In Too Deep

by Lynn H. Blackburn

  Adam couldn’t take it anymore. “What has Barclay done?”

  Sabrina’s shoulders drooped. “I need more time. A lot more time. And some trustworthy help. And warrants to get more info than I can find legally on my own. But Mike sent me the files he’d recovered this morning. I looked through those files for anything connected to Barclay Campbell, and I’ve found some disturbing discrepancies.”

  Gabe sat up straighter. “Such as?”

  “Such as the fact that Barclay has way more money than he should. He has to be laundering it somehow, but I haven’t figured out how yet.”

  “How on earth did you figure that out?” Gabe’s question wasn’t one of disbelief but of obvious amazement.

  “It’s the files on the laptop,” Sabrina said. “There are accounting records from four of Barclay Campbell’s companies. The thing is, all of them are extremely profitable. And all of them involve very cheap labor.”

  “Which is why you’re thinking human trafficking.” Anissa leaned forward and put her head in her hands. “I hate these cases. Hate. Them.”

  “Which businesses?” Adam asked.

  “They all have initials. BCC, BCH, BCP, BCF. I’m guessing here, but I’m assuming that stands for Barclay Campbell and then some other aspect. Hotels? Properties? I’m not sure about the others.”

  “Cleaning.” Adam groaned. “BCC is Barclay Campbell Cleaning.”

  Sabrina blew out a breath. “That makes so much sense.”

  He held her eyes for a long moment. He wouldn’t need the rest of her carefully prepared slides. He knew where this was going.

  “Is it a real business?” Anissa asked.

  “It’s real in that it exists, but I don’t know if he’s gone through the appropriate legal channels to legitimize it.”

  “What do you know about it?” Ryan directed his question to Adam but then turned to Sabrina. “I’m sorry. Should we wait to chase this rabbit trail?”

  “It isn’t a rabbit trail. Adam’s got the scent. He can probably get you where I’m going.”

  Adam stood. He wanted to hit something. Or more to the point, someone. How had they been so blind? “I don’t know how we missed it. Heaven help us. I had no idea.”

  “You haven’t done this, Adam. And you may be the only one who can help us bring it to light.” Sabrina’s soothing words stretched across the space between them. She was right. He needed to man up—even if it meant watching his family’s name get dragged through the muck.

  “Okay,” Adam said. “I don’t talk about this much because you guys would hassle me about it and it’s none of your business. But my father intends for me to take over the family business someday.”

  Three faces registered surprise. Sabrina’s was not one of them.

  “You’re going to quit?” Gabe shook his head in disbelief.

  “No, I’m not going to quit. But assuming I don’t get myself shot or blown up, I’ll be eligible to retire when I’m in my forties, and Dad wants me to be prepared to take his place when the time comes.”

  “Is that what you want?” Anissa frowned in concern.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine doing what he does all day. I haven’t said yes, but I haven’t closed the door on it. Alexander has. He doesn’t want it and says he never will. He wants to fix arms and legs, and he’s wanted that since he was six. No one was surprised by his choices.”

  “Bet they were surprised by yours.”

  Gabe wasn’t wrong. “Very. But while the extended family had a duck over it, once my parents realized I wouldn’t back down, they were always supportive. Concerned, but supportive. All Dad has asked is that I stay involved in the business so if he had a health issue, I would know what was going on and could step in. At that point I could decide if I wanted it to be permanent or until we could sell things off or transition the business.”

  “Makes sense.” Anissa’s expression was still clouded. “But that’s a big burden for you to carry.”

  “Sometimes. But Dad’s good about scheduling appointments around my work. We have board meetings at night. He even works around my dive team schedule. I think he’s so relieved I’m willing to do it at all that he’s happy to accommodate me.”

  “So how does your business intersect with Barclay’s?” Gabe frowned.

  “It doesn’t. But Barclay wanted it to. About a year ago, he came to Dad with a proposition. Said he was working with DOR, which is the hospitality arm my aunt and uncle own and Darren works for. He pitched an idea to take over all our housekeeping and groundskeeping and maintenance at the hotels and the resorts.”

  “Do you currently keep that in-house?”

  “Yes. Everyone who works on a CHG property works for CHG. We don’t have anything outsourced.”

  “Seems like you could save money by outsourcing it,” Anissa said. “I’m not a business expert, but I can see the value in that.”

  “The monetary value, yes. But the human cost is too high for us. Of course we could make more money, but we make plenty without doing that. And our employees make a very fair wage, have good benefits, and are considered part of the family. I have a cousin who runs that part of the business and she’s amazing. Everyone loves her. She runs a tight ship, tolerates no junk, but rewards performance lavishly. Dad’s given her a lot of latitude, and she’s made that department one of the best in the entire corporation. But that isn’t why we turned down Barclay’s offer. We turned it down because it didn’t make sense on paper. There was no way he could do what he was claiming. We know how many maids, valets, and groundskeepers we have on staff. We know how many it takes to run our hotels properly and we know how much it costs to pay them, provide benefits, everything. Even if he paid everyone minimum wage, the numbers didn’t add up.”

  Father, why didn’t we see it a year ago?

  “At the time, we told him we preferred to keep everyone as employees of CHG and we weren’t interested in making a change. I didn’t have much to do with that decision beyond agreeing to it. Dad was the one who ran the numbers. We figured either Barclay didn’t know what he was doing or he’d made some bad calculations before he presented it to us. Dad even told him he needed to check his numbers because they didn’t match up. Barclay said he would, and it’s never come up again.”

  “But if the employees of BCC were victims of human trafficking—specifically labor trafficking—then would the numbers make sense?” Gabe asked the question like he was dreading the answer.

  “Oh yeah.” Adam turned to Sabrina. “Can you go back to that slide with the photographs?”

  She did.

  “I don’t know how we’ll ever prove it unless Sabrina can find a smoking gun in those files, but I know this is what Lisa Palmer was coming to talk to me about.”

  He pointed to the yacht. “A yacht like that would have a staff—housekeeping, chef, maybe someone specifically for maintenance—other than the captain. Most yachts like that are designed so you never see the staff.”

  He pointed to the restaurants. “These are all small, locally owned restaurants. He could have people doing the night cleaning when no one else is there. Or some of the back-of-the-house work like dishwashing. Maybe even bussing tables.”

  He pointed to the private homes. “My grandparents have six full-time staff members. But Senator Carson? Probably twelve. And with the exception of the butler who opens the doors and maybe the chauffer who drives them around, no one outside of his family ever sees the staff.”

  He blew out a long breath. “And then we have The Porterhouse. We’d heard they’d outsourced almost everything about a year ago and their profit margins have skyrocketed. They’ve had enough money to actually do some of the renovations and updates they desperately needed to do to stay competitive. Honestly, I was happy for them. I hate for anyone’s business to go under, and during the high season all our properties are at capacity. It’s a competitive industry to be sure, but there’s room for a place like The Porterhouse to thrive.”


  “But the staff . . .” Anissa trailed off like she couldn’t bear to finish her thought.

  “I have no proof, but if you suddenly quit paying your staff, you’d have plenty of money left over for other projects.”

  “How are they getting away with this?” Anissa rubbed her face in her hands. “How are these people working these jobs and no one realizes they aren’t getting paid?”

  “Would you like me to explain it?” Sabrina’s gentle question reminded Adam that he’d hijacked her slides. Not that she seemed to mind.

  “Please.” Adam tried to smile at her as he spoke.

  He didn’t know how he was going to handle this. If his suspicions were correct, Barclay had been running this “business” for at least three years. Maybe longer.

  How many of Barclay’s so-called employees had been living in fear that long? How many of them had he seen in a restaurant or on the street and had no idea he was looking into the face of a slave?

  17

  Adam flopped back into his chair and Sabrina skipped through a few slides. “Adam’s covered some of these.”

  He stared at the ceiling. He looked so miserable. She wasn’t surprised Adam had understood immediately. If she could get this over with, she could . . . what? She couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t change it.

  A guy should expect his girlfriend—if that’s what she was—to be comforting. Right? Not that she had a clue how to do that. She might need to text Leigh for advice. Or maybe Anissa could help her?

  She forced herself to focus on the faces of the three homicide investigators, all of whom wore expressions that even she could tell were a mix of horror and fury.

  “Anissa, your question is one we get a lot when we talk about modern-day slavery and the rise of human trafficking in this country. Most people assume slavery is a thing of the past, but it isn’t. The statistics are terrifying, and unfortunately the Carolinas are known hotspots for human traffickers.”

  “Why the Carolinas?” Ryan pointed to her slide that showed huge red circles of human trafficking centers right over their current location.

  “We have major transportation arteries from the Gulf to the massive cities of the Northeast, combined with our own midsize cities and large rural areas. It’s easy to move people and hide people and make people disappear.”

  She flipped to a new slide. “The reality is that most of the people caught up in human trafficking entered the country legally. They have passports or visas, but their traffickers take them from them and then use intimidation, abuse, sexual assault, or threats of deportation to force them to work for little or no pay. Because they’re away from their own support systems and speak little to no English, they’re particularly vulnerable. And they often come from countries where the police are corrupt, so when they see one of you walking down the street, they don’t even think to ask you for help.”

  Sabrina flipped to a new slide. “Now, when most people think of human trafficking, they tend to think sex trafficking. And that’s certainly a huge component of it. But many people don’t even realize labor trafficking exists. Men, women, and children are coerced into working under inhumane conditions, for ridiculously long hours, and with little or no pay.”

  She pulled a stack of papers from her bag and handed it to Anissa. “Will you take one and pass it around?”

  As Anissa shared the pages, Sabrina explained what they were looking at. “This is a typical scenario for a labor trafficking victim. They’re recruited in their home country. Sometimes they’re stolen away from their homes and smuggled in, but more often they pay someone to help facilitate their move to America. They have legitimate papers and come into the country with the promise of jobs that will pay enough for them to live here and still have money to send home to help support their families.”

  “But they get here and nothing is like what they were led to believe,” Ryan said. “They have their passports, visas—anything that could be used to identify them and prove that they are here legally—taken away. They’re told they owe money for their transport and they have to work it off before they’ll be free to go elsewhere.” He looked at the others. “This is sickening.”

  “It’s more prevalent than most people realize,” Sabrina said. “These are people who came to this country in search of something better. But they don’t know American laws or customs, and they don’t speak enough English to communicate their concerns. The traffickers will often abuse them in the beginning to get them to comply. After that they may not use physical harm because they don’t want to ‘scuff up the merchandise,’ but they will use threats—often of harm to their families—to be sure they do what they’re told and keep their mouths shut.”

  “I need to hit something.” The way Gabe was punching his fist into his palm, Sabrina had no trouble believing him.

  “If we go back to our photographs”—Sabrina flipped back to the seven pictures from Lisa Palmer’s briefcase—“here are some plausible scenarios. Remember, I have no proof.”

  Three heads nodded. Adam had shifted from staring at the ceiling and now had his head in his hands.

  “The yacht.” Anissa dove in. “The entire staff could be slaves.”

  Ryan pointed to the restaurants. “Any of the staff in those restaurants could be slaves. We don’t question it when the busboy doesn’t speak English or the girl rolling the silverware in the back doesn’t engage in conversation. The servers, hosts, even the chefs may all be legit, but the prep crew, the cleaning crew, the dishwashers all could be victims of trafficking.”

  Sabrina pointed to the slide again. “We’ve already discussed the senator’s home. And of course, there’s The Porterhouse.”

  Adam’s head popped up. “Housekeeping, laundry, groundskeeping, kitchen staff . . . all of them could be victims.”

  “You all know I work with an organization that is very involved in the hunt for sexual predators and human traffickers,” Sabrina said. “I’ve seen this before, and while I have no proof, I’m confident Barclay Campbell is using trafficked human beings in his business ventures. I doubt he’s the brains behind it, and I doubt he’s the recruiter. My guess is someone got some leverage on him and then used that leverage to bring him into the business. Once he got in, there was no way out.”

  Adam shook his head. “Don’t give him an out, Bri. We don’t need to make excuses for him.”

  “These aren’t excuses. These are observations,” Sabrina countered. “Why else would a legitimate businessman get into something as seedy as this? Sure, he can make some good money, but it’s impossible to justify this as anything other than being a modern-day slaver.”

  “Dad says Barclay’s always had a mean streak.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Gabe said. “Mean streak or not, buying and selling human beings for profit takes things to a whole new level of depravity. You have to be either a coldhearted fish or in deep enough trouble that you are willing to go down a path that there’s no return from.”

  Anissa shifted in her seat. “What kind of money are we talking about?”

  “A woman working seventy hours a week could potentially be worth over fifty thousand dollars a year.” Sabrina shuddered. “I hate talking about people like they’re commodities, but that’s how they’re viewed. A strong man in a construction job could be worth even more.”

  “But we have no proof.” Adam popped to his feet and paced the area behind the sofa. “We need a friendly judge to give us a warrant to get into Barclay’s computer without his knowledge.”

  “I don’t know any of them friendly enough to do it with what we have,” Ryan said.

  For a few moments, they talked over each other, throwing out different names of judges in the area.

  “We can’t risk it.” Gabe’s pronouncement silenced them. “We’ve got a state senator possibly involved. A prominent businessman who is a member of Carrington’s most respected family.”

  Adam rolled his eyes at that remark, but he didn’t say anything to contradict th
e statement.

  Gabe continued. “We don’t know who’s involved and we can’t risk tipping our hand. Not yet. We need more proof.”

  Sabrina didn’t say anything. She wasn’t a cop.

  “I want to go straight to The Porterhouse and find all their housekeeping staff and interview them,” Gabe said. “But if we move too fast, we could spook the traffickers. They could kill these people.”

  “Or move them.” Anissa clenched and unclenched her hands as she spoke. “Put them to work somewhere else. Cut their losses here.”

  “Sabrina.” Ryan’s calm and measured voice made Sabrina think of the way a cat purrs . . . right before it pounces. “You do this kind of stuff all the time with those groups you work with. What kind of law enforcement task forces are out there? And I’m not talking about the two investigators in our own department who are assigned to human trafficking. They’re good investigators, but even if we bring this to them, they’re going to need help and a lot of it. I’m talking about state- and federal-level kind of stuff.”

  “There are several task forces in the area that are focused on human trafficking. And there are some fine investigators on them too,” Sabrina said. “They work on the local, state, and federal levels. One of them has some FBI involvement. Why?”

  “He’s thinking about how we’re going to bring down the whole organization. Not just Barclay Campbell.” A tight smile crossed Adam’s face. There was no humor, but there was something else. Maybe appreciation? He liked Ryan’s idea.

  Whatever it was.

  “I know we would all like to end these people’s suffering tonight.” Ryan leaned forward and laced his hands in front of him. “But we don’t know what we’re dealing with. If we run off half-cocked, we could do more harm than good in the long run. In the short run, we need to start thinking about who we can bring into this investigation without risking anyone getting worried that we’re on to them.”

  He turned to Sabrina. “How much longer do you think you’re going to need to go through Lisa Palmer’s hard drive?”