“Okay, tell me what you guys think of this. What if one of you men went into the Jade Thai Spa to ask for a massage and see if in the course of that massage they make an offer for more than that?” Emily suggested.
“More than that? You mean sex?” Alex asked. “I’ll volunteer,” he said, raising his hand.
“Oh, no you won’t,” Isabel reprimanded, flashing him a sarcastic grin.
“Isabel’s right. It should be Colin or Peter,” Emily recommended. “They have more experience in working undercover.”
“We’ll need some kind of hidden camera,” Peter said. “Emily, you’re a private eye. Do you have anything like that?”
“No, nothing small enough to hide in this situation.”
“Colin, can you get your hands on a tiny camera,” Peter asked, “like a button camera, or something hidden in a pair of glasses?”
“Boy, I don’t know.” Colin shook his head. “Paradise Valley Police Department is pretty small, but maybe I can borrow something from my friends at the Boise PD.”
“Or I may be able to get some equipment from the FBI, especially since they’re going to be very interested in this case if you turn up anything,” Isabel added.
“Oh, this all sounds so excitin’. What can I do?” Maggie asked.
“Just sit there looking pretty,” Peter said with a patronizing smile. “This could get dangerous.”
Maggie’s voice, which was normally upbeat and lilting, took on a stern tone as she looked Peter in the eye. “I know y’all don’t know me very well, Peter, but I’m a lot more than just a pretty face. Maybe your sister hasn’t told you, but Emily, Isabel, and I teach self-defense classes to women at the Y—I can take down a man twice my size.”
“I’m so sorry. I must have sounded like a condescending jerk,” Peter apologized.
“I’d say you stepped in it big time,” Alex kidded.
“Can we get back to the plan?” Emily crossed her arms and paced a few times in the center of the room. “If the offer of sex is made, I want to make sure the madam is willing to bring the girl to you somewhere else.”
“Like a hotel?” Maggie asked.
“Yes, excellent idea,” Peter remarked, which made Maggie smile.
“But why do you want her to bring the girl somewhere else? Can’t the police swoop in and arrest the whole bunch right then and there?” Maggie asked.
“To my way of thinking, divide and conquer is cleaner and safer for everyone involved,” Emily replied. “You guys agree?”
The nodding heads assured her they were in agreement.
“We just need to decide who’s going to be the patsy that goes in for the massage, because he’ll have to be the same guy who meets the girl at the hotel,” Isabel said.
“I volunteer,” said Peter. “I want the story.”
“Colin?” Emily asked.
“Let Peter do it, then I’ll swoop in for the arrest.”
The group spent the next half hour throwing ideas around for how and when they could work out the sting. If they were able to confirm the young Asian girls were being used for sex trafficking, then the FBI and the Boise PD SWAT team would need to be pulled into the operation quickly.
Isabel agreed to alert her FBI contacts to their plan, knowing they would want to be in charge of the operation. And Colin said he would inform his chief, as well as make contact with people he knew in the Boise Police Department to gain their involvement. If the operation was to proceed and the girls rescued, there would have to be a precisely timed orchestration of taking down this ring at several different locations simultaneously.
“We’ll have to have a well-defined plan in place to move quickly if sex is offered and the madam agrees to bring one of the girls to the hotel,” Colin said.
“My guess is she will. I’ll bet that’s what was happening when we first ran into the girl crying in the hotel restroom,” Emily said. “The poor thing probably knew what was waiting for her and she didn’t want to go.”
“And we’ll need time to get the hidden cameras, earbuds, and microphones together,” Isabel pointed out.
“I don’t want to wait too long. Every day we lose, those girls might have to prostitute themselves with who knows how many men,” Emily said.
“From what I’ve learned, it could be up to ten a night,” Peter added.
“Now remember, we’re planning this whole thing on very little evidence,” Colin pointed out. “Jade Thai Spa could simply