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I cup his face, hoping to ease some of his tension. “Logan, it’s fine. Whatever you need from me.”
“I need you to stand down. I know you want to be involved, but Vincent’s a wild card.” He takes his hand and covers mine. “This won’t be like the other times, Addy. Shit’s gonna get ugly. Vincent Leoni isn’t who he is because he plays fair. If I can find an out, you’re not coming. I can’t worry about you and do my job. When he starts laying out demands, I need you to convince Vincent you’re not feeling well. Promise me you’ll get in my car and leave?”
“What if I can’t convince—”
“You can. You seem to have a way about you that makes men crumble at your feet. I have no doubt you got this.”
I smile, enjoying his compliment, but then catch myself being thrown off course. “Hey! You’re trying to sweet-talk me out of the action.”
“Damn right I am. Promise me.”
No fun. “Fine, I promise.” He kisses me quickly.
“You’ll fake sick and take my car home. Call Agent Bishop the second you pull out of here and have him take you somewhere safe, so I know you’re okay.”
“And when will you be back?”
“That, I don’t know. Depends on how this goes down. Could take hours. Then I have to go in and do a shit ton of paperwork. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can.”
“And how will I know you’re okay?” That cocky smile does me in. “Okay. I get it. You’re badass and unstoppable. If you won’t let me in on the action, let me help in other ways.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“Where’s my laptop?”
“Addy, I told you, you’re not—”
“Yeah, yeah. Not writing the story. Got it. You may be the muscles of the operation, but I’m the brains. Kind of. Give me those files, and let me do my research. You’re trained to fight bad guys—I’m trained to search in places someone may never think of for information.”
He stares at me, weighing his options. Knowing there’s no harm in a little investigative work, he nods, goes into his closet, and retrieves my laptop, phone, and recorder.
“No funny business, you hear me?”
I put my three fingers up. “Scout’s honor.” He hands me my things, and I get to work, spreading the papers across his bed.
“So, what’s your plan?”
“To decipher everything on these papers.”
“Addy, that could take weeks. We don’t have that.”
“For you, maybe.”
I start with the man on the profile. Victor Norfolk. As I suspect, nothing comes up. First thing you learn in journalism is never to take anything at face value. I start hammering keywords related to his name into my search engine. An hour later, I get a ping.
“Logan!” I call for him, and he rushes back into the bedroom.
“You get something?”
“Victor Norfolk is supposed to be Vincent’s contact, right? The one you’re supposed to meet tonight?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Hear me out. I knew nothing would ping when I did a search, but when I dug deeper, this is what I found. I don’t think Victor Norfolk is an actual person. It’s a decoy for a company and location.” I point to an open browser. “Look at this. Victor Transportation, Inc. It’s a transport company out of Chicago.”
“Okay, but that can just be a coincidence.”
“Is this?” I pull up another browser. “Norfolk Southern. It’s a train line. Their services specialize in ocean containers—and look.” I shuffle through the papers until I pull out the sheet with the Calumet Harbor information. “We assumed Vincent had his shipments coming through Calumet Harbor, but only Calumet is highlighted. Norfolk is out of Calumet. I didn’t think anything of it, but now, they were never coming through his waterways. I think he has them coming by freight train.”
Logan leans in, inspecting the screen. “Fuck.”
“I’m not done. I also did some digging on these barcodes, and they are definitely for individual people. A few years back, a popular company was rumored to be trafficking girls through their online retail site. The theory was they were selling girls under the guise of home goods. The names listed had specific keywords indicating what they were buying. Enter in a promo code under a professional account holder, and voila—get yourself a trafficked girl.”
“Yeah, I remember that. We had a shit ton of missing girls pop up in Ohio when I was working their crimes unit.”
“Yeah. Anywho, it goes on and on. Dimensions and weight of the product were really the descriptions of the girls for sale. I don’t think this is any different. So, I started entering the codes. The thing is, I realized they were missing dashes separating the numbers. It took me some time but put those dashes in the right places, and this came up.”
Logan leans in further. “What am I looking at?”
