Chapter 15

We worked long hours doing just that. Some had moved states and married, others just seemed to disappear and those were the ones who interested me the most, though I knew that some of those women would have wanted to disappear or even ended up in the witness protection scheme. As I laid down on the floor to think through what we had so far, I started to think what that female boss would be like. It was times like this that I suppose a profiler would have been handy but hey, we could work with what we knew.

She'd be powerful and probably very aloof. She'd have lovers but nothing long term. Her job would allow her flexibility and she could have various properties and travel a lot. She'd have money and would probably flaunt it and I bet she just loved to be seen with the rich and famous. Would she keep some of the young people, as servants or workers? No, that would bring her work too close to home. She might be well known but no one would know her, maybe even being a very secretive person. I bet she kept records though so that she could feel that power of control and gloat to herself.

Would she have hated her father or admired him and what about the mother? Would the mother have been a woman that had been brought into the country or even abused by the original boss? Could the daughter have become a victim who had perpetuated that abuse herself?

Sitting up I was once again reading through the searches that Xander had produced on the daughters. Xander eventually left the comfort of his computer and came and sat down with me.

"Tell me what you're looking for"

"Use a yellow highlighter to mark a mother who wasn't born here in the states and a pink highlighter where the mother died when the daughter reached the age of ten"

I was going to look again at where the father had married several times. Every so often one of us would get up to stretch our legs or disappear to retrieve some food and a drink but we never left that room. I think we both fell asleep where we were sat but not for very long. There were papers strewn everywhere but in an organized way until eventually we both agreed on the four women that we wanted to dig deeper into.

Xander did his magic by pulling out their financials while I pulled out every news article and photo that I could find. Several hours later we compiled everything together in order to look for inconsistencies.

My eyes were drawn to one woman. She was seen with men, some very good looking men, but there was never any scandal of an affair. Her father had worked out of New York City and had been arrested and charged for trafficking women, which was when she disappeared. Because he'd turned over evidence on some of the men who worked with him, he'd been released at the age of eighty, ill health being a major contributing factor. It seemed though that the feds were sure that some of his operations had continued to run while he was in prison. They assumed it was him and that he had contacts that enabled him to keep a finger on his business while in prison, but no evidence for that was ever found.

The man, George Dewitt, had died in a freak accident when there was a gas leak and explosion at his home not long after his release, which seemed too much of a coincidence to me. His daughter who was named Bridget looked nothing like him. She was darker skinned and had brown hair and eyes compared to his light auburn coloring. I had a photo of her so needed to find out who she was now and where she was, so I handed the photo to Xander.

"Bridget Dewitt. You interested in her?"

I watched as Xander studied the photo.

"Yeah, I want to know who she is now"

I was sure that she would fit my amateur profile.

"I'll run a face recognition program, though she may have changed her features"

As Xander set that up on his computer I felt at a bit of a loss. If she was the new boss, then nothing could be done until we identified her.

"So what exactly happens here in this building?"

Because to me it just seemed too quiet.

"You're only seeing the frontage that goes onto one street. The building is separated into two distinct areas. The half at the back of here is where the main thrust of the business is"

I raised my eyebrows because I was curious as to what actually happened here. I mean I now had some idea of what Gregory's business was so wouldn't there be some of that work happening here as well? Plus no one except for Ben had dared disturb us. Where were the men or women who be following up with what we found?

"They have a successful security business so that's managed and monitored next door. There's also what I suppose you'd call transient workers that Greg will move to where they're needed for work"

Hmm, those ethical mercenaries that Xander had illuded to before. It made sense as I suppose different jobs would occur in different parts of the country.

"Other than Seattle where else does Gregory have offices?"

"Chicago and Houston. But they also have secondary business sources. They all work on contracts for alphabet agencies so there's always work. Sometimes Greg will call in favors from other similar companies if he needs to"

Like he must have done for the operation to rescue Robert and have those two brothers arrested. I suppose what Xander had told me made sense, but it also made me even more nervous that this company had been the one that Ranger had alluded to having sold. If I didn't ask, then I wouldn't have to know, plus I didn't want Xander to have an inkling that I'd had ties to Ranger and Rangeman. I was pretty sure that Ranger had been just one of the partners here in Atlanta, so maybe he hadn't had much to do with what happened here.

As the facial recognition program threw out possible likenesses, we each followed up on the name with a search. I was feeling a bit despondent that we'd ever find one that could be the woman I was looking for. We were back to doing individual searches on their lives again.

"Xander can you add parameters to that facial recognition search?"

I wasn't sure what could be done because I'd never used it before but if we didn't reduce the number of possibilities we'd be here forever.

"What do you want adding?"

"Specify the age range, not married"

"What about children?"

I stopped and looked at Xander as he asked that. Would she have adopted any of the children? I honestly had no idea.

"I don't know"

Okay that took a few out. It was as I was researching a woman called Renata Leonor that my spidey senses began to make their presence known. I was soon stood up looking around the floor for the pile of papers that I needed. I reread the information on George Dewitt to find what his wives had been called and while that didn't pan out a look at who had been working for him before he went to prison did. The woman who had been employed as the nanny when Bridget was young was called Leonor Serrano.

"This is her, Renata Leonor. There are too many coincidences"

I almost shouted across to Xander as I held her search in my hands. I closed my eyes as I thought through the idea that I was basing all of this work on some stupid preconceived notion that I was right.

"Annie, if it feels right then we have to follow it up. Don't doubt your instincts"

The problem was that I did. A lot was riding on this being right. People's lives being at the forefront of my mind as I looked back at the photo of those young kids in that container. I told myself that if I wasn't right then we'd just have to start again from a different direction, though I wasn't sure that I'd even know where to begin with that.

"Okay, Renata Leonor. Aged forty nine, single and financially very well off. It has her source of income as an employment agency"

I looked at Xander as he looked at me. Surely that was a bit too close to exploiting young people wasn't it?

"She owns a variety of companies from ones that operate dog walking services, cleaners, care workers, temp office workers. A lot of umbrella companies. She isn't married but has two adopted daughters"

I was reading over Xander's shoulder even as he told me the highlights and then input her name on my computer to bring up the news articles. Yep, she was seen with men and speculation and rumors followed her around but there was no real evidence that she had ever had a long term relationship with a man.

"So how do we prove that it's her?"

I didn't want to jump to any conclusions until we had more evidence, but I could feel the excitement surging through me. Xander was more than a geek, he was incredible at accessing information and this time we were following the money. We had more piles of paper set out on the table, one for each of her companies and her personal finances. It took some doing and I was thanking Anya for having shown me the best way to look at balancing figures. With Xander using spreadsheets with a complicated formula we had our answer. Okay it had taken nearly six hours and I have to admit that how Renata had hidden her income was genius. But in the end the book keeping, invoices, income and expenditure didn't add up. How the tax department hadn't cottoned on mystified me. She was spending far more than she earned legitimately. Now though we had accounts and amounts of money that we could back track.

It had taken us just over three days, over 72 hours, to complete all of our searches and for me to add names and evidence to my overview on the board. We now had the two names that linked Renata to the rest of the organizational flow chart. One of which was one of the daughters, though I had suspicions that maybe that daughter was somehow her younger sister. The other was seen as a respected businesses man. yeah right. I would never see someone who ran an online betting site as respectable, but it gave a method to launder the money that moved in both directions.

All of the piles of paper were collected and filed together leaving the three important files at the top and the wall board still covered. It was time to inform Ben what we'd found.

"Are you saying that it's a woman?"

I raised my eyebrows at that chauvinistic comment. Women were just as good at business as men were.

"She doesn't get involved with any of the distasteful aspects of her organization. All of the evidence is there"

I pointed to the wall and the files wondering why Ben seemed so reticent to believe me.

"Shit. We use her company. Anyone had usually been temporary, but we still did a full check on them"

Ah, that was what was causing him to doubt us uit it did have me wondering if those contacts could have tipped her off to any planned raids.

"Look Ben. The staff that she uses are probably legit. They're her cover for what she's responsible for in the background. Look at the evidence and then you can decide what to do with it"

Xander was moving all of the paperwork onto a trolley and had pushed it to the door. So after Ben had photographed the board he was soon pushing all of our evidence out of the room. I felt myself sway as every ounce of energy seeped out of me and was soon being held by Xander.

"You need sleep. You've been at this for hours with little rest and you've burnt yourself empty"

I flinched slightly as he used the word burnt, but knew what he meant. I felt like I did after an adrenaline crash so knew that I needed to try to eat and sleep. Eating was too much effort but a couple of cans of soda did the trick, and I was soon being pushed into the room that held a bed. I stripped off my clothes on the way to the bed and pulling back the covers fell into the bed allowing the weariness to take over.