Throughout the entire ordeal with Remy Blaze, she was the one who’d given them hope, and now she was giving them purpose. A way to move forward with their lives, feel empowered again, and make a difference.
In honor of the bookstore that Gretchen had founded—and possibly fueled by one too many drinks—they’d somewhat jokingly dubbed themselves the Night Herons. But the name also fit their new role because the black-crowned night herons that hung around the local piers were nocturnal, often escaping notice due to their unusual stillness.
The majority of the original group from that evening sat around the table now, their focus on Gretchen as she placed a yellow notepad on the table and took a chair.
“Good evening,” she said, making eye contact with everyone in the room before settling her gaze on Emma. “How’d the meeting with the programmer go?”
“Better than expected, even though I had to leave early,” Emma said. “I got his number.”
“Great.” She clasped her hands on the table. “What do you have for us?”
She opened the folder and placed the first file on a tabletop projector. One by one, the group quickly looked at the emails between a guy named Renfro Warner and Viktor Schulz. Viktor had made handwritten notes on each, explaining the various code words hiding what appeared to be an extensive sex trafficking network, purely for the enjoyment of Renfro and his buddies.
“Jesus,” Nolan said as they read through page after page of messages, purportedly requests to acquire underage girls, or pay off, bribe—or otherwise make disappear—women who threatened to expose an affair with Renfro.
Emma nodded, starting to feel a little sick. “Exactly.”
“Do you buy Viktor being afraid to go to the police?” Nolan absently tapped his fingers on the table.
“If he thinks the people behind this have inside contacts there, then yeah.” Emma rubbed her temples in a vain effort to stave off a looming headache. “Being a foreigner could also have something to do with it. He may not trust or understand our system, and if he’s been enabling Renfro, he might be worried about going to jail himself.”
Dallas was typing away on his laptop as Emma continued perusing files on the big screen. “Right out of UCLA,” he said, “Renfro created some kind of flight scheduling optimizer that was bought up by the Star Alliance in a record-breaking deal at the time. He then started a venture capital firm called Blue Bear Enterprises, which has turned him into a multibillionaire.”
“How original,” Nat muttered.
Emma gave her a sardonic look. “Right?” UCLA’s mascot was the bruin, a brown bear, and their colors were blue and gold.
“What else can you find on Warner?” Gretchen asked. “Any lawsuits, arrests, bad press?”
Emma skimmed through more emails, but the details were frustratingly sparse. On purpose, of course. Renfro had been smart to communicate in code.
“Okay,” Dallas said after a minute. “Several women have pressed charges for assault, which were later dropped. Most likely due to a payoff.” He scanned his screen. “Let’s see… Kerry Martin, a resident of Hardy Beach where Warner lives, recently died of an opioid overdose. According to her mother’s rant on Facebook, Kerry was involved with Warner and he killed her because she was going to go public. ”
“That’s worth digging into,” Emma said.
Dallas spoke absently, one hand flying across his computer’s trackpad. “His muscle-turned-right-hand man, now wealthy in his own right thanks to his association with Warner, is a guy named Byron Chin. He played quarterback at UCLA, and spent a year in the pros—”
“Wait.” Emma sat up, hoping she’d heard wrong. If not, there was no way in hell she could continue on this assignment. “Did you say Byron Chin?”
“You know him?” Gretchen asked.
Emma stared at her boss. “If it’s the man I think it is, I dated his brother in college.”
“Let’s see…” A few more taps on Dallas’s keyboard. “He’s a thirty-nine-year-old Korean-American Black man, one brother named Jason.”
“Shit.” Her gut churned. “Yep, that’s him.”
His eyes narrowed and he whistled faintly. “Damn, Emma. The brother’shot.”
Across the table, Nolan frowned at Dallas.
“Wait. You datedJason Chin?” Nat gaped at her. “TheJason Chin? As in…” She flapped her hands wildly. “Hot Stuff?”
Emma nodded, as memories of betrayal and loss stabbed at her chest.
“Oh. My. God. I wassoinfatuated with him in high school.”
Emma frowned at her teammate. “You were?” She sometimes forgot Nat had only been a freshman in high school when Emma was graduating college.
