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I get where he’s coming from. But I think we’re just going to keep going in circles because while he can use his trained brain to keep himself from thinking about what’s happening to those kids so he can gather all the facts, I’ve found enough facts to eliminate the fuckers and I can’t stop myself from thinking about them. I don’t get to turn off my brain and detach from it so easily because the experiences are embedded within me.
Instead of carrying on the conversation any longer, all I can keep thinking to myself, despite all that he’s said is,yeah but we could’ve still saved those kids tonight and we didn’t.
Chapter 23
Calder
ChapterTwenty-Three
Calder
I’ve been going crazy sitting here all alone with my thoughts. My foot has been tapping madly, waiting for someone to get home so I can release this information and figure out a solution. I practically leap for joy when I hear the door being opened but the look of sadness and anger on Julissa’s face pauses me, especially as she slams the door, making my already nervous response heightened. She storms past me, not in the mood to talk and I’m conflicted. Soon after the door flings open again and Mikhail’s nose is bleeding and he has a fucking black eye. What the fuck happened with them? He doesn’t seem to see me either.
They begin arguing and I’m already struggling for impossible peace within my mind, I can’t help but pace back and forth. Coincidentally, however, they’re talking about rescuing kids and how much of a coward Mikhail is, how he was willing to walk away and leave them there with their captor, while they might be getting hurt. And guilt consumes me, knowing that I sat in front of my computer screen watching transactions take place before my eyes and did nothing. I drove past the building, knowing what was happening to babies inside, and was too coward to do anything and now here I am back home, still haven’t said anything.
I don’t want to interrupt them because I can tell Julissa is incredibly hurt, emotionally and Mikhail’s been attacked by someone but I need to tell them soon. I decide to wait until the tension dies down but I can’t just sit still and wait. I feel like everything in my body has turned to mush; all my organs, my bones, every little fragment has been blended with my blood, turning it to slush that’s just on fire, bubbling up from my toes upward and upward until it’s just going to burst out of my mouth, my nose, my ears, every tiny pore in my body and I have to move to shake it up and prevent it from boiling over as I try to convince myself that I’m not a horrible person for being so fucking terrified of this new information. I’m walking around, back and forth, trying to get it to settle down. I’m so consumed with that, that I begin to drown out Julissa and Mikhail. Instead, I’m being deafened by guilt.
I’m just waiting for a moment to say something, that’s all. I need to wait until things have calmed down a little before I unleash something like this on them. On maybe just Julissa, since going by their conversation, I’m thinking if I actually want to find a solution, telling Julissa would be my best bet. I’m not really in the mood to wait any longer to do something and I feel like this would be way too much for Mikhail to handle and then it would probably stall us. So yeah, I’ll tell Julissa but I also know that it’s going to be a lot for her to handle as well. This isn’t easy information to hear from someone. But at least with her, we both know what it feels like to be sexually abused as children so I’ll feel a lot better telling her, knowing she won’t sit on the information for long. And maybe telling her will help me sort out what to do next.
I don’t wait long after they’ve calmed down to pull Julissa aside.
“You alright Calder?” she asks me, the lines in her forehead folding up as she looks at me. She is still highly bothered, I can tell but I know that this is something she’d want to know.
“No, not really,” I admit.
We take a walk to my room and I close the door because I don’t want Mikhail to walk in and overhear what I’m about to say. We sit down on my bed and sickness builds up inside of me. Julissa turns her body to face me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “What’s up, Cal?” she pushes.
“Oh God.” I exhale, turning my head up to the ceiling, afraid that if I keep it down, I’m going to throw up again. “Brace yourself for what I’m about to tell you,” I warn her.
She’s nervous now, I notice her foot, hanging off the bed, starting to shake. “Fucking say it, Calder. What is it? What happened?” she asks.
I decide to just go for it. “I found out…” I pause, swallow and take a deep quick breath. “I found out that a foster home is trafficking kids here,” I start, failing to mention just yet that some of these kids arebabi… oh god, babiesbecause I can’t bring myself to say it.
Her eyes widen and her shoulders shoot up straight. “What the fuck? Where? Who? How? When?!” she screams.
“Shhh,” I say, “I don’t want Mikhail to know because I actually want to find a solution to this.”
“Right.” She nods, lowering her tone.
“A client came in today, Robert Delaney. He asked me to fix his system and I hacked it. I’ve been doing that lately, I can’t help myself but I haven’t come across anything too suspicious with any of my clients. I wasn’t expecting to come across this.” My eyes well up and my voice scratches.
I clear my throat and force back the tears because this isn’t about me. “I start digging around and I see an email that…” I begin to stutter. “…that nearly killed me. I don’t know how to say this.” I gasp. She starts to dig her nails into her skin, drawing blood.
I have to say it now, I don’t have a choice. My voice shakes. “The email was a transaction between The Delaney’s Home for Abandoned Children and a buyer for a…” I shudder and my voice comes out in a cry, one I can’t control as tears stream down my face. “A baby, Julissa. A newborn baby,” I whisper.
She swallows aloud and she becomes pale. In a few seconds, she jumps up from my bed and makes a run for my adjoined bathroom. As she throws up violently, I get up and make my way to my window, needing to stand and needing some fresh air so that I don’t throw up again as well. My body shakes as I brace myself with two arms on the wall framing the window, needing it to hold me up and I bawl for those babies. Those babies that I left behind. Those babies, I don’t know how to help, or else I would’ve helped them already. I feel the intense urge to bang my head against the hardness of the wall when I hear Julissa come up behind me, making me jump. I turn around to see her. She’s also crying and she’s even paler than when she ran into that bathroom. She sniffles.
“I’m going to need you to do something for me,” she says.
And I jump at the opportunity, willing to do whatever she asks if it means we can solve this. “Anything,” I say.
“Do you need to go back to the office to log back into his system?” she asks me.
And I give a swift shake of my head. “No, I downloaded everything to my hard drive,” I say, walking over to my laptop to pick it up. “What do you want me to do?” I ask as I open it up, turning it on and connecting my external hard drive.
“I need to know if my father is involved in this too,” she says with a grimace.
My heart thumps with a vicious beat. “Is that where you were?”
