"Emily! Thank goodness." Amanda breathed, hugging her old friend.
"Amanda, dear, come and sit down." Emily took Amanda's packages and led her to a small lounge. "I'm so happy to see you!"
"And I'm happy to see you. This week's just been madness."
"I know, dear. Lee called me late last night and asked me to come here, hopefully to rendez-vous with you. I just spoke to him again an hour ago and he's beside himself with worry for you." Amanda checked her watch. "My check-in isn't for another hour."
"Well, you shouldn't leave the poor man waiting like that, my dear. He's probably pulling out that very nice hair of his!" Amanda chuckled softly.
"Emily, there's just so much going on! I'm so glad you're here because I just don't know who to trust anymore."
"Well, let me tell you what Lee was able to tell me. That may help." In short order, Emily explained not only about the link to Judge Harris, but what Lee had just told her about Phillip's young friend. Francine's new mission was also included in the status report. Amanda rubbed her forehead, exhausted from the sheer weight of the investigation.
"So Caspian is in this up to his neck?" Amanda asked. "None of what you told me explains how he came to have an NSA bug with him."
"My dear, your flight reservation has been cancelled and he never made it to his flight."
"I knew about my flight. I cancelled it myself." Amanda said absently. "I meant to tell Lee but when I realised that my room was bugged, I wanted to wait until I could get to a secure line. I'm flying back with the guys from the BAU. One of their team will come to help us out with this investigation."
"Can you trust them?"
"I hope so because I was apparently very wrong about Chris." Amanda said sadly. "It doesn't make any sense!" She stood up to pace and was immediately overcome with dizziness. "Oh!"
"Amanda! When did you last eat?"
"Last night. With everything going on, I didn't trust the food at the conference and I didn't have time to go get something somewhere else." Emily clucked her disapproval.
"Well, you sit here and rest for a moment. I'll go get you some food."
"Just fruit, please. I don't think I could eat anything else just now."
"Alright dear. There's a phone there if you want to call Lee. He's at the house coordinating the move for that poor girl to a safe house."
"Thank you, Emily. I'll do that."
Dialling the international number quickly, Amanda shook her head in astonishment at how complicated everything had become. She shouldn't be surprised of course; her first case as lead agent was cosmically fated to be a doozy! But still, an entirely new area of criminality and corruption was not what she'd expected. The phone rang four times before she heard Lee's warm voice come on the line. "Stetson-King-West residence."
"Lee! It's me!"
"Amanda! How are you?"
"Hungry and tired, but safe. I'm with Emily. I'm flying back tonight with the FBI team on their jet."
"Oh good." Lee's relief was palpable. "How much has Emily told you?"
"You have the senator's daughter in protective custody and she'll be moved to a safe house shortly."
"Yeah, well… Mabel isn't exactly the senator's daughter. She's more of his slave, and a mistreated one at that. She's been severely abused, Amanda. She's covered in bruises and she's got marks on her wrists. She said that the only way she was able to get away is that after he beat her, the senator figured she wouldn't be going anywhere in her condition. She managed to escape but she's in pretty bad shape."
"Oh sweetheart!" Amanda sighed. She knew that Lee could easily be destroyed by the heartache that came with facing victims. In fact, he'd once told her that it was why he'd chosen counter-intelligence instead of any other branch of law enforcement. They almost never came face to face with innocent victims in their work. Whenever they did, Amanda knew that Lee would be a wreck for weeks afterwards. It was better now that they were married and they could lie in bed, cuddling and talking about it. Stuff like this just ripped her Big Fella to shreds. Feeling her eyes water at the thought of not being there for him when he needed her, Amanda pulled herself together. "Sweetheart, I'll be home late tonight. I think we'll arrive in Washington around eleven o'clock local time."
"I'll come pick you up."
"That's okay, Lee. One of the FBI agents lives in Arlington. He'll give me a ride home."
"Amanda!" Lee grumbled. "Caspian is out there, AWOL, and probably looking to put a stop to your investigation, we have senators, judges, and who knows who else trying to cover up career-destroying crimes, and you're just going to get into a car with someone who may or may not be involved?" Amanda frowned.
"Chris didn't make his flight?"
"No. He didn't. So if it's all the same to you, I'm going to drive out and collect you from the airport myself."
"And who will stay with the boys?"
"Are you kidding? I'm not letting them out of my sight either! As soon as I have Mabel stashed at the safe-house, I'm going to collect Jamie and they can both sit tight until all of this is sorted. I'll take your car to pick you up. They can sleep in the back."
"Lee! You're overreacting."
"Amanda!" Lee answered in a matching tone. "I don't care if I am!" When Amanda didn't continue to argue, he relented. "Now, is there anything else you've found out that might help?"
"Yeah. The bug that Chris planted on my briefcase was NSA, standard issue."
"NSA?" Lee groaned. "Is there any Agency in this country that isn't tainted by this crime syndicate?"
"I don't know." Amanda dropped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. "How would you hide people in plain sight? I mean, if you want to hide a thing, then the best thing to do is hide that specific thing with similar things. Then someone who is looking for that thing might not notice it in with all the others. Like that Where's Wally book that Emily sent the boys at Christmas…" Lee let Amanda ramble on. It helped him feel calmer and he knew that there was a better than average chance that she'd come up with some brilliant solution. It didn't take long. "Lee! I know what we're looking for!"
"What?"
"I think that most of the people at the charity don't know what is going on. There are a few people, involved in the fundraising who do. And I think that what they are doing is creating two sets of documents for some children. With all the children that SunChild processes each year, there'd be nothing remarkable if they had a few dozen lose their papers, right? So if you have two children, say two girls, of a similar age and colouring. One is the legitimate charity recipient but the other is a trafficked child. You have the documents for the first child through the charity, and then you claim they are lost and substitute the photo for the second child. Now you have two children who are indistinguishable." Lee nodded, amazed that after all these years, he could now confidently follow Amanda's thinking.
"Yes, of course! So the charity arranges for one child to legitimately receive aide while at the top, someone's making an awful lot of money procuring a second set of children that are effectively invisible. Sure! And when the invisible one eventually disappears, who will notice?"
"Lee, we need to get into the records of the charity without anyone knowing that we're there looking."
"I'll get Francine on it, Amanda."
"Lee-"
"Amanda! Francine and Beaman are already in place under cover. And you're out of the field, remember?" Amanda sighed. "Look, both of us will need to play this one from the side-lines. Senator Anderson already knows that I know about Mabel. It's just a matter of time before he turns up here looking for her and I need to have her safely stowed when that happens. Let Francine handle the field work this time." Lee paused. "It could be good for her and Beaman to practice working the Q-Bureau." Amanda blinked. She knew exactly what Lee was telling her. This case was the one that was going to do it. He wanted out of the field. She couldn't blame him, but she wasn't quite ready to hang up her boots yet.
"Maybe. But Lee, I don't think that I can be satisfied with just this case. I can't explain it, but I know I can make a difference, an important difference, working on trafficking cases."
"I know." Lee said sadly. "Let's talk about it later, okay?"
"Yeah. I'll see you in a few hours, sweetheart."