Chapter Twenty

“O livia? What’s going on?” Brock settled across from her, eager to know what had caused his fiancé’s sudden urgency to get to her laptop. Olivia had practically flown to her computer and snapped it open with her screen filled with information. She spoke as she typed, her words just as rapid as the blurred clacking of her keys.

Olivia looked up with intensity burning in her eyes. It was the same look she got every time she had an “aha” moment, something that clicked, something that made sense. The only thing that disheartened her was that it wasn’t anything to do with a teen cult. It was a small indicator, but also a dead giveaway if her gut was right. And right now, her instinct was screaming at her louder than Alasdair had to Mila.

He still looked bewildered. “Okay?” His tone urged her to go on, but she had no need for motivation. She was on fire at this point. The only thing is, her thoughts were so scattered, it was like trying to put together a window that had a rock thrown through it. Where did she even start? Well, it was good to start with the obvious, the clue that kicked off her instinct. “Did you see how upset he was about her getting a tattoo?”

Brock’s eyes darkened. “Kinda hard to miss. But, yes, I did.” He tapped his steepled fingertips together again, deep in thought. “Being conservative is one thing and if tattoos bother you, it is understandable why something like Mila getting a tattoo would upset you. But flying off the handle is something entirely different. It’s just a tattoo. And for a guy who seemed to be so kind and tender toward her, there was nothing kind in the way he treated her at all.”

“Wondering why he would get upset over something so small?” Her eyes peered at Brock over the top of her laptop, seeing if he would connect the dots as she did.

He didn’t. “There isn’t any telling.”

“There might be.” Olivia put her laptop aside on the coffee table; her body lurched forward as she rattled off her thoughts. “Traffickers mark their victims with distinguishing tattoos that brand them as property.”

Brock’s eyebrows rose. Now, he got it. But she kept going.

“These tattoos can be a bar code, a special symbol or someone’s initials.”

“Someone’s initials…” Brock’s voice trailed off. His eyes focused on some part of the back wall as he worked out what she was already thinking. “And the tattoo that Mila got was Alasdair’s initials.” He held up his arm, rubbing a hand over the upper arm near the shoulder. “On her arm, a common place for a trafficker to mark. ”

The arm, the back of the neck, still too close to where Mila had thought she’d hidden it. Olivia spoke as rapidly as Susanna had, only not with as much excitement. What she had unraveled was so disgusting, yet it was the very thing both of them had feared. Against all hope, Olivia had prayed and hoped that the missing teens weren’t the victims of human trafficking. Killing themselves for a cult was terrible, but living a life in gross slavery was yet another. It was a living death, trapping them day in and day out with zero hope of escape and robbing them of more than just their lives. But if these teens were the victims of human traffickers, it was going to be no more. Olivia would see to it that it would stop.

A picture of the red-headed girl, thirteen years old when she came up missing, flashed with strobe lights in Olivia’s mind, prodding her into anger. “What if he was upset with her because she accidentally branded herself as his and it didn’t make him happy? Or maybe? What if he’s playing her, using her as a cover?”

“And by her branding herself as his, she wouldn’t be very effective cover, then would she?” Brock mused. “Olivia... you’re a genius.”

“I have my moments.” She picked her laptop up again. “What did she say his last name was?”

“Crosby, I think.” Brock thought a moment.

Olivia typed in Alasdair Crosby,, and her screen filled up with information. She clicked through some pages, reading her findings out loud to Brock. “Crosby Inc. is a company that ships out of Charleston. The guy is local.” It might also explain why no bodies had ever been found... they’d been lured up to Charleston and shipped somewhere in the world.

“Where all does he ship to?” Brock leaned forward.

Olivia scrolled a bit. “South America, the UK, the Netherlands, to name a few.” She sat back, reading over her screen again until something seized her. A thought, a memory. This time, excitement really did begin to build inside of her as she snapped her gaze up to meet Brock. Her voice trailed off, but her thoughts kept going. “The Netherlands.”

He nodded. “Yes?”

“That teacher was speaking Dutch at the school.” She seized the idea. “Could it be that the guy we saw there that night was Alasdair?”

Brock raised his eyebrows and nodded. “The guy had lighter hair, like Alasdair does. Similar build, though all we could see was his back. It’s very possible.”

“Shipment. The number two…” More and more pieces were starting to make sense. Maybe they were closer than they’d thought they were. “I’m going to see if I can pull up the staff at Cape Fremont High.” Olivia minimized the screen with the information about Crosby Inc., ready to return to it at a later minute and do her homework on it. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she found the school. One click of the mouse brought the homepage up, lighting her face and the surrounding areas with the colors of the school mascot, blue and gray. The smiling faces of high school students met her gaze as the slideshow of pictures scrolled through, one picture after another. The football team, the high school band, one of the classrooms, a senior class picture. Olivia wasn’t interested in what the school had to offer, she was more interested in the staff. She rolled her cursor over the words staff directory and clicked. A list of names and email addresses replaced the smiling pictures of a happy high school.

“No pictures.” She patted the spot next to her. “Come, sit by me.”

Brock didn’t hesitate in dragging his chair over to sit by Olivia. By the time he settled next to her, propping his feet up on the footstool she shared with him, she had opened Facebook and started typing in all of the names listed in the directory. “It’s amazing what you can find on the internet these days.”

Brock snorted a laugh. “Everyone’s personal information, all up there for anyone to find. Not so good for them, but great for us. ”

Olivia copied the principal’s name and pasted it into the search bar. She changed the settings to Cape Fremont and quickly found him. “Well, that’s not him. He has had one too many doughnuts. The guy we saw was fit.”

Brock laughed. “Well, at least we’re not suspecting the principal. Yet. If the guy was fit, maybe look up the football coach?”

“Next.” Olivia copied Ryan the football coach into the same search bar. “Hmm. No. He’s not even close.” Besides, most of the teens who had come up missing were girls. Drama director, maybe? Or band? She moved on to the next teacher in the staff directly. Alana Fleming. Catchy name , she thought to herself as she pasted it into the search bar and clicked enter. The first picture that came up matched the brown-haired woman she had seen driving away in her car that day. “Aha. I think we’ve got one teacher.”

“The one who speaks Dutch?” Brock leaned forward. “That’s her, all right. Huh. Would you look at that? Teacher of the Year award.”

“Great smile.” Olivia soaked the image in, studying it. There was something familiar about it, but she couldn’t place it. Was it just that she’d seen Alana twice before? Or… Olivia squinted, leaning closer. No. It wasn’t the teacher’s look at all. It was what she was wearing. A shell necklace that caged a pearl inside of it hung around her neck by a silver chain. She waved to Brock. “Brock... hand me that file over there.”

Brock looked back, searching for the file in question, then grabbed it from the bag. He fished it out and handed it to her. “Thank you,” She mumbled, her mind going a mile a minute. That necklace. She had seen that necklace before. She flipped through until she found the picture of the thirteen-year-old redhead, one of the first to go missing. Melissa. Her smiling face looked back at Olivia, and around her neck hung the same necklace that Alana wore in the picture. Olivia’s eyes went wide and she pointed, her finger hovering just under the tiny necklace in the screen. “She’s wearing the same necklace as this girl is. ”

She flipped the image around to show Brock, who scanned the picture with eager eyes. He then glanced back at the photo of Alana. “They’re not related, are they?”

Olivia shook her head. “No. Melissa’s parents are listed as Dawn and Cody, not Alana. And she’s a bit too old to be a sister.”

“Normally, I’d think nothing of it,” Brock’s voice carried the wonder of discovering a vital clue. “But the necklace is very unique. It looks like even the pearl is the same color.”

There it was. There was their answer. Olivia raised her gaze to look at Brock. “That’s enough for us to go talk to her.”