Deviant (Boys of Winter 3)

I reach down to the ledger and flip through the pages. “Are you sure? Are there any other entries for kids this young around the same time?”

Cruz shakes his head. “No, this is it. She’s the only one. All the other details match. She was sold within fifty miles of where Maddison went missing, and the sale date was less than a month later. It’s just the age.”

“This girl in here was only five. It’s possible that Sam got her age wrong. He’s a scary guy, and for a little kid, he would have been absolutely terrifying. I doubt that she was going out of her way to tell him how old she was. He could have just guessed. No one was going to question him.”

“I know,” Cruz groans, spinning around to lean against the table. He can’t keep staring at the image of Maddison Atwell on his laptop when he knows that right now, all he can do to help her is match her name to a listing in a fucked-up ledger. “But what if we somehow save this girl and we bring her back only to find it isn’t her? What am I supposed to tell her parents then?”

“That’s not going to happen,” I tell him, letting out a breath and putting myself right in front of Cruz. My fingers catch on his belt as I step in close. “I know it’s hard, and you want to reunite every one of those victims with their families, but you need to remember that we’re not doing this for the parent’s sake, this is for the child who’s spent years living in fear. We focus on saving the victims listed in this ledger, and only once we’ve done that, do we find their parents and reunite them. The last thing I want to do is give a parent hope that we can find their baby and not come through. Everybody has already suffered enough, and we’re not about to add to it.”

Cruz lets out a deep breath and takes my waist, pulling me in tight against his body. “I just hate that I can’t do more. I hate that we have Dynasty’s red tape holding us back, and I hate that I’m not out there right fucking now, kicking down doors and saving these people. We need to do better.”

“We will do better,” I tell him. “We’re going to win this. We’re going to fuck up each of those monsters who bought these children. We’re going to get every little piece of information out of them to find whatever connections we can, and we’re going to save other children suffering through the same thing. Those sick bastards are going to wish they were never born. We’ve got this, Cruz. We’re going to be unstoppable. Dynasty isn’t about corruption and power anymore, and I’m going to see to it. We’re going to use every little resource we’ve got. Dynasty is going to become an organization that’s one hundred percent dedicated to fighting the evil in this world.”

Cruz nods and gently presses his lips to my forehead, desperately needing that closeness. “And the bastards who bought from Sam Delacourt are going to be our first targets.”

“You’re damn right, they are,” I agree, stepping out of his arms and looking back down at the ledger. “How can I help? I want to find these children, but I don’t even know where to start looking.”

Cruz shakes his head. “I wish I knew.”

“What about that massive tech room that Dynasty has below ground? Could anything in there help?”

Cruz looks back at his laptop screen, staring at the image of Maddison Atwell. “Possibly,” he says, his eyes going wider as the slightest bit of hope pulses through his veins again. “My dad was telling me that Dynasty was getting an updated facial recognition program, far beyond anything else on the market. If that’s already been done, I can use the images from the missing person’s site and do a scan, but if the victim hasn’t been let out in public, then it’s hopeless. Not to mention, running a scan for each child could take weeks.”

“Fuck,” I grunt. “Is that our only option?”

“At the moment, yeah. It’s all we’ve got.”

“But it’s something,” I remind him, looking up and meeting his broken stare. “Do it. I don’t care who tells you that you can’t be down there using that software. You have my direct approval and no one is going to stop you.”

“It’s not just going to happen overnight,” he reminds me, making sure that I fully understand.

“I know, and quite frankly, I don't care if it takes us fifty years. We’re finding every single one of them. Hell, create a team if you have to, but whatever you do, don’t give up.”

Cruz’s eyes brighten by the second, and before I know it, he’s diving into me and crushing his lips against mine in a bruising kiss. I don’t even get a second to breathe before he’s pulling away and grabbing his notebook and Sam’s ledger. “I’ll be back … fuck. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up.”