Page 17 of Unexpectedly Wanted
I spent the next hour going over the new cases I had information for. What I’d been able to gather. What I was close to having a location for. What we’d need to look into next. And so on.
Once he left, I threw myself into work.
Actual work.
Not wasting time filling in my boss about what I’d been doing. Which had annoyed me, but I also understood its purpose.
I began to dig again, trying like hell to find a way in.
We’d been trying to bring this group down for a while. We’d taken out quite a few of their cells, but the main hub was still a mystery, just like who was behind it all. No one would talk.
That wasn’t part of my job, but I usually heard things floating around the office after a bust.
Reed had ties with an off-books FBI division. He was friends, I suppose you could call it, with the guy that ran that division. And, like it or not, sometimes we all worked together like one big happy family.
It was hard for me to play nice after getting busted by the FBI and looking at spending my young adult life in a small cell. I still didn’t trust that they wouldn’t break whatever deal they had with Reed and drag me away. I was doing too much good to sit behind bars.
That was something I didn’t want to think about.
So I put my focus back on work.
And then…
I was in!
Holy shit! I was in.
My eyes scanned the line of code, trying to find something that would help me out. I had to be in and out quickly, but I just needed one major thing. Something that would point me in a direction or give me a location. An IP address, that I was sure wouldn’t actually be the right one. I’d take anything at this point.
My fingers worked over the keyboard like a madman.
I made my way in, finding files with strange names. Numbers. They were all numbered. I wondered if that was some kind of code they used to log everything.
Clicking on a few, I found images. Images that I didn’t want to see, but had seen so many like it before. One of the girls I happened to recognize. Which told me I was looking in the right place. She’d been one of the ones sold off before we could shut them down. But we had found her. We had returned her to her family. And she hadn’t been the only one.
But there were more out there.
More that needed help. Needed to be set free or returned to their loved ones.
So I kept digging.
I clicked on another file, and a list popped up.
“Are those GPS coordinates?” I mumbled to myself as I leaned closer to the screen.
Grabbing my phone, I snapped pictures of what was on the screen. I scrolled down enough to get six images.
I’d been here too long.
It was time to retrace my steps, and back out like I’d never been here.
With any luck, this would lead me somewhere.
“Milo?” Remy’s voice filtered through the closed door at the same time I heard his knuckles rap against the wood.
“Hold on,” I shot back quickly.
I didn’t want him to know what I was doing. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because this was very dangerous. The less people that knew, the less likely one of them would try to get involved. I’d tell once I had something they could actually work with. And maybe the last thing I needed was for Remy or even Kyle to try to jump on this train. That would be a whole mess that I wouldn’t be able to keep clean.
