  All that identifying info, the kind that had once been seen on the back of milk cartons, it couldn’t be anything else. And the dollar amounts had to be rewards offered for the teens’ return.

  Very high dollar amounts. Impressively high.

  “Didn’t you already recognize the pattern of runaways from researching public information? Why pay all that money for missing person reports?” Jolie’s question was fair, though I suspected we weren’t looking at just any reports. These were standardized. Organized. Like someone had broken into the FBI.

  Donovan scrolled down again. “That’s not what we’
re looking at.”

  Jolie looked back at me, her brow raised. I shrugged. When Donovan scrolled down again without saying more, I went ahead and asked. “Then what are we looking at?”

  “Receipts.”

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck. “What do you mean receipts?”

  “I mean exactly that,” he said impatiently. “These are receipts. Bills of sale. Every one of them. These missing teens? They’ve been sold.”

  Twenty-Seven

  “Sold? Are you talking sex slavery?” Jolie sounded dubious, as though she thought Donovan was trying to sell us a conspiracy theory, and she was not buying.

  If he was offended by being doubted, he didn’t say. “Primarily, yes. Drug mules too. Whatever suits their owner’s fancy.”

  She blinked. “You can’t own a person.”

  “Unfortunately, some people believe you can,” Donovan said.

  “And you think my father is one of those people?”

  Donovan and I exchanged a glance. Stark certainly had the opportunity. Even if he wasn’t already my enemy number one, he would be the first person I’d look at given the evidence.

  Our lack of response said everything, and guessing from her reaction, it wasn’t what Jolie wanted to hear. “How do you know that’s what this is? Who told you that? This could be what Cade said it was. This could be someone making a scandal out of nothing.”

  The way we planned to make a scandal out of nothing?

  I didn’t say it, though, because Jolie was obviously having a hard time processing the depth of the crimes we were talking about.

  Donovan excelled at remaining objective. “It’s possible. I haven’t worked with Bishop before, but I trust those who recommended him.”

  “Is this Bishop guy part of this?” I asked. “People don’t have these records without being involved.”

  “He has a membership to a pleasure island in the Caribbean where these kinds of deals are done on the regular. My understanding is that Bishop made a deal of his own to get these records—apparently there is a member of the ring that he’s been blackmailing with this.”

  It dawned on me that the scope of our plans had changed. “This doesn’t just involve Stark anymore.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  “You’re serious about this.” Jolie looked from me to Donovan, understanding sinking in. “You’re really saying these teens didn’t run away. That they were abducted. That they were sold.”

  Again, silence was as good of an answer as anything else.

  She blinked a few more times, her eyes darting as she absorbed the situation. Then she sank down in a chair and brought her hand up to her mouth. “Oh my God. The V stands for virgin.”

  The tingly sensation at the top of my spine said she was right. “The U then?”

  Donovan rubbed his chin. “Undetermined?”

  Jolie’s color had left her face. “I’m going to throw up.”

  In a flash, Donovan grabbed the trash can from under his desk and handed it to me. I started to pass it over, but she shook her head. “Not really. I don’t think.”

  I moved behind her and rubbed my hand over the muscles at her neck.

  She tilted her head toward me. “Do you really think he could do this?”

  Did I think Headmaster Stark was so vile that he’d traffic teens out of his school? Given my feelings toward the man, it deserved a moment to consider. It would be easy to say yes because I hated him. Because I wanted to believe the worst of him. Because I wanted to bring him down.

  But just because he beat kids on the regular didn’t mean he’d try to sell them into slavery.

  Then again, Stark’s crimes against me had gone further than simply losing his temper. I had no doubt that his morals, if he had any at all, were flexible enough to lower himself to this level.

  “You do, don’t you?” she guessed when I hesitated.

  I didn’t want to bullshit her. But I cared about being sensitive. “I think someone did this. And if your father is in any way involved, he needs to be stopped. He needs to pay for it.”

  “And if you did want to destroy him, this stuff is pretty damning,” Donovan piped in.

  “If he’s not responsible though…” I could sense she was working out her own morals as she spoke. “Can I really pin this on him? Of course, five days ago I was ready to kill him myself. Why does that seem easier to reconcile?”

  “Because that was just between you and him. Now there are other victims who can’t fight him themselves. It’s a lot of responsibility.”

  My hand dropped as she swiveled in her chair to face me. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

  Donovan let a beat pass, giving us time to absorb. “Obviously, this isn’t information we can just ignore. Something has to be done with it. At this point, you’re welcome to walk away. I can submit this to someone who will make sure a full investigation is opened up. We have to get someone rescuing these kids.”

  “They aren’t kids anymore.” My stomach churned thinking of how long these people had been missing. How many years of torture they’d endured. What that would do to a person. Were they even savable anymore?

  “The point is that it needs to be stopped.” I could tell from Donovan’s tone that there was something he hadn’t yet said. Something we hadn’t yet thought of.

  I tried to see what he was seeing. “So we can walk away, you take this to authorities, the whole ring comes down including Stark, and we don’t have to have our hands in it at all?”

  “Not exactly.” He backpedaled. “I mean, I hope that’s what happens. But this network has been running for a long time now. It’s plainly very organized. Very well sheltered. It’s possible authorities already know about it—I’d be more surprised if they didn’t. Knowing about it doesn’t mean it’s easy to take down. These receipts don’t implicate anyone. There’s another folder in here with pictures of the same kids at ‘time of purchase,’ which should help prove this isn’t just a collection of missing person stats. But even if this somehow leads to arrests, Stark has likely done quite a lot to distance himself from this ring. There’s nothing assuring that he will go down with the ship.”

  “Are you saying this could all be for nothing? This horrible thing that’s been happening under our noses for decades keeps happening, my father keeps living his perfect life, and I have to figure out how to live my life knowing the man who made me is a fucked-up, repulsive piece of shit?”

  “That’s not what he’s saying,” I assured her, not actually sure of that fact.

  “I’m saying that’s a possibility.” Donovan was clearly less interested in comforting Jolie than I was. “Another possibility is that it gets taken down, but your father remains unscathed. Another possibility is that we make sure he doesn’t.”

  Finally, I was catching up to my partner. “All right. Then we make sure this evidence is tied to Stark. How do we do that?”

  He cleared his throat, and I could tell that the pause wasn’t to give him time to think of the answer but meant to slow his brain down so he could bring us up to speed. “Financial records would be helpful. His large bank deposits don’t line up with these receipts, either in amount or timing, but over a decade, the totals come close enough to be suspicious, particularly when we’re adding in expenses he might have paid in cash such as purchase of a boat or a vacation home. He’s been careful on purpose. He’s been smart.

  “If he was found with copies of these folders—the bills of sale along with the photos sent back from those who made the purchase—that would be quite incriminating. As I said, he might already have this. Do you know where he’d keep information like this?”

  “His safe at the cabin.” She looked toward me. “Did you see anything when you got into it?”

  Christ, that was seventeen years ago.

  She had the same thought. “It might have been actual papers. Or a floppy disc.”

  “I don’t remember what else was in there,” I said honestly. “All I was interested
in was the cash.”

  It would have to be planted there then. To be sure.

  “So you know the combo?” Donovan asked, picking up on the fact I’d opened the cabin safe before.

  “It’s not the same safe,” Jolie said before I could reply. “He replaced it after the money was gone. The new safe has the same combo—because that’s how original he is—but now it requires a key to get in as well. At least, that was what he had a decade ago. It’s probably still the same. He’s particular and doesn’t like things to change.”

  Donovan seemed to be taking notes in his head. “Let’s assume then that the combination is the same. Do you know where the key is kept?”

  “There are two keys. He keeps one on his key ring. The other is locked in a drawer in his home office.” She rubbed her eyes, the lack of sleep likely catching up with her.

  “The cabin’s in Sherman, right?” Donovan had done his research. “And the home office in Wallingford. What’s that—an hour away?”

  “An hour and a half.” I remembered the drive well.

  “It’s going to be a task for a PI to get into the house where your father lives and then get into the cabin safe. Not impossible, but there are easier ways to do this.” He was leading us to suggest it ourselves, so that he wouldn’t have to.

  And I didn’t want Jolie to be the one either. “I should do it.”

  “It will be just as hard for you to break in as a PI,” she said.

  The cabin wouldn’t be hard. It was the house that would be tricky, and we both knew it. “I won’t break in.”

  Her head snapped toward me. “You’re planning on just going up and knocking? You don’t even know if they’ll let you in.”

  “They’ll let me in.” Like I’d been doing all morning, I pretended I was more sure of that than I was.

  She turned away, her finger running back and forth over her lip while she deliberated with herself. “It should be me.”

  “I don’t want it to be you.”

  She shifted again to face me. “This whole thing started with me. This is my responsibility.”