Mina started shaking and I closed my eyes.
"The pictures, though … those were what forced me to follow their orders."
"What were they?" She turned to face me, crossing her legs to allow her to get as close as she could without actually being on top of me.
"Pictures of her … " I closed my eyes. "Exposed. They took shots of her genitals. Her nipples, and her face." I swallowed thickly. "They were clinical, to me. But they wouldn't be to someone else. Not to some sick fuck child porn addict."
Mina moaned and her chin started to wobble.
"I took Sienna and the pictures and went straight to Silas. He set me up with a married couple that his son, Sam, lived with in their compound in Kilgore, Texas. They were good with computers," I hastily added so she didn't start freaking out. "Went there, watched them take down pictures from over forty sites. Took them over eleven hours, but they found every one of them … "
"But … " Mina asked carefully neutral.
"But my father and mother still have some on a jump drive." I growled under my throat. "And this wasn't the only thing the two of them found. They found hundreds of thousands of pictures, all of children."
She moaned beside me.
I couldn't look at her, my shame was too great.
"And there were manifests. Times and dates that showed shipments," I said. "Shipments that I found out later were of children who had been kidnapped from all over the country, sold and then delivered all over the world to buyers who had a desire for little kids."
Mina moved, ran straight to the bathroom, and threw up her breakfast into the non-working toilet.
I stayed where I was, frozen in my own horror.
"What else?" Mina croaked from the bathroom.
"We took everything we found to Silas, who took it to Lynn. Lynn had already been investigating them, unbeknownst to me, but what we found on them wasn't enough. The search, was done illegally, so it couldn't be used against them," I continued. "So I pledged to help them find whatever they wanted me to find. I started digging right away, and in doing so, I ruined our lives."
"How?"
She was sitting on the tile floor of the bathroom, staring at me with her hands wrapped tightly around her knees.
"I tried to help. I had no fuckin' clue what I was dealing with at the time. I was so incensed and full of rage that I couldn't see how far I was getting myself in until I was already at the bottom." I looked away. "Then, not paying attention, I tried to help Rue that day."
She looked at me sharply.
My club brother had trouble following his woman, and I'd been helping watch over her when someone had tried to set her house on fire with her in it.
"While I was trying to help her, I got a message."
She sat up to her knees, reading the change in me immediately.
I gathered her clothes, leaving her panties that had some questionable liquid on them, and handed them to her.
///
She dressed without another word.
"I was to either agree to help them, or they'd shoot you."
"But … "
"They had a rifle pointed at your head. You were at work, in a room with a patient. You were smiling and had your favorite blue scrubs on with the white flowers. The ones I'd seen you leave for work in that morning."
Her eyes went huge. "I could see you through the scope. They'd taken a picture and had sent it to me. I was to agree to help them, or they'd kill you. Right then and there."
"And you faked your death?" she gasped.
"Not intentionally, no," I disagreed. "That was just how it worked out. I agreed, yes, and about that time a beam fell in front of me, blocking my exit."
"So, you really did die."
I nodded.
"Twice, actually," I said. "I was clinically dead. On the way to the hospital, it was just a formality since I was a police officer. They wanted to say that they did everything that they possibly could. With the brothers doing CPR on me, it'd gotten enough oxygen into my lungs that when they started CPR in the ambulance, it actually worked. I regained a pulse. I wasn't going to live, though. My lungs were fucked up, and they weren't sure if I'd suffered oxygen deprivation or not. I was on the road to death. But somehow … " I shook my head. "I don't know how they did it. Falsified patient reports. Reported me dead. Nobody, luckily, requested to see my body." I looked at her pointedly. "It all worked out perfectly for my parents to steal me away. They searched donor registries, and then killed him for his lungs … I had a lung transplant … "