He had a feeling he knew what was going to come out of her mouth next.
"And what's that?"
"Did you never hear her ‘code name'?" He braced himself and waited.
"She's The Gambler."
"Now young man, how did you say you came to know our Jenna?"
"She's mine." That's all he'd say even as her eyes widened and she looked perplexed.
"So they used her to do what? Cheat people at cards?"
He should've broken every bone in Alphonso Bonata's body. It was too late for that now, the fuck was gone; but there might still be others out there and he wanted their names. Since her lying fuck mother wasn't talking, he figured this might be the only way to get the answers he needed. He couldn't say that he was surprised by her little bombshell. But he had the added worry of who else knew her as The Gambler and who might have it out for her because she'd skinned them at the tables. No wonder he'd never heard of her, that they'd taken her out of town.
He had thought this shit through and knew he wouldn't rest easy until everyone who knew about her talents was done. The gambling thing was new, he thought he only had to deal with the hacking and shit, but whatever.
"Oh she doesn't cheat, far as I can tell she just knows what to do, some call it card counting. But Hal has tested her a few times and he says that it's a little more than that. It's like she knows what's been played, but she also estimates what each player is holding in their hand according to what they hold and what they throw away. I really don't understand any of that; it's all very confusing for me. But I do know she's made these men millions if not more."
"Okay so she was gambling, she wasn't cheating, it's not illegal. Why the expose`?" There had to be more to it than that. For him it would be the fact that out of all these millions she was being paid with chocolate, not to mention the fact that she was being used in a way that she wouldn't have been able to understand. That more than anything else made his blood burn beneath his skin. He squeezed her as she sat there quietly, not interjecting, but following every word.
"I think there was more going on, like I said before, they were using some of the others as call girls, if you can believe that. Some of them were even being sold from what I discovered. Jenna was their meal ticket. Do you know that she's been financing the Bonatas for the better part of five years? We're not talking small change here. She was playing in the highest stakes games all around the world. Some of those games went on for days.
Some of the biggest names in the world were sitting at those tables. They had no idea that they were playing against someone with Jenna's abilities. People lives were destroyed, some lost everything; when word started getting around about her, there were threats made against her life. But that's not why I did this, I did it because of what I found when I started digging. Jenna unwittingly turned me on to some of the things that were going on.
On one of the rare occasions her mother let her visit my home, she was on the computer with Hal. Let's just say she scared the ‘you know what' out of him when she cracked into the pentagon's database. He knew what he was looking at because of my prior work with the defense commission.
He didn't let on to her that he knew what she was looking at, or that it was wrong, but through a series of questions, he was able to get out of her what she'd been doing. Up until then we thought it was just the gambling thing, and like you said, it's not illegal per se, but it was still wrong for her to be used in that way, and I was going to find a way to put a stop to it. But when we found out what all they had her and some of the others up to, we had to make a move. It would've been unethical not to as a grandmother, and as a representative of our great nation.
I don't know how much you know about the autistic community, but some of these kids and some adults as well, have amazing talents. Some we haven't even tapped into yet. This Bonata character somehow convinced some very influential men and women to exploit these people. We're talking children being ripped away from their families and being placed with others that were handpicked by him, or whoever else was working with him. He has families who were being paid by these unscrupulous men to foster these poor kids.
They would target them, in the beginning we didn't know how they knew who was who, but I suspect that the operation was very sophisticated. We found school officials, doctors, lawyers and the head of DHS. They were all in bed together. You might wonder how they found each other, or how they were able to convince these people to sell their souls, but in the end it was all about the money.
They'd have someone bring a trumped up charge against the biological parents so that they could remove the children from their homes and place them. Can you imagine a child like Jenna, so unassuming and innocent being taken advantage of like that? It broke our hearts; we had to do something.
It started with my granddaughter yes, but I couldn't sit back and let this go on after learning these things. The more we dug, the dirtier it became. A sanctioned government organization that had been set up to help children and families in need, was being used as a front for this … I don't even know what you'd call it. So I got the idea for the expose`, I knew the only way to flush the guilty parties out was to shine the spotlight on the whole sordid affair."
"Did your daughter know about this?"
"I didn't want to believe it, not at first. But when I brought some of it to her attention she seemed, I don't know. Either she didn't want to believe me, or she just wanted it to go away. When I started getting threats I didn't think anything of it. We always get threats when we're working on a cause. And no one else knew what I was doing; I kept this one close to the vest. I thought we were covering our tracks pretty well, because of the sensitive nature and of course to protect the innocents."
Jenna chose that moment to start her speed texting and Andros looked down at her little fingers as they sped across the letters. No one else had said anything once the senator started to talk, and the room was in almost complete silence, except for the tapping of her fingers.
He took his phone out when it chimed and read the message she had there. "Do you know a Spencer Dewitt?"
"Why yes, he's my assistant, he's the one helping me with the expose`; which I have to get back to by the way. The book's being launched in a couple days with the documentary following after."
"This guy have your documents, whatever it was that you were gonna use?"
"Why yes, yes he does."
"He's the one they sent to kill you."
"What? That can't be, he's … what?"
Jenna started typing again and he waited. "Do you have backups for all this shit?"
"I don't know, I have my notes and stuff, but Spencer took care of all that, I had other things that I've been working on. What are you saying? The book's launch is coming up soon, wouldn't the publisher have contacted me if there was a problem?"
"Not if your assistant used your name to squash it." She seemed genuinely flustered and upset; her husband put his arm around her and tried comforting her. Andros meanwhile was trying to work his mind around all the shit he'd learned. He didn't doubt that the shit she'd said was true. His only thoughts now were finding those who'd been exploited, and seeing to their care. He wasn't interested in the expose` and other bullshit.
People paid interest in those things only for as long as they were in the spotlight, as soon as the news stopped running it, people copped the attitude of, out of sight out of mind. Some of them even believed, that as long as it was no longer a running stream on the six o'clock news that the issue had been dealt with. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
"Jenna." The grandfather had gotten up from his seat next to his wife and gone to retrieve something from the bag he'd packed in a hurry. He handed Jenna a laptop before going back to his seat. Andros was about to ask him what the fuck, but the other man answered before he could open his mouth." Cathy used that for her work, if the records, manuscripts and all that are gone, Jenna can get them back."
"How?"
"You'll see." He smiled at his granddaughter with pride, much as gramps did on occasion when Andros had pleased him. Usually when he'd burned someone or fucked somebody's shit up for being stupid; but you had to take your proud moments where you could get them. Not everyone was a damn computer criminal.
She started fiddling with the thing and he looked over at his boys. "Find Spencer, add any names she gives you to the list." He was sanctioning a hit in front of a United Stated senator, but he pretty much didn't give a fuck. He was gonna eliminate every last motherfucker that had anything to do with this scheme. One because of the part she'd been forced to play in it; and two because of all the innocents they'd no doubt fucked over.