Page 59 of Kyle

I’d had enough of his attitude.

“No one will touch you again,” he vowed.

I didn’t get a chance to answer. The screen filled with a very pretty young girl. Glossy blonde hair and dead blue eyes.

“Monica Chandler,” Zane started. “Born Monica Tremblay. She’s twenty-three now. Monica disappeared from Ontario, Canada, when she was thirteen.”

I couldn’t pull my gaze from her eyes. The poor girl looked lost and defeated. She was smiling in the picture, perfect straight white teeth, flawless skin, but her eyes—dull and dead.

“What’s that on her wrist?” someone asked and Zane zoomed in on her hands.

A hint of a black tattoo peeked out on the side of her inner wrist.

“A QR code,” I answered.

“Come again?” the man asked. I really wished they had name tags on. I thought his name was Jaxon but I wasn’t sure.

“Welcome to the technological age of prostitution,” I told him. “I’ve seen it before. Pimps brand their stables with QR codes or regular bar codes. A john scans the code and pays with Bitcoin or any other type of cyber currency.”

“No shit?”

“No cash exchanges hands. If a girl is nabbed, the pimp doesn’t lose that night’s take. Also makes it difficult for the prostitutes to run away. They never have cash in hand.”

“Fuck me,” Zane growled. “If I have the man who has her scan the code Tex and Garrett can track the account.”

“No. If she’s gone from the stable the QR code will be a dead link,” I told him. “We’ve tried that when I was with NCMEC. We rescued one girl and tried to scan her code within the first hour we had her and the link had already been disabled.”

“You have a man sitting on a sex trafficking victim?” Emerson gasped. “Zane! She’ll be scared out of her head.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re still eliminating her as an accomplice,” he shot back.

“No way. She’s a victim. Look at her eyes,” Emerson demanded.

“I agree.” I looked at Emerson then back to Zane. “You can fake a smile, but the eyes? They tell the story. She’s lost and defeated. She’s given up. And don’t mistake willing accomplice with being forced to do something against your will. Most prostitutes are sent out to recruit. And they do it because the alternative is so devastating, they don’t fight it. I’ve interviewed girls who’ve told me that recruiting is worse than the sexual assaults they experience every day. They’ve told me, that was when their soul died, when they had to lie and bring an innocent girl into the life knowing what was going to happen to her.”

“She’s not talking,” Zane stated. “You think you two could get her to turn?”

Before I could speak, Kyle and Thad simultaneously barked a very loud hell no.

Zane sat back in his chair and rubbed his palms over his face.

“Just once I’d like my team to think with their heads and not their dicks,” he muttered.

“My woman was kidnapped a few weeks ago and held in a goddamn shipping container,” Thad seethed. “You think she needs to be around a victim so all that shit can bubble back up?”

Kyle had told me one of his teammate’s wives had been kidnapped, but now seeing Emerson, I couldn’t believe it. She looked normal. At ease. Happy. How was that possible?

“Long story,” she mouthed. “Tell you later.”

She didn’t look all that upset about her abduction being talked about and I was envious of her strength.

“And mine was pulled off a boat forty-eight fucking hours ago,” Kyle barked. “No fucking way.”

Mine. Warmth spread over me at Kyle’s outburst. He was trying to protect me and damn if that didn’t feel good. But I still wanted to do it.

“I want to do it,” I told Kyle.

“Me, too,” Emerson added. “She’d not going to talk to a man. She needs someone who can relate to her. Anaya and I know the ins and outs of—”