Fred looked guilty, but before he answered Tiago's question, he looked at me and paused as though he was making an assessment.
"First," he said to Tiago, "you're going to explain to me how you went from poster boy for the gay single life to loved up in three-point-five seconds." He turned to me. "And you, you're going to promise me that you won't break his heart or I'm going to forget I'm an officer of the law and kick your ass so hard you're going to end up in France with no pit stops in Spain."
I held my hands up and away from Tiago who took them and wrapped them around him again.
"Don't worry, babe, I'll protect you," he said, looking at me and placing a chaste kiss on my lips.
"Ugh, another loved-up couple. Am I the only one left now?" Fred groaned.
Tiago leaned forward and put his hands on Fred's. "He's out there, Fred."
Fred looked into Tiago's eyes but then looked away. I saw regret and something else I couldn't name. Was he in love with Tiago?
I didn't have time to think about it because Fred decided to change the subject to talk about the real reason he'd stopped by.
"I'm sorry I've been missing. I know I normally tell you when I go undercover, but things happened so quickly, and I didn't have time to warn you."
"That's okay, you're here now, but you don't look well. Did anything bad happen this time?"
Fred took a moment to choose his words.
"A few years ago, when I was still new in the force, I heard of this pedophile network that had come to an end when they were reported by someone. They were running a massive underground network that provided images and videos to another organization that posted them online. They were difficult to catch because they weren't the ones with the digital print. What they didn't count on was being reported by the son of one of the top guys when he found out what his father was up to.
"When I joined the special missing children's unit, I suggested we create a safe space online where anyone can report any activity where they believe children are being abused. We made it super safe so we couldn't identify the people sending the messages. We wanted to tell the public that they could report things anonymously and we would investigate."
"Did you get a lot of fake reports?" I asked.
"We did, but we also received a few that helped us put some criminals in jail. We hoped that making this public would encourage anyone who was afraid for their safety or the safety of their loved ones to report the activity because we wouldn't know who they were.
"With advances in technology, that website became more or less obsolete. We wouldn't ever shut it down because some people may still have the link and use it, but we didn't get any new reports. That was until about a year ago. There was so little on it, I thought it was a joke, but I still replied to the message. It took two months until I had another message from the same guy using a different name.
"How do you know it was the same guy?" Tiago asked.
"I didn't at the time. It took four messages over six months for the guy to realize that I really couldn't know who he was. That's when he said he was the one sending those messages. I spent some time building his trust. Something told me that he was reporting something big, but also that he was afraid of what would happen not just to him but to others if the information came into the wrong hands.
"I've established that he has access to a number of children that have been groomed and kidnapped. In the last few weeks, I've been working with a network of special agents to coordinate the rescue. What we were missing was the location."
He paused, and my gut feeling told me he was about to pull the rug from under Tiago's feet. I tightened my hold around him and his movement to burrow farther into my chest told me he felt the same.
"I need a halfway house for the kids once they're out. The center is the ideal place because you already have support people in place, and if the press gets wind of this, the first places they'll look are the police stations and hospitals."
"Yes, of course," Tiago said. "The center is closed at the moment because we have some plumbing issues, so no one will be coming in. I'll do anything I can to help."
"There's one more thing."
"Anything."
"I convinced the guy to meet up with me so we could go through the rescue plan. I met him a week ago. Tiago. It's Afonso."
