River blinked, and then nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “I’m fine,” she assured them. “I just… I can’t stop thinking about those poor women who went missing. It could have been me, if Cade hadn’t been there to find me.”
“But it wasn’t you,” Sarah reminded her. “You’re okay. You’re safe here.”
“I know.” River sighed, kicking at a loose rock on the ground as they walked. “But—but so many of those women weren’t. It doesn’t feel fair, you know?”
They reached Sarah’s cabin, and she paused, looking at River with a concerned furrow in her brow. She could tell when her friend was struggling, and it was obvious from the look on her face that she was having a hard time holding herself together right now.
“Xavier said he’s going to look into it,” Hannah reminded her. “If there is anything going on out there, we’ll know about it soon enough. And then we can handle it. Right?”
“Right,” River agreed, though she sounded far from sure about it. Sarah unlocked the door to her cabin, but before she stepped inside, she felt a cold shiver run along her spine.
She wasn’t sure what it was, but all this talk of what had been happening with those missing women had her feeling out of sorts. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was that was going through her head right now, but she knew she didn’t like it.
And she knew, all too clearly, that it reminded her of what she had felt when she had been sitting opposite Jed in those therapy meetings. And look at how that had ended.
“Anyway, you should get some rest,” Hannah told her, leaning over to give her a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” Sarah returned, trying to match Hannah’s bright smile. She didn’t want to be a downer, and shedidn’t want it getting back to Xavier or Lawson that she seemed twisted up about anything, either.
Or else they were going to make her take that break that she wanted to avoid more than anything in the world. And the thought of giving up—or even taking a break from—her work, the one thing that was keeping her distracted right now, was more than she could bear.
Chapter Five
Lawson sat opposite Lainey in Reed’s Café, as she clung to a cup of cinnamon-scented decaf coffee like it was a buoy in the middle of a stormy sea. Her gaze darted left and right, and Lawson eyed her with sympathy.
“Nobody’s going to come looking for you here,” he assured her. “You have nothing to worry about. Okay?”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” she admitted, shaking her head and chewing her lip.
“You trust me, right?” he pointed out. “That’s why you came here in the first place. So, talk to me, Lainey. Tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed deeply, and he could tell it came from some place deep down in her soul. She was clearly carrying the weight of something enormous on her back, and she was struggling to keep herself upright underneath it.
“I trust you,” she admitted. “I just… I’ve kept all of this under wraps for so long, or at least, I’ve tried to. I’m not used to talking about it.”
“You called me, remember. Talking about it is the only way we’re going to be able to help you,” he told her gently. “You’ve got to tell me what you’re running from.”
She nodded, taking a sip of her coffee. He couldn’t help but notice that her hands were shaking. Damn, he had seen her handle a whole lot when they had been working at the agency together, so for something to spook her this badly, it had to be big.
“I came across something strange on one of the recent accounts I was responsible for running a financial analysis on,” she explained. “I kept running across this one particular name and the name kept popping up in some unusual places. He wasn’t connected to the accounts I was working on, but somehow, he seemed to be paying in and withdrawing from one of the connected accounts, then different kinds of accounts branching out from it.”
Lainey took a deep breath before continuing and Lawson sat back and crossed his arms as he processed her words.
“I know it wasn’t part of my job, but I started following the different trails and some dead-ended but others continued to branch off into other accounts owned by him or shell companies disguised as legitimate businesses. The man was apparently running several different schemes and had his hands in a lot of illegal stuff—everything bad you could think of, and probably more.”
“Were you able to find a name? Or a main account where all the funds were flowing through?”
Lainey glanced at him again and lowered her voice even more. “I couldn’t find them all, but I found some. And the man’s name is Victor. Victor Granger. He’s the head of a big crime ring and runs pretty much everything you can imagine. Drugs, weapons and…trafficking, Lawson. He has all these young women and even girls working for him. He’s brutal and sadistic in his punishments and revenge.”
His eyes widened and tension ran through his entire body. It didn’t surprise him that she had caught on to something like that.
She had always been smart and observant, and able to spot when something was off. She was the last person he’d want looking into him if he was trying to pull off crimes of the magnitude she was describing.
“So what did you do?” he asked, leaning forward with interest.
“I collected everything I’d found and took it to the higher-ups,” she explained. “Presented a case. Told them that we needed to put together an operation to bring him down before he did any more damage than he already had, or hurt any more people. I even offered to organize and lead the operation if they wanted me to.”
“And what did they say?”