Undercover Baby Rescue, page 2
Her eyes rose to the majestic Rocky Mountains that crested high above the town. Winter in the city could be an ugly business, but it sure was pretty in the mountains.
Lord, I’m looking for two different targets, she prayed, silently and methodically turning her case over to God. The sellers aka the L.B. Syndicate who steal and traffic newborns. And the parents who buy the babies from them. You know who they are. Please, help me find a lead. Some tiny crack in their enterprise to wedge my foot in, and then from there take the entire operation down.
She reached the coffee shop she’d been aiming for. A light was on inside, but the blinds were down, the door was locked and the sign read Closed. A figure in a red plaid jacket and a clashing blue-and-green Canucks toque stepped out of the alley. Instinctively, she braced herself to strike.
“Violet!” Justin’s hands rose defensively. “Hey! It’s okay. It’s just me!”
“Justin. Hi.”
She rocked back on her heels and lowered her hands.
“Sorry to startle you.” His kind blue eyes, filled with an urgent, almost desperate look, met hers under the brim of his wool hat. “I need to talk to you about something, and I thought you’d be more comfortable if we did it over coffee, outside of headquarters, instead of the total goldfish bowl that the unit can be.”
He wasn’t wrong. Both she and Justin worked on separate floors of the same RCMP building. The gossip that swirled around after their wedding was called off had been worse than high school.
“Sadly, this place is closed.”
“I know, but it’s your favorite, so I talked to the owner, and she agreed to open it up for us.”
That was Justin in a nutshell. “Preemptively caring,” as she’d described it to her brother Anthony and his wife, Tessa, once. Justin had been the kind of romantic partner who’d never asked what she’d wanted. Instead, he’d figured it out and then just gone ahead and made it happen. Maybe she’d liked it at first. Even found it loving. Until she’d realized just how one-sided the whole thing was. Because he’d never let her take care of him in return. He’d never asked her for help. He’d never opened up about what he needed. Instead, he’d just bottled all his own worries up and acted like it was his job to make her happy. All the while she’d watched him get more and more weighed down and crushed by whatever secret burdens he was carrying that he wasn’t willing to share.
Until he’d crumbled, taking their entire relationship with it.
“I know you’ve been talking to other people in my unit. I’m sure if there’s any merit to your theories they’ll pass it on to me.”
“Violet, I think I’ve found my nephew, and I’ve figured out who his buyers are. They’re going to leave the country in less than a week, and I need your unit to authorize an undercover rescue mission.”
He pulled out his phone and held it up to show her a picture of a two-week-old baby in a blue blanket. It definitely looked like his nephew. But so had hundreds of other pictures sent in by members of the public that turned out to be nothing.
“I’m not the one you need to convince,” she started.
Chief Superintendent Wade Zablocie of the Major Crimes Unit was the one who had to sign off on opening an investigation into any specific family.
“I’ve tried every other officer in your unit. Not one has been willing to go to bat with Zablocie on this. Just give me ten minutes. Please, Violet. I need your help to rescue him before it’s too late.”
Something painful turned in her heart. This man had been her best friend, her favorite person and the one she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with. But she couldn’t remember Justin ever asking her for help before. Let alone pleading.
“Okay. Ten minutes.”
They walked through a side door into the kitchen at the back of the coffee shop. A woman in her late fifties whom Violet knew by sight but not by name nodded and smiled to them as they passed. The place was empty except for a thin man with a hoodie pulled over his head, who was hunched over a laptop by the window. He looked familiar.
“Violet, meet Seth.” Justin nodded to the man who raised a hand in greeting and then went back to his laptop. “He’s arguably the country’s best good-guy hacker, and he consults for the cybercrimes unit, specifically on the lengths that the L.B. Syndicate seller is willing to take to stop anyone from ever figuring out who’s buying the children they’re selling.”
“So you’re up to speed on the seller and buyer dynamic we’ve uncovered.” Violet pulled off her glasses, cleaned them with a dry corner of her scarf and slid them back on.
“Yeah,” Justin said. “I’ve put a chart up in the cybercrimes unit. It looks like the sun or a virus molecule. We’ve got L.B., who’s trafficking kids, in the center and then the six unknown buyers jutting out the sides. We’ve been able to trace some payments on dark websites, but the details are always wiped before we can trace either the seller or buyers.”
Yes, she knew all this through her own work within the RCMP. But it was good to know Justin was on the same page. Justin waved Violet toward the table for two in the opposite corner of the room, where she noted their coffee was already waiting. She sat down and so did he.
So Justin thought he’d found one of the buyers. Then why wasn’t an undercover operation already underway?
“I also know the working theory is that the L.B. Syndicate has been going at it incredibly hard to stop anyone from uncovering them or their buyers,” Justin said. “To the point that they’re actively monitoring the web twenty-four seven to make sure nothing that exposes any of the buyers ever appears online.”
“Yes, we believe the buyers are paying for security from L.B., not just a baby.” Violet leaned her elbows on the table. “Although it’s possible this so-called security is more of a threat to keep them silent.”
“You know how I told you I found a recent picture of my nephew at two weeks old online?”
“Yes, but you haven’t explained how or where yet.” And he’d better get to it.
“Well, the picture was wiped from the internet within moments of someone posting it, and, fascinatingly, whenever I’ve tried posting that exact same picture anywhere online since, whatever website I use gets taken down within an instant, and my network’s been hit with an online attack.”
“And you think L.B. Syndicate’s sellers are behind it?” she asked.
“Absolutely. So I’ve asked Seth to post a copy of that same two-week-old baby online right now, in front of you, using a private server he’s rigged up. Then you can see for yourself in real time as someone attacks his domain and takes it down.”
Which would indeed bolster his case that this kid he wanted to investigate really was his nephew. Justin was backstopping his claim, before she even took it to Zablocie with tangible proof. It was smart. And exactly the kind of thing she’d expect Justin to do.
“We don’t want to use the RCMP system,” Seth called from the far side of the room. He leaned back and cracked his knuckles. “Not just because they could create a whole mess in the system, but also because we don’t want them realizing we’re on to them. I’m going to be a little bit sloppy in covering my tracks, so hopefully they’ll catch on to us quick. Then I’ll record every keystroke they try to hit us with, which will hopefully help us figure out where it’s coming from.”
The hacker grinned and went back to his laptop.
Violet unzipped her jacket. The truth was her unit didn’t have any solid leads as to who was behind the kidnappings. If Justin had found his nephew, located the person who’d bought him and managed to lure the L.B. Syndicate into attacking Seth’s laptop, she’d have her first real shot at finding all the missing children and taking the traffickers down for good.
“Enough stalling,” she said. “Let’s get to who bought your nephew, where he is now and how you found his picture.”
Justin blinked. “I wasn’t stalling. I was just trying to lay everything out in the right order.”
His order, in other words. Justin unwrapped his scarf and pulled off his hat. Dark rings lined his blue eyes. His blond hair was shaggy, and the stubble that lined his jaw told her that he hadn’t shaved in days. He took a deep breath and started.
“Ever since Sadie’s baby was kidnapped, I’ve had an online search running, twenty-four hours a day, for any sign of him. Anytime, day or night, an alarm goes off so I don’t miss a possible sighting, no matter how remote.”
No wonder he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.
“You must’ve gotten hundreds of false alarms.”
“Thousands. A little over forty-eight hours ago, an eighty-two-year-old woman in Eastern Europe posted this picture of her great-grandnephew to a closed seniors’ chat group. She didn’t realize anyone outside her retirement building could see it.”
“Obscure place to find a lead in a Canadian kidnapping case,” Violet said.
“The picture disappeared off the site less than ten minutes later, replaced by a very tearful apology saying her grandniece Emelia didn’t want any pictures of the baby posted anywhere for privacy reasons.”
“Which isn’t necessarily unusual,” Violet pointed out. “A lot of new parents don’t want their kids’ pictures online.”
“Less than twenty-four hours later, this great-aunt was dead. Apparent natural causes, nothing obviously suspicious, but the coroner did note high levels of sleeping pills in her system.”
Violet whistled.
“Now, that’s a pretty big coincidence.” And maybe a sign of just how far this seller syndicate was willing to go to stop any glimmer of information about their operation getting out. “I take it you’ve located Emelia?”
“I have. Took a lot of online digging, but I found her. Emelia DuBois has been married to Francois DuBois for three years. He goes by Frank. Unhappy marriage based on what we’ve been able to find of Frank’s social media philandering. They’re from Eastern Europe, living at a very remote wilderness camp in the Rockies. They call my nephew Matty—short for Matthias—and say it was a home birth. They’re scheduled to move to Scandinavia a week from now to be closer to their extended family.”
“And you’re worried that once they leave the country with him it’ll be hard to get an extradition treaty since we won’t have jurisdiction.”
“Yup, so the clock is ticking.”
She leaned forward.
“What do we know about the camp?”
“It’s called the Mount Prince Wilderness Resort. She was a receptionist, and he was their main sports instructor. It’s extremely remote and hard to get to. There’s only one way in and out, and the road’s so treacherous visitors have to park at the base of Mount Prince and get one of the camp’s three all-terrain vehicles to drive them up. Right now, it’s closed for the season and has less than ten full-time staff living on-site. It’s also financially struggling. The owner is hosting some potential investors from other wilderness camps this weekend to see if one or more will bail them out, and I’ve got an in that we can use to infiltrate that.”
Both Violet and Justin had spent a lot of time at similar places, hiking through the woods and rappelling down cliffs. It was not the kind of place she’d expect to find criminals who’d bought somebody else’s stolen baby.
“And it’s an unhappy marriage?”
“It looks like they were heading for divorce before Emelia ‘got pregnant.’” Justin’s fingers put air quotes around the last two words. “She’s got health problems of some kind, but I don’t know what they are. She’s posted a lot online about her pregnancy over the past nine months, and apparently it was a rough one. She was sick a lot. Frank was away overseas visiting family for the last trimester and most of the second as well, leaving her to handle it on her own. So it’s quite possible he had no idea she wasn’t actually pregnant. He only came back when Matty arrived. It was a ‘home birth.’ The baby was ‘delivered’ by the camp’s nurse practitioner, Ariel Fallis, while Frank was out of the country. Ariel’s the one who filed the official ‘notice of birth’ with the government. She’s now been hired as their nanny and is flying overseas with them.”
Violet pushed her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose. A picture was forming in her mind.
“So the theory is we’ve got a woman who fakes being pregnant to keep her wayward husband from leaving her. The question is how did she turn to a kidnapping ring? And how did she talk her friend into helping her?”
“I don’t know,” Justin admitted.
“Was Frank in on it? I can’t see why he’d ever go along with it, especially if their marriage was already on the rocks. And is the fact they’re moving overseas just a fortunate coincidence or part of the plan?”
“Again, I don’t know.” Justin’s brow furrowed, and the lines between his eyes deepened.
“Why do I get the feeling the other shoe’s about to drop?”
Justin shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Frank’s grandmother runs the world’s fourth largest energy company. She’s quite elderly, and apparently succession plans are underway to pass the company on to Frank’s uncle when she dies. She has lots of friends among Canadian politicians and law enforcement. Our government is currently negotiating with them to help on our upcoming pipeline.”
Violet sucked in a breath.
“You do realize how big a public relations nightmare it will be for the RCMP if we accuse a member of a powerful foreign family of kidnapping a baby and we’re wrong? The potential blowback could sink both our careers. Maybe even ding Zablocie’s.”
“That’s why I need you to help me prove that Matty is my nephew before it’s too late.” He reached across the table, and his fingers enveloped hers.
“Hey, guys?” Seth’s worried voice came from the other side of the room. “Don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think the L.B. Syndicate has tracked our address.”
“You mean your computer’s IP address, right?” Justin asked.
The hacker shook his head.
“No.” Seth’s face paled. “Our physical address. Here. This coffee shop.”
Justin stood. Violet did, too.
“I’m sorry,” Seth said. “They’ve had it for about ten minutes, but I only caught it now.”
“But they’re not based here,” Violet started.
Then again, they’d kidnapped and sold a baby here recently. Maybe they’d left an operative behind to make sure the sale went well.
Suddenly a black van pulled up outside on the slushy road. The back door rolled open.
“Get down!” she shouted.
Gunfire sounded.
Justin threw his body over hers and pulled her to the ground, as the coffee shop window exploded in a spray of glass.
TWO
Sometimes seconds stretched out until they felt like an eternity, Justin thought as he lay on the cold tile floor with Violet pressed against his chest and broken glass raining down around them.
Then, just as suddenly as the gunfire had started, it was all over. He heard the sound of the van peeling away.
Violet rolled out of his arms. She leaped to her feet, as did he.
“Everyone all right?” she shouted.
As Justin called simultaneously, “Is everyone okay?”
“I’m okay.” Seth was crouched under a table. “But my laptop has seen better days. I thought you said this L.B. Syndicate was based overseas.”
“I’m guessing they have someone local, too,” Violet said. “Maybe when a baby is trafficked they dispatch someone to keep an eye on the buyer to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
Snow blew through the hole where the window had been and sent the twisted remains of the blinds dancing. Violet yanked her phone from her pocket, dialed a number and held it to her ear as she ran for the kitchen. From what he could hear, it sounded like she was on the phone with RCMP dispatch. He turned back to Seth as the hacker climbed to his feet. His laptop had been reduced to fragments of plastic and metal that now littered the floor.
Violet rushed back into the room.
“Two civilians in the back,” she said. “Both are fine. The owner of the café has already gotten through to 911. Local police are on their way.”
Justin’s heart ached for the kind business owner who’d agreed to open the place for them.
Police sirens wailed in the distance.
“Seth, do you think the people behind this know who we are?” Violet asked. “Did they see our faces? Could they identify us?”
“I don’t think so,” Seth said. “For my part, I was on an anonymous server.”
“Plus, you and I were sitting in the back of the room,” Justin added, “and the blinds were drawn. Why?”
He watched as relief rolled off Violet’s shoulders.
“Okay. Then I say we let local police be the face of this, and all RCMP involvement stays below the radar.”
“Why?” Justin asked.
Determination shone in her indigo eyes.
“Because I’m going to tell Zablocie we want a meeting in his office within the hour. I still don’t know if your theory is correct. But we’re clearly up against a pretty powerful enemy with incredible reach. Justin, you’re one of the most cautious people I know. You’ve convinced me you’re on to something, and if there’s even a possibility that whoever just shot at us is connected to the baby kidnapping ring, I’m willing to put my neck on the line to find out.”
* * *
It ended up being closer to two hours before Justin and Violet stood before Zablocie and Justin made his case. He had stayed behind at the coffee shop to help the owners sweep up the floor and nail boards over the windows, once local police had cleared them to tidy up the scene. Meanwhile, Violet had started the ball rolling with Zablocie.
