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“He knows something about what’s going on. I started leading him through a fake theory, and he rolled his eyes at me like I was so far off base that he couldn’t be bothered to listen to me. You only do that if you know what actually happened, right? Otherwise as a police officer he would listen to what I had to say, for the investigation.”
“You’re right, that’s odd,” Yates said. He was the strategist of the group. I joked that Garcia was a nerd, but Yates was the real one. The man had studied military history like his life depended on it. He and Jasmine could have competitions on who out-nerded who in their prospective interests—which had some surprising overlap.
“So why don’t we divide into groups and canvas? We need to concentrate in the areas with the most disappearances. I’d also like to interview resort staff if we can. One of them likely knows something, or could even be working for the kidnappers. I worked at a coffee shop to get myself noticed, but what if traffickers worked there to scout tourists and have easy access to them? We might be able to pull HR files from the resort’s offices and see if anyone could be connected to this Ricketts guy,” Abby said.
“I like that plan. It’s very likely this guy has a network larger than we thought, especially since there are disappearances on other neighboring islands. It takes a lot of people to make something like this work. With more people, there’s a greater chance for a fuck-up. He could be running an operation larger than the New York one, and definitely larger than Robbie’s,” Mendez said.
“So first things first, let’s do some canvassing. Speak to the staff and see what they know,” Wells said.
“All right, everyone, couple up. Guy, do you want to remain behind and watch the computer?” Jones asked.
“Yeah, I’ll get the drone up and see what I can spot,” Guy answered.
“All right, let’s go get ready and grab the ear pieces,” Wells said.
“This is going to be an exciting honeymoon,” Christine said to him with a grin.
“You are weird if you are still calling this your honeymoon,” Yates said with a chuckle. “Most people want to fuck their spouse’s brains out and not leave their room.”
“First of all, who says that isn’t happening when you aren’t around, you perv? Second, we’ve all known from day one that I was weird, and look where it got us. I’m the vice president of an international company, and I paid for all of the expenses for this trip. Meaning that bounty hunting money we get gets divided between us without expenses eating into your profits. Shut up and be grateful, peg leg,” Christine said with a smirk and a wink. We all busted out laughing again. Yates took it like a champ and only resulted in sticking his tongue out at her. It was impossible to be mad at Christine; she was the group’s sweetheart.
“Are you done eating?” I asked Abby. I looked down at her plate, and it looked like she had only taken a few bites of it. I could see where she pushed the food around on her plate.
“Yeah, I’m done. I lost my appetite,” she said with a shrug and then picked up the tray and dumped the food in the trash.
“We can get something to eat if you get hungry again while we’re out. I think it goes without saying that you’re my partner,” I told her as I nudged her arm with mine.
“Good, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she said with a small, reassuring smile. She tucked her hair behind her ear and then looked away.
“Me neither,” I said as I grabbed her hand and gave it a light squeeze. She smiled again and squeezed back. All of the drama from last night and this morning was behind us.
I couldn’t wait to see Abby in action.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
abby
“Anything yet?” Christine asked through the radio.
“Nothing of interest,” Garcia answered back for his team.
“We may have something,” I said. I watched as the sniffling housekeeper walked down the hallway. My heart ached for her.
“Oh yeah, and what’s that?” Yates asked. I could tell he was smirking as he said it, and I wondered what for.
“We ran into a housekeeper who seemed a little distraught. Abby asked her if she was okay, and the woman burst into tears. Her daughter recently started working at the resort and went missing two nights ago,” Adam said.
“Oh, that is something,” Jasmine replied with concern. “Does she have any info for us?”
“No, she mentioned that her daughter was going to quit, but she went missing before she could. A manager was harassing her, and she didn’t like the advances,” I added.
“Any chance she name-dropped the manager?” Guy asked.
“No, she wasn’t sure which manager. This was the last conversation she had with her daughter, and it wasn’t a long one. Guy, any chance you can try to hack the employee records and figure out a list of managers? See if you can track time cards and find which managers she would have worked with. The resort is massive, so I’m sure there might be quite a few managers,” I suggested.
“I’ll see what I can find,” he answered. “I’ll also see if I can find a new missing persons report and add her to the map.”
“Perfect. In the meantime, I wonder if we can do more research on the local missing persons to see if any of them have shared connections. Maybe they all live in a neighborhood or certain part of the island,” Jasmine suggested.
