We'll Always be Here for You

Manny slid the file across the desk to me, and then stood up. "It's not called research if you know the results in advance. Someone's going to jail for this and if I have my way, in a blaze of publicity. Remember that and I will be too busy with my own enquiries to spend time looking at yours."

We shook hands. He left my office, I felt guilty placing him in this position. But I still couldn't shake the thought that if I had not been there, that scummy little jumped up security idiot would have harmed my wife. And Carla might have gone missing already.

*******

Kathy once again rose from her chair and went to close my door. "Kathy, can you come in a moment please."

I didn't look at her; she had been waiting for this conversation. She even sat across from me.

I pointed to the file. "Do you need this back or can you do this from memory?"

She smiled. "Nope, all good boss."

So for the next thirty minutes, we took Jessica Louise Merchant's life apart.

Did her time in college, finished second in her class for journalism, had some damn good grades in her other interests, computer science being one of them. Married once, husband un-known. The product of that union was of course Carla, who I suspect was being wrapped in love from my wife as we spoke about her mother.

Joined the local paper, after two years and with some really good stories she caught the attention the bigger national paper. After the breakup of her marriage, she moved to the big city. Again some good features and a few ground breaking stories, then Jessica went a little quiet. Kathy couldn't find anything in the paper from her, with regards to any news stories for close to three months, then the announcement that she was killed in a hit and run.

"Boss I need to point something out, for some of this information, I had to dig and I mean really dig to even find her. It's like she lived her life for a while then slipped off the end of the earth for months on end only to comes back into her old life. She was easier to track once she had Carla. It's just that when she was single there are these unexplained gaps in her life that I can't offer an explanation for."

It was the newspaper that paid for her funeral. It was also mostly the people at the paper that turned up for the funeral as well. She had no known living relatives and no one could find the ex-husband. Carla was handed over to social services and then to the orphanage.

The confused look came next. "Boss, Jessica led two different lives. No one at the funeral even knew she had a child. It seems the woman in the next apartment looked after Carla when Jessica went to work or had an assignment. It was the neighbor who reported her missing after she looked after Carla for almost a week, with no sign of Jessica."

She kept her private life just that, private. A couple of the staff at the paper and the neighbor looked into adopting Carla, once they realized she existed. But by then the orphanage had her and wasn't going to give her away."

Kathy then paused, she seemed a bit pensive, but she added. "There is something else and I do think you need to know this. I used the software we have in our system to remotely hack into Jessica's PC history. There was already someone in there and they came after me. I closed them down before they could get a firm hold on me. If it hadn't been for the software we have, I think we could have had a problem ourselves."

With a nod and verbally thanking her, Kathy got up and left.

I pulled my cell out and went to text, typing in the word. 'Ardent.'

Not known... 'We've been waiting for you. She was one of ours. We will discuss further when we meet. Usual place.'

My cell... 'Agreed, two hours.'

Not Known... 'Agreed. Peach will meet you.'

I then phoned my wife, she eventually answered. I smiled when I figured out why it took so long to do that. "Hey husband of mine."

"Marion, I'm working on the history of our little friend, I'm going to talk to Toby after I've finished with you, but I'm going to keep him with you two for now. She's going to need clothes, nothing fancy at the moment, natural and casual since I want you both at the cabin once you've finished shopping."

My wife paused just long enough to fully understand what I said. "Okay, to make it easier, I will get the clothes from town on the way to the cabin. I assume you want all the lights on when we get there?"

This was one of the many reason why I loved my wife so much. When we bought the cabin we had some adjustments made. A top of the range (and once we wired it into the cabin adding a few of our own modifications) security system being one of them.

"I was going to ask Toby to do that, but yes please. How are you two getting along?"

It was the pause that interested me.

"She's not into sharing at the moment. I can understand that from what you're turning up. She has her own inbuilt firewalls in place. I plan to let her dismantle them."

I finished my call to her in the usual way. "I love you."

She just couldn't resist. "After what we do in our bedroom, you had better."

I heard her giggle, when she closed her cell down.

On my call with Toby, we exchanged ideas about what to do once they made it to the cabin. He did emit an exasperated sigh when he found out he was taking two girls shopping for clothes on the way. He also mentioned the security system. One of the reasons I value Toby is that we are always on the same page.

I looked at my watch and found it was time for my meeting. Telling Kathy that I would be out for an hour or so was almost normal for us. She automatically took over everything coming into the office and distributed it, what came in to the relevant people. A few minutes later I'm standing outside the office for a moment, looking at everything and nothing. An Uber pulled up beside me, I got in.

The blue eyes sparkled in the rear view mirror. "Morning, Andy."

It was my turn to smile. "Morning, Peach."

"Does your wife know you're sharing a cab with a girl?"

She watched me smirk via the mirror. "I'm not sharing a cab with a girl. I'm sharing a cab with a peach."

Just then she pulled over to the curb. Another guy got in. "Hey, Peach."

"Morning, sir." Was her only reply.

Peach leaned slightly to the left and flipped a switch on the dashboard. The privacy glass moved up in silence.

The new guy looked at me, smiling. His hand went into his jacket and came out with a thumb-drive. "A little while ago we started hearing whispers of white girls of barely legal age being flown over to one of the sand countries. We sent Tony Enders over there to scope things out. His body floated down the river two days later."

"That event almost coincided with Jessica getting a call from one of her friends. He found something on the dark web. No sooner had he copied some of it, then it up and moved away. Her friend is on the lookout for it again and even enlisted a few of his own friends. Jessica sent the thumb-drive to us and low and behold, she was dead days later."

"Who would have outed her? Do we have a mole?"

"We're still looking into that."

The thumb-drive changed hands just as the Uber eased to a stop against the curbside. The privacy divider came down again.

"I know you want to use your own people, but I want Peach with you on this."

Peach watched the mirror and saw me roll my eyes.

"Hey, if you don't let me play, then I'm telling mom on you."

She watched me smile, then joined me. I still had to get a dig in, after all brothers and sisters have been doing stuff like this for generations. "You always were a sneak, even when we were little."

The man laughed. "Just play nice you two." He looked a little closer at me and the smile almost left his lips. "Something tells me that the daughter is the key to all this. I know you have your wife with her but spend a long weekend with them at the cabin. If nothing comes from the weekend, we will have a sit-down and work on plan B. So far this has cost us two good people, and we haven't even got a real handle on this yet. Just speculation."

One old soldier to another, he touched two fingers to his brow and stepped out. Peach drove me back to my building, then told me she would return the car and join me in an hour.

I walked back to my office via the deli on the corner. Twenty minutes later, a bag containing a Danish appeared on Kathy's desk. I told her she looked a little skinny, so I felt it my duty to fatten her up. She was still laughing when I closed my office door.

I have a rarely used PC in a corner of my office for situations like this. It's connected to a fake Internet portal and isn't in fact connected to anything. Rather, it tracks attempts to connect and IP addresses of targets. I attached the thumbdrive to this machine and after automatically checking for malware, let it play.

The drive contained several files. One was a video taken with an obviously stationary camera. The screen showed a wall and a couple of cabinets. After a few moments, a young girl appeared. She didn't look around for a camera; it was clear that she wasn't expecting one to be in the room.

Numbers appeared at the top of the screen, growing bigger as the girl walked around the room and got changed for bed. As she undressed, the numbers went nuts, and then the screen went blank. These people were being really careful. They had provided access to a group of potential bidders -- probably a large group if the numbers were accurate. The pictures of this young lady were now elsewhere on the web. I did wonder at how high the numbers might have gone, just as I wondered about the best way to shatter this sick spectacle.

I heard voices outside some minutes later. It took my sister another five minutes to find the handle to my door. She was still sharing gossip with Kathy as she closed the door.

I looked at her and then raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you don't want to work here? You seem to spend an awful lot of time here."

She smiled. I could never get enough of her smile. "Well, if my girlfriend wasn't sitting outside your office, I would only be the invisible sister that you pull out of the ether every birthday and holiday for family dinners."

This time I stared off into the distance and a smile crossed my lips. "Oh, a man can dream."

I felt the deserved slap across my upper arm. I even heard the usual threat to tell on me to our folks. Those same folks who are now happily retired and living in the sunshine states. Peach sat across from me. She even had the stones to lean back and put her feet up on the corner of my desk.

I would have broken the legs of any man that did that, but this was my sister. Peachie Genevieve Tennyson. Two years younger than me and the same person that shadowed my own career. Dad was a twenty-year man with the 101st Airborne. Retired a colonel, while I went into the Marines and my sister followed my lead two years later.

We came home on leave once, full of ourselves, more so since Peach had just made Lance Corporal. Dad must have heard us talking in her room and warned mom. Peach wanted desperately finally to get mom to explain how could she name her only daughter Peachie Genevieve?"

Mom had one of those wistful far away looks about her, then sat down at the kitchen table with us both. Looking Peach in the eye, she said, "I was hoping for a frilly giggly blonde, who wanted nothing more than to go shopping with me. Hang out, do each other's nails and read Cosmo to each other all day."

By now both my sister and I were waiting for the punchline. This was after all our mother, a woman who could even keep our father in line.

"Instead, I got a lesbian daughter who became a Lance Corporal in the Corps." She watched me smirk, fatal mistake on my part. More so when her hand went into mine and said. "I should have had you second; I was listening to Johnny Cash by then, I even started to collect his albums. Sue is a really nice name."

Peach and I looked at each other, grabbed our bags and drove back to camp like Satan was biting at our collective asses. Yep, Mom sure knew how to handle all three of us when she had a mind to. Put the school bully in front of either of us and one would hold the other's coat while we dealt with him. Mom only had to give us one of those looks and we both went and hid for a few hours.

Our own careers still kind of followed each other. I did what I decided was my time and along the way, met my wife and left the Corps. That's when I started Hartman Securities, Peach left the Corps two years after I left and even though I offered her a place in the company, she went with the FBI.

*******

I stared at my sister. "Did you look at the thumb-drive, before Jake gave it to me?"

She nodded but added. "He asked me to make it for you. The numbers are obviously a bidding war going on. But we don't know who the girl is and how this involves Jessica Merchant. We tried facial recognition, so far nothing. She's just not in any of our databases. So unless a street camera snags her, we don't know anything about her."

I nodded my head, in agreement. "Something tells me we don't have time to wait with regards to the girl on the thumb-drive. Going by the numbers on the screen, someone paid a shit load for her. That means they want her and soon."

Peach agreed with me. I picked up my phone and told Kathy to get a team together, give Toby the heads up and let him co-ordinate the team around the cabin. have a backup team on standby in case this turns into a marathon stake out. We need enough people for 24x7 coverage for perhaps as much as six weeks.

Once I put the phone down I felt like I could relax, at least a little. I had acquired the cabin via a company that just happens to have its office on Grand Cayman. No one could trace the ownership without a lot of time or government warrants. Who actually owned it wasn't going to be known overnight.

It was then my desk phone rang. Kathy was putting Toby's call through as my sister sat and listened. Toby had already kitted out the girls from the town three miles from the cabin. They also picked up necessities and food and were now camped at the cabin with the security system on.

The leader of the team that Kathy had sent out to Toby was already inbound via helicopter and had phoned Toby with an eta.

I thought it prudent to tell Toby that when all this is over, we sit down. "I owe you a bonus."

The pause was longer this time. "Probably, but the hug I got from your wife when we found the tracker was bonus enough."

I smiled, more from relief than anything. "I may have to have a chat with my wife about giving hugs to strange men."

Toby's chuckle down the phone made me smile. "I've already had that conversation with her. I believe the bruise on my arm will have gone within the week."

*******

I came up to spend the next few days with what was rapidly becoming 'my girls'. To my wife it was a quick visit to see how they were coping, I'm sure they would both see through that pathetic excuse. I found them in the kitchen, I leant against the door frame watching them. Marion was doing the washing up while Carla was stood on a chair next to her, an adult bib tied to her small body as she dried the cup that my wife had just given her.

"Can we make brownies? Mom loved to make brownies."

I smiled at what I knew was going to be Marion's answer. "I don't cook sweetie."

The look on Carla's face was priceless.

"We have a cook at the big house and when we feel like a change we go out to dinner. I can make a mean toasted sandwich of that helps."

"But not brownies?"

Marion shook her head. "I was to focused when I was in college, I wanted to own and run my own company. So my coursework took precedence over everything. When I met my husband my plans changed slightly, I now run our company alongside him and when his away on business."

Carla put the cup she had in her hand down and turned to look directly at Marion again.

"Momma had a book, can we get a book and make brownies?"

It only took a moment for my wife to realize that this was something they could indeed do together. Her smile spread to both of them and the hug between them reinforced that moment.

I took this as a bonding moment for them both and quietly backed away and out of the cabin to speak to the security team.

Marion and Carla were out when I got back, one of the security team told me they had gone for a walk.

He smiled as I looked around for Toby. "Yes sir, Toby is with them."

I made a coffee and stared out the window for a while, then went into the library to see if I could get some work done. Slipping the thumb drive into the computer I watched once again the young lady none of us knew, walk around the room. The small segment that Jessica Merchant's friend had captures had just about come to an end when the library door opened and Carla walked in, as she smiled and walked towards me I tried to click on the button to close the segment down, all that I managed to do was pause the picture.

Carla's arms wrapped around my neck and hugged me. "Thank." She paused and then let go of my neck to stand back, the confused look still within her eyes. "Why do you have a picture of Joanie's room on your screen?"

I had tried so hard not to pressure Carla, but; she clearly knew something.

This time I pointed to the screen. "Do you know that room?"

Carla nodded but she seemed confused. I was tempted to call Marion in, but I was unsure if that would slow or stop any conversation between this little girl and myself.

Carla then pointed to a small soft toy on one of the cabinets. "That's Joanie's pet rabbit. She couldn't think of a name for him other than Roger, so she calls him Rabbit."

So many questions dashed through my head, I needed to be so careful. "Carla, do you know the address that Joanie lives at?"

The confused look came to her now, fortunately Marion and Toby came looking for her and her confusion appeared to eased a little. I explained to Marion that Carla knows who lives at the room in the picture. She freaked until she looked at the screen and could only see the back wall and a couple of cabinets, the young lady wasn't in the picture. Carla's guard once again came down, more so when Marion sat on a chair next to me and sat Carla on her lap, so she could see the frozen picture on the screen more clearly.

"You're being silly now. Joanie lives with us at the Orphanage. When I went to live at the orphanage I was told that they have four rooms that Matron had built into the attic about three years before I got there. She lets some of the senior girls live there before they leave the orphanage."

What she said next nailed everything.

"Molly told me that Matron even let two of the girls stay a year longer than allowed, but they are gone now. Her brow creased once again and then said. "Come to think of it, Joanie has been there an extra year as well."

I looked pleadingly at Marion, she nodded. "I suppose since your busy talking to my husband, you don't want ice cream."

Carla's head spun round to look at my wife.

"It's okay. Toby and I will have to eat it."

I've never seen a seven-year-old leave a room as quickly as she just did.

My wife leaned over and kissed me and with the deepest Texas voice, said. "Go get em, pardner."

I had just been handed a prize from a seven-year-old, a prize so great that not even Jake Bennett's FBI people couldn't figure it out. The Matron woman had done it all under everybody's nose.

******

"You have got to be fucking kidding me?"

I smiled, I shouldn't have, but he couldn't see me so I allowed myself that moment. Then came the next ten minutes of explanation, backed up by a seven-year-olds eye witness account.

"Andy, I've got the damn blueprints of the building here in my hands, there is nothing in the attic other than free space. She got those rooms done on the quiet, which for her would have been easy to do since she runs the damn place."