Page 51 of Logan

Vengeance would be sweet, but that wasn’t why I was here. I needed to get the kids out and let the other agents handle the driver.

I opened the door as little as possible and kept myself low so the van’s seats would cover me as I grabbed the kids, blanket and all. The two bodies I felt were much smaller than I expected and took almost no effort to pick them up.

The driver shouted when he noticed what I was doing, but I pulled the kids out of the van and kicked the door shut before he could even turn around.

As I ran down the street with a small body in each arm, I heard the chaos of open gunfire rattle the air behind me.

Once a safe distance away from the violence, I set my burdens down on the side of the curb and pulled the blankets away.

A pair of children blinked up at me with terrified eyes. A boy and a girl, both under the age of ten. They were bound and gagged, with heavy tear tracks down their cheeks, and both looked to be on the verge of hyperventilating.

“It’s okay,” I said with the same soothing tone I’d used with Clay when I approached him in his apartment. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe. Okay? Just let me get these off you.”

With careful fingers, I reached for the gag in the girl’s mouth, but she pulled back and shook her head.

“No, wait. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I tried to explain, but it didn’t work. To them I was just another adult that wanted to hurt them.

“Here. Look.”

I pulled out my badge and held it up for them to see. They stopped struggling but didn’t seem any more inclined to let me near them.

“See this badge? I’m like a cop. The police. That means I protect people. Understand?”

The kids’ eyes remained narrowed in suspicion, but this time they didn’t pull away when I reached for them, and I was able to remove their restraints.

As soon as they were free and they realized I wasn’t trying to trick them, both kids immediately started crying and dove back into my arms. I held them right there on the side of the street, whispering words of comfort as we waited for the rest of the situation to calm down.

There was one other thing I’d noticed, though. Neither of these kids was blond.

The daughter of the family that we’d protected earlier perfectly fit the description of the Bell ringer’s usual targets. She could have been a female version of Clay when he was younger.

These two, however, were completely different. Based on their ages, they were a better fit for the preferred victims of the pedophile ring that Alias Investigations had brought down.

It was just more evidence for what we already suspected. These two trafficking rings, which had originally seemed like independent cases, were just branches of a much larger tree. There was no telling how many branches this tree had, but tonight proved that they were not only organized, but also helping each other.

While I was glad we saved these victims tonight, it also brought a sense of despair.

No matter how many branches we cut off, this criminal tree would never die until its roots were dug up.

I wasn’t sure if we had a shovel large enough for the task.

CHAPTER 21

Logan

Two days later,I woke up in my bed, gasping for air, and with the phantom taste of Clay lingering on my lips. I’d been hoping that my dreams about Clay would eventually fade away as the distance between us remained, but it was going on a year now since I’d parted from him, and the dreams only seemed to be getting more frequent. They’d be driving me insane if I didn’t enjoy them so much. I’d considered cutting contact with him to solve the problem—out of sight out of mind, as the saying goes—but I couldn’t bear to do such a thing. Not only did I look forward to his video calls, but I knew suddenly disappearing would also hurt him. I wouldn’t be able to explain why I needed to cut contact. To Clay, it would seem like I suddenly ghosted him for no reason.

No. I couldn’t do that to him. He’d been hurt and abandoned by enough people in his life. I didn’t need to add myself to that list.

So, I dutifully maintained our weekly video calls and tried to ignore the effects of my dreams as much as possible.

I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t time for me to get up yet, but there also wasn’t enough time for me to go back to sleep. In the end, I decided to just start my day early. Arriving at the office before my shift started wasn’t going to do any harm, and maybe I could get a head start on the endless paperwork that waited for me.

The FPA office was never empty, but so early in the morning, there weren’t many people either. After dropping my stuff off at my desk, I noticed the light on in Mason’s office. Mason Wright was always the first to arrive and the last to leave every day. I had no idea how he managed to find time for a life outside his job, but every rumor about him said that he was also a dutiful family man.

Since he was also Roland’s brother, I could personally attest that these rumors about our leader were accurate.

With so few people in the office, it would be a good time to give Mason an account of our recent mission. It had been a day and a half since we rescued several kids from being kidnapped and brought four members of the Bell ringers to justice, one way or another. By now, Mason must have already received the details about everything that happened from Agent Stayner, but I knew he would also want to hear a firsthand account directly from me. So, I knocked on his door then poked my head inside.

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