New York – FBI Missing Persons
It had been a Friday when they had all flown into New York, so it wasn't until Monday that everyone gathered in the Missing Persons office. When Vin did arrive, he was leading his pack as everyone had expected. What they didn't expect was to see Chris Larabee limping and wearing quite a few bandages.
They also weren't expecting to see Dr. Jackson facing down his pack's Alpha. "Damnit Chris! You will sit down and I mean now! Those knife wounds aren't anything to mess with!" Chris just snarled and sat down at the conference table next to the white board where Vin's FBI picture was hanging.
Every present member of the pack was avoiding looking at Chris, except for Dr. Jackson who hovered. Jack decided to take his que from Vin and did his best not to antagonize Larabee, who looked ready to bite the next person who got too close. He knew what the injuries were. Larabee had been in a dominance fight. That would make him touchier than usual; it wouldn't take much of anything to set him off.
As no one else here was injured he could only guess that it was with one or more of the Alphas of the New York Packs. There were three that he knew of that divided New York up between them, rather like a street gang or more accurately, several wolf packs sharing territory boundaries. A new pack moving in would have to negotiate a reworking of the territories, either that or take one over and kill or absorb the original pack. He just hoped that no one else had died.
Two Bloods had a low population as it was. Even if Larabee had killed someone, there was nothing that could be done about it. Two Blood dominance fights were outside of human laws and were only subject to Pack law. And Pack law stated that dominance fights were between those fighting and no matter what the outcome; everyone had to abide by that outcome. There was no such thing as an appeal. If someone was stubborn enough not to yield and died in the fight, then that was that. No further action would be taken.
Jack reached over and handed Vin a new badge. It had Vincent Tanner on the id portion. "Here you go Tanner; the rest of your paperwork should be done by Friday. Now, everyone listen up. Vivian got the 'hack' warrants. That means that everything has to be by the book. There will be no fudging anything at all during this investigation. If you find something illegal, but the warrants don't cover it, you must, I repeat, you must go and back track it another way and get a different warrant to cover that information. No exceptions!" Jack gave his own version of Larabee's glare.
When he had received nods from everyone at the table (he still hadn't looked at Larabee, he wasn't that stupid) he waved at the piles of papers on the table in front of him. "We've managed to confirm 70 kidnappings from hospitals and doctor's offices going back thirty years. Vivian has confirmed that all of them except Vin died within ten years of being kidnapped. Unfortunately not all of them were infants. We've found that they've taken children as old as five years old from their families and placed this death curse on them. They net an average of $50,000.00 per child that they adopt out this way."
"Jack, we've managed to find two more." Sam placed a folder down on the table. "Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald told us about a couple they had referred to the adoption agency. They adopted a set of twin girls, the girls are ten years old now. The adoptive parents are in interrogation room three right now, the girls are at the hospital. The Witches there have confirmed that both girls are also under the death curse. It has been removed and the girls are undergoing therapy while we try to locate their birth parents."
Low snarls and growls came from the pack members sitting at the table. It was Vin who got them under control. "Ease up pards, them little gals is gonna be ok. Now's the time to track these varmints down and we'll give 'em what they deserve when we know who's all involved."
Larabee nodded and Ezra spoke up. "Quite right, Mr. Tanner, I wouldn't want any of these vile miscreants to escape justice." He was fiddling with a deck of cards, shuffling them and doing card tricks, pulling up one card after another. He was very good at it, Jack decided, even more so as he didn't even seem to realize what he was doing.
"These," he tapped seven piles in front of him, "are everything we have on the men who work at the agency. While we also have files on the women, I know that you are only interested in the men as it was a man who cursed Vin. Now, we know that most of the adoptions going through this agency are legal. We know that these men," and he shoved five of the files a little apart from the others, "are involved with the illegal ones. One of them has to be the warlock or wizard who places the curse on these kids. We can't tell who it is just yet. Until we do, no one is to go after these men. I don't want anyone to walk into a magical ambush because we got careless."
"If you don't mind, Agent Malone?" Ezra asked as he and Josiah reached for the files. While Buck, JD and Vin gathered around them to read over their shoulders, Dr. Jackson stayed put at Larabee's elbow. Chris just snorted at Nathan's hovering. The man hadn't changed much after all these years, there wasn't anything he could do to change him now.
Jack didn't mind at all, not only would it keep them occupied, it left the women that they knew were involved to the rest of them. While they knew that it was a man who had cursed Vin, that didn't mean that one of the women couldn't be involved in the magical end of things as well. Every possibility had to be investigated. To do any less would be do play a game of magical Russian Roulette with people who had already stooped to placing death curses on children and infants for the tens of thousands of dollars in fees that they could charge.