I thought about the security audit and the man named Rafe stalking the property with Vigo. Is that why the Hawks were revamping their security system? Because they were worried someone might come back to finish the job?
“Jesus, Cass…” Daisy said. “Does Bram know?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. I just… I don’t want to bring it all back for him, you know?”
“I get that, but you can’t carry this alone.”
“I’m not alone.” For the first time, I realized it was true.
I had the Hawks.
They’d gone to the Sunoco at the bottom of the mountain and had seen a black SUV getting gas on the day of my accident, but they hadn’t been able to read the plate on the security footage.
I don’t know how they’d gotten the transaction records from the station — I wasn’t sure I wanted to know — but Hawk was running down the credit cards that had been used right beforemy accident to try and identify who’d been in the car that had run me off the road.
“Still,” Cassie said, “Bram’s your brother. He’d want to know.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. I’ll tell him, I promise. I just want to figure this out first. I’m hoping you can help me do that.”
“What can I do?”
“I’ve just been thinking… my parents were investigating some big wire transfers to Aventine right before their accident.”
I told her about the transfers my parents had highlighted from Kensington Trust to Aventine University and explained how private banking worked: the opacity, the discretion, the shadowy international figures who used it to transfer money.
“You think your parents were killed because of the money transfers?” Daisy asked.
“I think maybe they were killed because of what the money transfers were buying.”
“I don’t get it,” Daisy said.
“Well, the money transfers got me thinking about the sex trafficking thing, all those missing girls.”
I heard Daisy’s intake of breath, knew I was touching on a sore subject for her too.
Because Daisy’s sister Ruth? She’d almost been a victim, a target of Piers Cantwell, the powerful man Daisy had worked for, and his son when she'd discovered the resort they were building was going to be a destination for wealthy men looking to victimize young women.
“You think the wire transfers were paying for the girls,” Daisy said. “That your parents were killed because they found out.”
“It’s not crazy when you think about it, especially after what happened at Aventine.”
Aventine had been the first domino to fall in the sex trafficking ring. At the time, everyone in Blackwell Falls had breathed a sigh of relief: there would be no more missing girls, the perpetrators had been caught.
Except now I realized therehadbeen more missing girls, that whatever had been going on when the trafficking ring at Aventine had been exposed was just the first strand in a web that was darker and more tangled than anyone could have imagined.
“I see your point,” Daisy said. “But what does that have to do with your accident? With the Cantwells?”
“I don’t know if it has anything to do with the Cantwells,” I said, “but I wanted to ask what you remembered, see if I can piece it all together.”
I’d been on the outside of it at the time. Now I wondered if there were details that might have been important, details that might connect what the Cantwells had been doing with what had happened at Aventine and the story my parents had been investigating.
Details that might connect to what had happened to me on the mountain.
“It was really just what was in the news,” Daisy said.
She ran me through what she knew: the Cantwells, the resort for VIPs, the surprising connection to Jace’s dad.
I tried to see all the pieces, tried to find something that connected them.
