“A lot do. I do.”
She rolled her eyes and toyed with his fingers. “You’re one of the lucky few.”
“Why don’t you like it? Aside from the fact Renwick is a dick?”
She chuckled and studied his fingernails. He had great hands. Big, rugged, with nice long fingers and clean, short nails. “You make it sound as if I hate it. I don’t hate it. I just don’t love it.”
“Isn’t it similar to what you were doing before? Investigative work?”
“Sort of. But then I was investigating the bad guys. Now I’m defending them.”
“Or helping to keep the good ones free.”
She smirked and looked up at him. “True. But you’re an exception. Most of the people who come through Renwick’s doors are there because they’ve done something that needs to be defended. And most of it isn’t good.”
“So it’s the moral aspect of your job you don’t like.”
She shrugged and looked back at his hand. “I guess.”
“What about the innocent people the police put away? You didn’t have any problem with that?”
“I wasn’t involved in anything like that when I was a cop.”
“Never? Nothing you investigated was ever used to falsely accuse someone?”
She suddenly didn’t like where this conversation was heading. Letting go of his hand, she pushed back against the mattress so she could sit up in the pillows and tug the sheet up over her breasts. “What are you getting at?”
“Nothing.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”
He sighed. “I know how the police work. My brother Ethan was falsely accused of something he didn’t do and sent to juvenile detention as a kid, all because the cops needed to pin a crime on someone. You yourself told me that the mayor is putting pressure on the department to pin Strauss’s disappearance on me because he’s ticked a McClane caused his political donations to take a sharp drop. I believe in what the police do to protect the people, but I also know not every single cop is honest. If someone at PPD is covering up for the Plague, you know it too.”
An uncomfortable feeling gathered in her belly. She believed in what the police did as well, yet she also knew he was right. There was corruption in everything. And now that the blinders were off and she was aware of all the shady deals being spun behind the scenes, could she go back to that world? Would she even be able to make a difference? Or would she forever question if her investigations and reports were being twisted to fit whatever narrative someone higher up wanted them to fit?
Her cell phone buzzed again on the nightstand next to her, and happy for the distraction—even if it was Andy on the other end of the line—she grabbed it and pressed “Answer.”
“Yeah,” she said into the phone. “I’m here.”
“Jesus, Harper,” Andy exclaimed on the other end of the line. “I’ve been calling you all morning.”
“Sorry. I was”—she glanced at Rusty, watching her carefully at her side, then quickly looked away—“distracted. What do you need?”
“Nothing. Nothing for me. But I need you to get out of your house. Take a vacation. Leave the state. Go . . . anywhere. Just disappear for a while.”
She pushed away from the pillows and sat up straight. “Why? What’s going on, Andy? And don’t even think about lying to me again.”
He exhaled a long breath. “They know, Harper. They have security footage of you at that . . . that club. They know you were there when that girl disappeared. They’re coming after you.”
Harper’s breath caught. Wide-eyed, she turned toward Rusty, who, from the intense look in his eyes and the fact he was already throwing the covers back, had heard what Andy had said.
“Get out of there,” Andy said. “Disappear. Let things cool down. I’ll call you when it’s safe to come back.”
“No.” Harper pushed to her feet, reaching for her jeans as Rusty hurriedly dressed across the room. “I’ll call you from a safe location when I get there. And you better answer, Andy, because you owe me a much better explanation than this.”
He was silent a moment. “I will. I’m sorry, Harper. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”
She wasn’t sure she believed that. And realizing he knew way more about the Plague than he’d ever let on, she had no idea if she could trust him.
Thirty minutes later, Rusty wanted to swear. The best he could do was curl his hand around the steering wheel of his truck and clench his jaw so he wouldn’t freak Harper out any more than she was already.
“Slow down, would you?” Harper glanced up from her phone and shot him a look from the passenger seat. “No one’s chasing us.”
She was right. No one was chasing them . . . yet. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come after them soon. Easing his foot off the gas a touch, he turned the wheel as the road curved to the left, his mind spinning with how he was going to protect her now that the Plague knew about her. He didn’t care if they knew about him or not. All he cared about was her. She’d said she knew how to protect herself, but this was different. The Plague was different. Risking his life was one thing, but risking hers . . . that wasn’t an option for him.
“Well, here’s some good news for you.” She lowered the phone and breathed out a sigh. “Callahan just texted me. Megan Christianson was happily reunited with her family. No matter what happens, we did the right thing.”
Rusty didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on the road. Yeah, that girl making it home was definitely a good thing, but that was the only good he could see. He didn’t even know where they were heading. His brain was such mush he hadn’t formed a plan yet. After calling Abby and telling her to inform everyone not to come to work today—even the construction guys, just to be safe—he’d pushed Harper into his truck and torn off the farm. A motel seemed like the only option at this point—he didn’t want to lead the Plague to anyone in his family—but then what? What the fuck were they going to do now that the Plague knew who she was?
His cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he spotted Hunt’s number and hit the button on his steering wheel to take the call over Bluetooth. “Hunt. There you are. Thanks for calling me back.”
“I called you twice last night. You didn’t pick up or return my calls.”
Damn. He hadn’t even checked his phone last night or this morning. “Sorry. Distracted. Were you able to find anything?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Rusty glanced toward Harper, the hairs on his nape tingling, only he didn’t know why. “No, I’m not. Should I be?”
“Shit. I can’t believe you don’t remember this. CAOF—Children Are Our Future—is the charity started by Walter Kasdan, Miriam Kasdan, and their son, Arnold. The same three people who were abducting and selling small children in the Pacific Northwest. The same ones who abducted Emma.”
“Holy shit.” Connections fired off in Rusty’s brain. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of connections.
He hit the brakes and swerved off onto the gravel on the side of the country road. Beside him Harper grabbed the handhold above her seat with wide eyes as the truck came to a stop.
Rusty looked toward his phone. “I need to meet with you and Alec today. Can you call him?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
Rusty met Harper’s curious hazel eyes. “A lot more than any of us thought. I think CAOF wasn’t just selling small children to childless couples. I think they were selling older kids and teenage girls to pedophiles as well.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“I wish I were. I’m also pretty sure they were linked to a black market group called the Plague that’s selling teenage girls on the dark web.”
“Shit,” Hunt muttered. “And let me guess. Your knowledge of that is why the cops were at Hannah and Michael’s house last weekend.”
“Yeah.” Rusty held Harper’s gaze. “I want to bring them down, Hunt. All of them.”
&
nbsp; “Then get your ass over to my place ASAP, and we’ll figure out how to do that.”
An hour later, Harper still couldn’t believe what she’d heard.
Rusty had agreed to help her bring down the Plague. All without her having to do a single thing to convince him.
That fact should have thrilled Harper. Instead it set off a weird vibration in her chest. One she didn’t understand and liked even less. And considering where she was and who she was surrounded by, it was one more odd reaction she wasn’t ready for.
From her spot at the big table in Hunter O’Donnell’s high-tech apartment on the top floor of his privately owned building, she glanced warily toward the group congregated in the center of the room discussing CAOF and the Kasdans. Currently, Rusty was sitting in the middle of the giant, U-shaped couch of the living area, seated beside his sister, Kelsey, while his other siblings—Alec and Ethan—and their significant others were rallying around Rusty in a way she suspected he didn’t even realize. All were eager to help him figure out who was behind the Plague and how they could bring them down. All except her.
She was on the fringe of the discussion, feeling like a complete outsider, pretending to run searches on her laptop, all the while wishing for some air because the big-family dynamic was not something she was used to or even liked.
“Hold on,” Rusty said, lifting his hands as he leaned forward. “You’re telling me Miriam Kasdan had nothing at all to do with older missing kids?”
“No.” Raegan, Alec’s wife, met Rusty’s eyes and flipped her auburn hair over her shoulder. “We’re saying we never found any proof that she had anything to do with any children over the age of five who went missing.”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved,” Alec said from where he was perched on the armrest next to his wife, his arms tightly crossed over his chest.
Raegan reached out and laid her hand on his thigh, and Harper watched as he uncrossed his arms and closed his hand over hers, as if just her touch relaxed him. “Miriam Kasdan was working with the Department of Human Services to identify at-risk youth in the community. The older children were often sent to CAOF for services.”
“Legitimate services,” Alec cut in, “which is why the charity operated for so long under the radar.”
“Right.” Raegan nodded up at him and looked back at Rusty. “She wasn’t interested in the older kids. In her mind, the older children were lost causes. She was interested in any younger siblings. Those she could save, the same way she saved her adopted son, Arnold, from the family she took him from in Washington.”
“Took.” Alec huffed. “She kidnapped the son of a bitch. Then she twisted him up until he was as fucked in the head as she was.”
Raegan shot him a look. “Your daughter’s in the next room.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“Hopefully.”
Alec leaned down and kissed the top of Raegan’s head. “Okay. I’ll tone it down. Any talk of the Kasdans makes me see red, though.”
“I know.” She squeezed his hand.
“What about Lily?” Rusty asked. “Did you find anything in the Kasdans’ files about her?”
Alec and Raegan shared a somber look, then both met Rusty’s gaze. “No,” Raegan said. “Nothing.”
“There were no kids in those files over the age of five,” Alec told him.
“Lily was what, twelve when Jordan filed that adoption paperwork?” Ethan asked from across the room where he was standing next to his wife, Samantha, an arm around her shoulder and a somber look on his face. When Rusty nodded, he said, “That’s the age CAOF would have been providing services to.” He glanced toward the stack of files Alec had brought in, encompassing all the research Raegan had done on the Kasdans and CAOF for the book she was writing about their experience. “Instead of focusing on the Kasdans, we need to be looking at CAOF’s files on the kids they serviced.”
“We don’t have all of them,” Raegan said. “Just the ones that were linked to the younger children found in the Kasdans’ files.”
“That’s a start,” Hunter said, reaching for the top folder from where he sat on the sectional next to Rusty’s sister, Kelsey.
Harper turned back to her computer as each of Rusty’s siblings reached for a folder and everyone started going through the files. She knew why they were doing this: if they could find a link between CAOF, the Kasdans, and the Plague, they’d have something solid to take to the police. It made sense. The problem was, they still didn’t know who was running the Plague.
She and Rusty had talked about it in the car on the way over. The man who’d shot Jordan and set that fire twenty years ago had likely done it to seize control of the group. But since Rusty had never seen the man’s face and couldn’t remember his voice, that could be anyone. Up until this point, they’d dealt with low-level thugs like that asshat Mihail, who grabbed the girls and transported them to points of sale. They had no idea who was sitting at the top, and they were never going to stop the organization until they figured that part out.
She skimmed through the Kasdans’ financial holdings, which Hunter had provided her with, and compared them with those Jordan had invested in. One stood out. A research science facility in Hillsboro, outside Portland.
She opened a new window and ran a search on the facility. A website popped up.
She scanned the page, then opened another window and ran a search on the facility’s investors. Her gaze skipped over the list, stopping when she spotted a very familiar name.
Holy shit.
“Um,” she said aloud to the room. “I have a question.”
Papers shuffled at her back. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw they were all looking at her curiously, but she focused on Alec and Raegan. “Did CAOF work with homeless kids?”
Alec looked at his wife, then back at Harper. “I’m not sure. We never focused on that. Why?”
Harper glanced toward Rusty in the middle of the couch, his dark eyes already narrowed on her as if he knew what she was about to say. “Because homeless youth aren’t often reported as missing.”
“That’s true.” Ethan closed the file folder in his hands. “The statistics are pretty dismal. And Portland has a huge homeless-youth problem. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest is because the city’s become known as a place where the homeless, in general, won’t be kicked out.”
“It’s also a city with a huge sex-trafficking problem,” Rusty said in a low voice, still watching Harper. “And homeless youth are a prime target for trafficking. They go missing, and no one cares.”
Hunt turned his attention Rusty’s way. “You sound like you know that from personal experience.”
“I do.”
When he didn’t elaborate, and it was clear everyone was waiting, Harper decided enough was enough. Rusty might think he was keeping his family safe by staying silent about his extracurricular activities, but he wasn’t. Not now when they were all here helping him. And even though he’d decided long ago he didn’t need anyone to lean on in his life, one look at this room told her they’d all leaned on him in the past and that they were here because that’s what family did—they had your back even when you didn’t want them to. “He’s been rescuing as many as he can from the Plague before they can sell them. That’s why the cops were after him. They thought he was the one taking them. They didn’t know he was trying to save them.”
Alec’s eyes widened as he looked from Harper back to his brother. “She’s kidding, right?”
Rusty scowled her way and mouthed “thanks” and leaned back against the couch cushions without answering.
“You were right,” Alec said to Ethan across the room. “Just not completely right.”
Ethan turned wide eyes on Rusty. “We thought you were still trying to save Lily.”
“Lily’s dead.” Rusty didn’t meet either of his brothers’ questioning gazes, he only stared at Harper. And though part of her knew he was probably ticked she’d spilled his secret, she didn�
�t care. They deserved to know. They loved him. Didn’t he realize that when people loved you the way these people loved him, it meant they believed in you, they trusted you, they’d do anything they had to do to keep you safe?
A memory slammed into her—one of him yelling at her in that tunnel to take the girl and run, to leave him. Of that gunshot going off in the darkness. Of standing on that damp, dark sidewalk, waiting, praying for him to come out that tavern door.
The breath caught in her lungs. A rush of emotion she didn’t expect hit her from all sides, squeezing her chest. Looking quickly away from him, she turned toward her computer and focused on her screen, clenching and relaxing her fists, trying to figure out why they were suddenly damp and what the hell was wrong with her.
She didn’t want him to die either. That was it. Except . . . her heart contracted again, and this time, visions of last night flooded her mind. Of how distraught he’d looked in that cave, of the turmoil in his eyes. Of the way he’d completely melted into her after she’d made it clear she wasn’t leaving, followed by the way she’d felt utterly complete with him. Safe. As if she was finally home.
Kelsey pushed to her feet and punched Rusty in the upper arm. “You big jerk.” She dropped to the couch cushions next to him. “You could have been killed.”
Rusty wrapped his arms around her, pulled her in close, and in low voice said, “Me? Never. Too stubborn for that.”
Kelsey sniffled and whispered something Harper couldn’t hear, and she was still too rattled by her emotions to try to listen closer.
“Sorry,” Hunt said. “I still don’t see the connection. What do homeless kids being preyed on by the Plague have to do with CAOF or the Kasdans?”
Hunt’s question knocked Harper’s brain back into gear, and, blinking away the memories and weird feelings swirling inside her, she cleared her throat. “A lot, I think.” She pushed her computer to the side so they could see the news article she’d found, but she still wasn’t ready to turn and look at any of them. “This is an article about the mayor, Gabriel Rossi, and his vow to clean up the streets and rid Portland of its homeless epidemic. It was published just before the Kasdans were arrested. Look at the picture.”
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