Page 63 of Lure

Alphabet shot her a sorrowful look. “No information is really ever gone. You’d need to delete and overwrite at least seven to ten times. Even then, data can be reconstructed. I don’t know if they’ve taken that kind of time.”

They’d clearly takensometime. “Even if they remove her from the firm, she had court cases. Based on what I remember from Amorette, you have to file with the court to withdraw as counsel. You don’t get to just ditch and say hey, I don’t feel like repping these people anymore.”

“But if her firm is still representing those people?” Lunchbox said.

“She’d still be an attorney of record. To change that, she’d have to file or the attorneys in her firm would. It wouldn’t matter how much overwriting they are doing at the firm itself. The courts are entirely different and if the judge or judges don’t sign off on it, then she could be facing fines or censure or something.”

“So, we hack the courts—” Alphabet muttered. “See what cases she’s tied to and what papers were filed. I can do that. I’ll get started on that as soon as the debrief is done.”

“If you find the names of her clients, I can call them…” It may or may not help. I disliked intensely that her firm seemed to erase her. “Did you find her so-called resignation letter?”

“No,” Alphabet said. “Any file detailing hers had been archived. I could see the names, but not content, and I couldn’t open them without getting into their archive.”

I really hated that. I scraped the last bite of yogurt out of the bowl.

“On that note,” Bones said and it forced me to focus on him. His expression was steel, though he didn’t seem angry. “Theoperation you were rescued from was an independent contractor with links to everything from South American cartels to Eastern European syndicates and a few operations right here in the States.”

That… was unsettling. “Independent?”

“Independent,” he confirmed. “We didn’t have anyone to question. Our allies, including Doc, are funneling any information they can turn up on these people to us but it doesn’t look like they were the ones who took you in the first place.”

I didn’t scream. I wanted to scream. But I didn’t.

“One of the reasons we want to get into your sister’s cases is to see if the reason she was marked had anything to do with those.”

My stomach sank.

“That said, we can’t discount that you two weren’t targeted because of whoyouare.” Voodoo met my gaze and I could almost feel the edge of regret. “You already told me about the yachting parties—the bidding. The guys who wanted to pay you for your time.”

The icy heat shifted as it seemed to glide over my skin. “You think because I said no, they decided to force my hand?” Did that fit with the man I’d woken up to? The one who’d said he’d waited for me?

He hadn’t been remotely familiar.

“It’s a possibility we can’t ignore,” Lunchbox said. “Human trafficking is a multi-tiered, multi-national, multi-sourced enterprise that basically deals in human slavery whether it’s commercial, sexual, or worse.”

I frowned. “What’s worse than commercial or sexual?”

“Big game hunting,” Bones answered and I pushed the bowl away from me. The yogurt and fruit sat like a lead weight in my stomach. “Research. There are others… none good.”

No, I supposed not. “Are there any reports of me being missing?”

“No,” Alphabet said. “Another cause for concern, because someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to erase both of you.”

Erase.

I clasped my hands together to try and keep them from shaking.

“The number of attempts to reacquire you also leads us to believe that you were the primary target, at least for one of these groups of traffickers.” Little emotion seemed to touch Bones’ voice. “The death of your manager, agent—that also suggests that whoever wants you doesn’t want anyone looking for you.”

Eleanor wouldn’t have stopped. Neither would Amorette. It seemed almost wild that of all the people I had contact with and knew, that those two had been specifically targeted…

Coincidence didn’t come with such a stretchy waist. Her going missing right around when I was taken and her firm acting like she quit? No police reports? Nothing? She was justgone.

“There’s more,” Voodoo said, pushing his own plate away and focusing on me. “Bones confirmed this morning that there is a bounty out for you. It’s being floated through some areas that we have access to. The accounts where the money is being floated will be back traced and drained. We’ll use their own tools against them.”

“Already working on it,” Alphabet said and he bumped my clasped hands with his gentle fist. “No one is going to take you, Gracie.”

“No one,” Lunchbox confirmed and Voodoo nodded.

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