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“Oh, sorry,” I mutter, moving aside so that I’m no longer in his way. He rushes past me without acknowledging my apology. His eyes are focused, frantic. I’ve never given him a second thought before but with the seriousness plastered on his face while he storms out, he certainly grabs my attention now. He looks around and then starts walking toward the parked car across the street, looking behind him constantly, in the direction of the young woman that just left.
Holy fuck, that’s her pimp!
I look between him and this damned fucking restaurant, not wanting to draw attention to myself. Once a-fucking-gain. I hate this stupid fucking situation we’re in. I’m tempted to rush through the door and say ‘fuck it’ to Anne on the way out to trail them but I fucking grit my teeth like a fucking coward and storm back inside, hoping that the money I gave her was enough, grabbing for my phone and beginning to write a text to send to the girl. What do I say? What do I do? Fuck.
“Katie! I’m not going to tell you again. Put that dang phone away, customers are waiting! I’m beginning to think you don’t want this job and I’m gonna have to start looking for a new waitress!” Anne yells.
I swear I’m going to stab this fucking woman in her eye with a butter knife. I type the message.
I just saw your pimp. He doesn’t look pleased. He’s about to catch up to you. Hide out quickly and give him the money I gave you when you finally see him later. I don’t want you to get hurt, please. And delete this message.
I march over to a customer’s table to take their order, ignoring their complaints about my service because the only thing that’s on my mind is that I hope she sees the message in time and deletes it before he checks her phone and sees it, I hope the money I gave her was enough to meet her quota and I hope the fuck she’s safe.
I look up at the clock and my shift is almost over. Fuck. Damn it. I might not be able to do much for the girl…oh fuck that shit. I know who I am. Who am I kidding? Of course, there’s a lot I can do for that kid, I’m just choosing not to because of this fucking commitment to a lie. So let me fix that. While I’ve CHOSEN like a fucking little bitch not to do more to help that young lady, I still have my appointment with Mikhail at the end of my shift to figure out the deal with old daddy dearest.
Chapter 18
Calder
RobertDelaneyof“Delaney’sHome for Abandoned Kids” just left my office after asking me to help him get his crashed system up and running again. He’s a pretty big deal. I guess he chose me because not only am I great at what I do, I charge less than everybody else because I don’t need the money, do I? I just need a front. Well, they don’t know that. But I guess he heard of me and who doesn’t want to save a bit of money here and there.
He is friendly and good-looking for a man in his early fifties, I guess. His reputation for caring for children makes him a treasured member of the community. And maybe it’s that fact, that particular link that is making it that much harder for me to keep my promise to stop hacking my new clients. I just can’t help myself. I just have to know if he is as good and kind as he appears to be.
First, I work on fixing his crashed system so that I can deliver it to him by the deadline tomorrow because it’s a quick enough fix. Next, I copy all his data onto an external hard drive that will be an exact copy of his entire company, everything that’s stored electronically. Then, I take a break, get myself some lunch, and get back to my desk where I sip on my coffee and install malware on his system, giving me complete access to everything every employee does on the company’s computers from here on out.
I should have probably stopped myself from installing the malware but what the fuck, I committed and that’s that. Now that I’ve managed to get the system up and running, I have information on key-logged strokes from every employee. One of those employees just logged into their email and I put my coffee down, waiting on the edge of my seat to see what kind of an email they’re currently sending. I’m seeing the email as it is being typed so I’m reading along with each word.
My ears start to ring and my head starts to pound when I read the words,Asian baby, male, sold, ready to be picked up.I blink a few times believing that I must be imagining things. Did I read that correctly? Maybe that’s just how they talk about adoption. Does it sound as transactional as this? I can’t believe my eyes and I can’t stop myself from trying to find out more. I need to see more emails this person has sent. I check their sent messages and their inboxes and the numbers of emails like these that exist is horrifying.White baby, female, two weeks old, purchased by “…” was delivered yesterday in Los Angeles. Black baby, male, newborn, sold and delivered to “…” in Spain.
The emails carry on and on and on. What the fuck is this place? This isn’t adoption. They’re selling babies, across the United States, across countries, to who?!
I type in the names of the buyers into a server, wondering if these babies are being sold to couples who are having trouble conceiving. I run their background information and the number of convicted felons, charged with horrendous crimes that pop up has me rushing to my office bathroom and throwing up violently. This can’t be happening. Babies? I can’t fucking believe this. This is fucking trafficking. I copy the names of all the buyers and put them in a file for later.
The big question is, is this happening behind Robert Delaney, the town’s “Saint’s” back? Or is he involved? He hasn’t logged into his email so I haven’t seen that screen pop up notifying me but that’s okay. I can go to the access point, the center of the company, his main computer. I run his email address into a website that stores breached data and voila, I’ve gotten his computer password. Now that I’m in, the malware that I installed onto the whole system allows me to worm my way into every single app, document, website information on his computer, things he uses regularly, and things he barely checks. And I find a folder called “Local clients.”
When I open the folder, I sit there speechless for a good fifteen minutes. I’m frozen and it’s like my brain just went dead for those few minutes. There are so many people within this small town that seems quiet and innocent who are fucking selling their damned babies to this man. This is a fucking national and international trafficking ring. Of babies.
Tears I can’t fight well up in my eyes and I feel like slowly but surely, the life is being sucked from my body as I sit on this chair and I’m dying. I can’t move my body because it’s too heavy. I can’t breathe because my chest is too constricted.
What–? How did we find ourselves here again? And what do I do with this information? I can’t just keep it and do nothing with it? Are the cops here as bad as they were in Vegas too?
In desperate need to find a solution, I pull up information on the local police department, copying the names of the officers I can find and entering them into Delaney’s company’s system in the bar that saysSearch all files. I’m led to a bunch of accounting documents that Robert Delaney has signed off on. Hundreds of thousands of dollars paid off to the local police departments and wait, it doesn’t stop there. He’s paid off schools and hospitals. He’s even paid off the mayor. Everyone’s eating from this man’s pockets. Pockets he filled with money he got in exchange for the lives of children.
He’s paid off border officials which allows him to move them between states and countries. His company works closely with every transportation service, including the airports. And this man earns billions of dollars which means that this foster care agency isn’t his only hub and he’s been doing this for years, selling who knows how many fucking babies within that time.
I break down at the thought that at this very moment, babies are being sold right in front of my eyes as they log the fucking “transactions” and I feel utterly helpless.
Listen, I know Mikhail isn’t going to want to hear this, and if I tell Julissa, she’s going to fumigate this town which means we’re screwed but I can’t just sit on this information. I can’t handle knowing this all on my own. Unless I want this newfound knowledge to fucking kill me because I’m fucking useless in this situation, especially if we want to survive. But I can’t try to protect my life at the risk of ignoring the lives of others. This needs to be stopped. This is Las Vegas 2.0. And I wasn’t ready for it.
What the fucking hell is wrong with people? I can’t bear the thought of what they could want with fucking babies. Babies man. And all the other kids at this agency who don’t have a voice, who can’t just up and leave because they’re dependent on these adults for survival; these adults who are abusing them are their only source of shelter and food. Children who don’t get a right to be autonomous so must depend on an adult for permission to do anything.
They’re completely left out and forgotten because no one gives a fuck about them enough to stop this. How can this keep going on for years? Most of the town is fucking involved and the others who aren’t involved directly can’t be fucking oblivious. Is it learned helplessness that has caused them to turn a blind eye? Is that what could happen to me because I just want a quiet and normal life? Because I don’t want to continue adding more trauma to my already piling list?
I’m beginning to believe that a quiet life doesn’t exist unless you decide not to speak up or do anything about the debris of life falling around you and normal has become this, something ugly, nasty, too fucked up for words.
I try to put back all the broken pieces of my mind together just so that I can muster up the strength to get up from my seat, find somewhere in my brain to store this information without me collapsing from the weight of it on my heart and start to prepare myself to go home.
I don’t think I’ve blinked since I looked at that computer and I’m about to just get up and walk out the door, like a zombie. It’s as if I could just start walking out that door and never stop, walking until my feet bleed or until I die because this information has just destroyed me.
