“You’re kidding.” Creed scooted closer. Baron and Maddox did the same.
“Refresh my memory on this,” Baron said.
Logan sat forward. “You mean there is actually some intel out there that the all-knowing Baron isn’t privy to?”
“I’ve been … busy.” Baron’s goofy smile told Jace just whator whohe’d been busy with: Nessa.
“Anyway,” Jace said, bringing them back on topic. “The trafficking site targets low-list celebs in the US.”
“Low-list?” Baron asked.
“Yeah,” Creed said. “Like Olympic hopeful, Tammy Brinkman. Low-listers have a modest following.” He broke into that cocky grin of his. “Unlike superstars like Kiera and me.”
“Exactly,” Jace said with an eye-roll. “Basically, there’s a page where visitors leave comments about the low-lister they’d like to … spend time with, if they had their choice. The site makes it look like it’s just some sort of wish list, I guess you’d say.
“Your average visitor might assume it ends there, but the site is layered.” At the mere mention of those layers, another pounding weight sank hard into his chest. Jace had endured an in-depth training course on the site, exposing him to unthinkable corners of the criminal mind. Criminals he was desperate to snuff out.
“So there’s probably hundreds of names coming up on that site,” Maddox said. “How do you know when they’re targeting one specific person?”
“Thousandsof names, actually. But it seems like the host of the site starts to … steer traffic toward certain women over other ones, like they think they’d be easier to obtain or a lower risk maybe. Possibly a higher demand. It could be as simple as having feet on the ground in that area; someone they trust who has access to her. We’re not sure exactly what factors into it, but at some point, they start taking bids on certain people. That takes place in a hidden layer within the site, of course.”
“So have Logan hack in and take these clowns down. He’s the magician, right?”
“Sutton already put me to work with the cyber team,” Logan said. He went on to explain just what made this site particularly hard to crack. Layers of veiled links, encrypted codes, and ghost IP addresses. “It makes it difficult to say the least,” Logan said, “but not impossible. We’ll get there.”
“So are the bidders already connected to this trafficking ring if they’re getting into the site?” Maddox asked.
Jace tipped his head. “Trustedby them, at any rate. We’ve got sellers and buyers, basically. People who’ve gained access to that layer are the buyers.” He hated talking plainly about a topic so disgusting but he was trying to move past the shock of it all. Now Jace was on a mission to destroy; that required a different mindset.
Maddox’s face fell flat. “Man,” he said, “can’t believe people are being treated like … meat, and on our own soil. It’s a sobering thought.”
“Yeah.” Logan sat up to join the huddle, then dug his feet into the sand. “That’s why it’s so creepy that anyone we know would even wind up on that list.”
That was the part Jace hated thinking about most.
“So, how does the trafficking ring get their hands on these women? They go kidnap them or what?” It was Blaine who’d asked this time, though he was the only one who hadn’t moved from his lounged position on the sand.
“Yes,” Jace said. “Our goal was to escalate the situation with Tammy Brinkman so that we had control of how things went down, to an extent. We were operating in the site under the profile of a wealthy user who’d been arrested for an unrelated crime. That’s who they planned to deliver her to once they got her.”
Another somber moment fell over the group. Waves crashed. Seagulls squawked. And a knot of disgust—the one that had formed when Jace discovered the unfathomable evil behind the site—burrowed deeper into his gut.
“So how’d you set up the sting op with Tammy Brinkman?”
Jace stopped himself from spitting out the long answer. They were familiar enough with the time, calculations, and risks that went into the approach. “There were a ton of bids on her page, and we had a feeling they were waiting for their moment to spring. So we had her tweeting a lot, saying she was under the weather and couldn’t train for a week straight. And since she lives in a high security hotel, we assumed they’d wait for a time she was out and about.
“Next we put in a generous bid with an expiration date attached to the offer, and had her post something about finally being able to hit the water once more. She tweeted that she was on her way to a specific pool outside of town at about one in the morning—not too out of the ordinary for someone who hadn’t been able to practice all week—and thirty minutes later they took the bait. The sting went down in the dressing room, and boy were we ready.”
“Man, they would’ve gotten her then, had she gone alone,” Creed said, slapping his thumb against his thigh.
A few mumbled curses rose among the group.
“Dang,” Baron mumbled, “Glad you guys are tapped into this site. We don’t need scum like that in the world.”
Jace nodded. “We took down a bunch of henchmen who offered pleas in exchange for info, and successfully seized and arrested four men who were higher up in the ring. After the sting op, the site was pulled, but it resurfaced under a different web address.”
“They’ll be wiser for the wear now,” Logan said.
“Yep,” Jace agreed. “And we still don’t know who the kingpin is. Once we find him, the whole thing is going to crumble.” He hoped. Another dose of disgust pushed through him. He hated the fact that someone as innocent as Amy Nelson had become a subject on the lips of such lowlifes. “I’m thinking this time, when we gun for a sting op involving Amy, I’ll probably need you guys’ help. They’re going to come prepared.”
