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He glares at me, silently communicating his rejection.
My ego doesn’t like that answer. Neither do my nipples or my clit.
Speaking of those errant body parts, why do they pulse when you think about them? Is that just me, or does it happen to everyone?
Are yours twitching right now because I asked that question? I bet they are.
Focus, Mia. The girl.
“Now isn’t the time,” I offer in a steady tone, aiming to sound like I’m the one tabling our insane chemistry.
I’m nothing if not delusional.
It’s my form of self-care, and I’ll thank you to stop judging me for it. I don’t judge you for buying smutty books or maxing out your credit cards at Barnes & Noble, do I?
“Cal, before I tell you this next bit, I’d like you to reserve judgment regarding my methods for obtaining this information. Can you do that?”
Instead of agreeing, he sits there blinking rapidly and judging me. Blatantly as fuck.
“Whatever. Judge me. What else is new?”
In my periphery, he smiles, and my clit pulses three times like it’s giving him a round of applause.
After a deep breath, I rattle off what I found with more of my totally-legit-and-not-at-all-shady research. “Right, so I ran a program pillaging pertinent state and national missing persons registries. It scrubbed the data and cataloged it for me to identify patterns and similar cases. I used criteria like victim age, gender, hair color, last known location, and shit that would align with Lettie’s situation. Then I separated them down to the county level, then city.”
His face pinches tight, but he doesn’t object yet, so I keep on keeping on.
“While that was running, Imayhave taken a quick peek inside a back door of the local FBI branch server— which, by the way, was carelessly left open. While there, I searched for files pertaining to trafficking in the region so I could see where they are with these cases, who the suspects are, and which agents are assigned.”
I pause and raise my brows at him. “You following so far?”
He nods slowly, giving very little away, which isn’t a good sign where Cal is concerned. If he’s suppressing his emotions again, he’s likely unhappy or calculating something.
If he wigs out on me forthis, just wait until he learns who Lettie is and how I found out about her.
I’m so fucked.
Toggling from the photo evidence on the screen, I bring up the preliminary results of my data dig. “With the initial analysis complete, which I finished about an hour ago, I found a handful of similar cases, which led to a few suspects.”
“These cases are all unsolved.”
“And all assigned to the same FBI branch. All painfully similar to Lettie’s case. More than likely, these girls are also being trafficked by the same ring.”
“We can come back to the FBI branch— which I’m assuming is where you think the corruption is— but how did these cases help you find the suspects? Were they named in the FBI files?”
“No, that’s part of how I know they’re dirty. They should have these guys by now. I did a series of social media searches, similar to the ones I did for the night Lettie was taken, but for a handful of these open cases— all of them occurred this year and in the surrounding four counties. I was looking for the guys who took Lettie, hoping for a better photo that we could use to identify them.” My chest swells with pride. “And I found them, Cal. It’s a three-man team, not two.”
I pull up the three images side by side and let my shoulders sag in relief.
“Son of a bitch, Mia.”
His harsh tone grates my insides, making my chest sting.
Nothing left to do at this point other than finish my explanation.
“I don’t have a positive ID on these guys yet. I need to run the new photos through Tomer’s program at the office to find them on traffic cams, satellite imagery, and all the shit that requires mega processing speed. What I could do from home— comparing these images to existing internet images— hasn’t helped get an ID.”
That alone is suspicious, but I can’t deal with that yet.
