Page 76 of Caged
"I promise he'll pay." D nodded.
Marshall turned to Danny. "You okay with all this?"
He wasn't sure he understood all of it, but he knew enough. "I trust you to do what needs to be done." He glanced around the room. "I just don't want any of you in trouble for any of this."
Xander smiled. "Don't worry about them. This is what we do. Everyone will be just fine."
Faith nodded. "If it's Larry, you won't have to look over your shoulder anymore."
"And if it's not him?" Danny asked softly.
"We won't give up looking," Jeremy promised.
"Who's going to Colorado Springs?" Jessica asked.
"All three of us. Because of the location, I want three of us to go in. The site is large and we aren't sure what we are going to be walking in on. We'll sit down and go over everything soon. I'm working on a few other things to ensure our safety." D glanced at Jeremy who gave a single nod.
Danny wondered how they could all be so calm. It was as if they were talking about a short shopping trip. Just thinking about what was going to happen had his stomach in knots. Maybe he really didn't want to know what was going on with the team. He couldn't handle it if anyone got hurt or arrested trying to take down Larry. He took a deep breath and looked around the room. "Thank you for this." The words were hardly enough, but what more could he say?
"You're welcome." Jeremy smiled. "But you need to remember, we'd do this even without knowing you. This is what we do. I don't want you feeling like you've made us do this. Don't carry our actions on your shoulders, okay?"
He nodded, but still worried.
"And looking into next week, date yet to be announced, we have Darrel McDonald. This man will not be up for father of the year. He's been selling his ten-year-old daughter to pay off his gambling debts. He has joint custody of her and we'll need to make sure she's not there when we go in, but I want this asshole stopped. Videos of the girl surfaced last week, alerting us to her. Once her father realized what people would pay for a young girl, he decided to not only use her to pay off his debts but rent her out to others for pay. What makes this worse, the girl is disabled. She's confined to a wheelchair and is non-verbal. This case will probably draw media attention as Darrell McDonald is also the assistant district attorney for the city of Denver."
"Fuck," Patrick cursed.
"I knew there was something I didn't like about him." Jessica shook her head. "He and I have butted heads in the past when I've tried to push through tougher sentencing for sex crimes. I had a meeting last year with several of our local senators and he was there, arguing against everything I suggested."
"You won't have to worry about him again once we get to him. Jeremy and Marshall have pulled up enough evidence against him that he'll be going away for a very long time. Once the police get the evidence we'll leave behind, it should take down at least four others he's sold his daughter to. Darrel wasn't very careful about hiding faces when he hid the cameras in the bedroom. There will be fallout. Some of these men are prominent businessmen in the area." D grinned.
Danny couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Is it always this busy?"
"No, not always. We can go weeks without a solid case, but we are always hunting and working on collecting evidence. The hardest part of the job is what Marshall, Matt, and Jeremy do. Linking the evidence they find to the source is time-consuming, not to mention mentally draining." Xander reached for Matt's hand.
"Faith, what did you think about Gary?" D asked.
Danny's head snapped up. "Gary, my therapist?"
D nodded. "When I found out Faith was going with you, I asked her to get a feel for the guy. We need someone to work with the team on a permanent basis. What we do can fuck with your head. In California, the team has to see a counselor every so often just to make sure their heads are in the right place. You can't do what we do every day and not have it mess with you. I'd like to invite Gary to join the team, but I need to know if we can trust him before doing that."
"He'd report to you?" Danny didn't like the idea that Gary might tell D what they talked about.
"Yes and no. What is said in any session is always confidential, but as a team counselor, he would let me know if he thought anyone was having a hard time or needed some time off. More than anything, it's just a place for team members to talk and decompress. None of us like talking about this shit, but we all have to admit that there are times it's helped. We see things that a lot of people couldn't handle. We torture other humans as part of our job. No one needs to carry the weight of that alone," D explained.
Danny nodded but still wasn't sure he liked the idea of Gary being that person.
"Faith?" D glanced at her.
"He's a good guy. Laidback, easy-going. I sense he's dealt with a lot of abuse cases. It was the way he would lead into a question but not force answers. He knows when to back off a bit. When I talked about my rescue and the heroes who came in to save me…" She grinned at Xander. "He didn't flinch at hearing about the castrations. In fact, he looked a bit impressed."
D glanced at Jeremy, then back at Faith. "Any negatives?"
"He sucks at Mario Kart." Faith grinned.
"Compared to you, we all suck at it." Matt rolled his eyes.
"Seriously, I liked the guy. Not knowing his background, I can't tell you if he'll snitch the team out to the police, but I didn't get the feeling he was that kind of guy. He was supportive and compassionate when I told him my story. He didn't ask a ton of questions, just let me talk. The only thing I can say that bothered me, and it could be just because I'm used to someone else, but I felt as if he should push a bit harder to get Danny to talk." She turned to Danny. "The stuff we talked about yesterday should have been brought up sooner. At least I feel it should have."
