Page 20 of Preying Heart
Glock does his nightly rounds and appears on camera in several places. He has an electronically accessible doggie door that recognizes his face and lets him in and out.
After fixing sandwiches for us, I go back to my computer and continue with my perusal. Glock scarfs down his dog food and settles at my feet, yawning, and falls asleep. Must be nice not to be haunted by the things he saw and did during the war.
Images of the many victims I rescued superimpose themselves over the security videos as I view and delete, view and delete. I’d find them tied up inside of containers, abandoned in bunkers, smuggled across borders, and holed up in the stash houses. Women, men, boys, and girls, even infants. Many without identities; others forgetting who they were or too ashamed to go back to their families. I did the rescuing and turning them over to law enforcement and their army of social workers. That was the easy part. I didn’t have to live with their nightmares, follow up with their traumas, or deal with the effects of their broken lives.
Of course, I never knew the ending of their stories or the depths of their struggles. How many of them went back to their captors? Or ended up on the streets again, addicted to drugs and haunted by their ordeal? How many stopped caring and took their own lives? I prefer to believe they all went on to live happy and productive lives.
But the odds are against them.
Especially the children.
I wonder if Remi believed me. She’d simply nodded and accepted my confession. That I’m in hiding because pissing off human trafficking organizations makes enemies in high places. I’m betting she’s tangentially aware of what her foster parents do—running an organization that on the surface raises money for the rescue of trafficking victims. I’ve had more than a look at their donor list, and I’ve seen the same men and women on grainy videos uploaded to the dark web—a place where secrets are bought and sold—where power is wielded.
The Greasleys are only a front, and so are Brian and Melissa Bowers, the public face of OgleNet—the world’s largest digital stash of data cataloging and indexing the activities of every person, entity, organization, location, and event on the internet.
What I haven’t figured out is who’s trying to take who down? On the surface, Congressman Greasley portrays himself as a folk hero fighting for data privacy and individual rights on the internet. He heads a committee to regulate the big social media companies: rules to delete personally identifiable data, to outlaw the use of facial recognition software, and to scramble faces on videos taken without the knowledge of the participants.
But how can anyone control what they don’t know exists?
I’m betting OgleNet has plenty on Gavin Greasley, and now that I know he’s sexually involved with his younger foster sister, I’m pretty confident whoever is behind OgleNet knows it too.
Greasley is a potential puppet to be controlled, and the fact that he’s on the rise politically—a young, photogenic go-getter from a philanthropic family who made their billions from buying and selling carbon credits—why, it doesn’t get any better than a quick promotion to the White House as soon as he turns thirty-five, and voila, you’ve bought yourself a president.
Which makes the safety of Remi Bruckner and her baby a matter of national security. The sooner I figure out who’s dangling a million bucks to find her, the better.
Friend or foe? Or third-party running interference? No matter what, whoever holds the bombshell evidence holds the keys to the kingdom.
The shower stops running, and I brace myself for what I must do.
I know she’s beyond exhausted. She wants to sleep and to recover, but I need her to help me identify the person who commissioned me. I’ve a feeling she wishes it’s Gavin or her brother. Someone she knows, even if she doesn’t fully trust him.
The devil you know theory.
I finish deleting the videos and close the security monitoring window.
The whiskey burns its way down my throat and roils my stomach. I finish one of the roast beef sandwiches without interference from Glock. He’s too well trained to beg. Instead, he walks away to the kitchen and slurps at his water dish where he knows I’ll give him a biscuit. I’m sure he disdains those undisciplined dogs who slobber at their master’s table, licking their chops and begging for scraps.
Sometimes I wonder if Glock is a dog or a well-oiled robot. He is a veteran and was supposed to retire with his handler, but my buddy passed him on to me—couldn’t take the flashbacks having Glock around induced.
Remi emerges from the bathroom wearing a pair of sweatpants too large for her and one of my T-shirts. She wraps the towel around her head and blinks at me like a cornered animal. She doesn’t question me when I motion for her to take a seat next to my computer desk. Glock sniffs her and wags his tail, then slumps back on the rug and groans like he’s bored.
“I’m sure you’re curious who’s offering me the million bucks.” I turn my rolling chair toward her.
She nods, wide-eyed and wary.
“Take a look.” I hand her a folder with the envelope with her glossy photo and details. “This is what he sent. After you’ve looked through it all, I’ll play the recording of our phone call.”
“I don’t recognize the handwriting. It looks rather rough.” Her hands shake as she takes the glossy photo from the envelope. “This is me. Several years ago.”
“You went into modeling?”
“Tried out for it, but it was too scammy. They wanted money for this, favors for that. Mrs. Greasley thought it’d make their foundation look good to have a younger face represent their project.”
“Operation Persephone. You know what their charter is.”
“They fund people like you who rescue human trafficking victims. I’ve been to their fundraisers. It’s all legit. Sometimes they have a rescued victim give a speech or sit at the head table with us.”
“So someone from Operation Persephone could have easily gotten ahold of this picture?”
