“So good news and bad news,” Hunt said as he pulled his glasses off and placed them onto Wyett’s lap. After he got done rubbing his eyes he said, “That guy that Blaise found today was named Bronson Huffman. Thirty-three. Ex-con and all-around go-getter. I say that because he’s been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. Petty theft. Robbery. Etcetera. But he found himself a good gig that paid. Transporting. According to him and his confession today, this was his first time transporting a child. A man and woman contacted him, on two separate occasions, and set this up with him. Transporting a child from our small town to a place in Deep East Texas. Though, according to him, he didn’t know that this child was kidnapped. He thought it was their child, but they were divorced, and he was taking this kid from one parent to the other.”
“Could be legit,” Six said, giving the man the benefit of the doubt. “Other than screaming at the little girl, he didn’t really do anything to harm her. Who was the guy that gave him the kid in the first place?”
He looked at me.
“That’s where I think Blaise might be in a bit of trouble,” Hunt said, sounding hesitant. “The handoff happened at the grocery store where she first saw the girl. I hacked into the feed there. The older man handed the kid off and left. And it was not even two seconds later that you can see Blaise come into view. She didn’t see anything, but the man that did the handoff isn’t going to know that. And since Blaise’s picture is already plastered all over the news for saving this girl, having followed her from a grocery store to the gas station on a stolen bike, I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep her identity hidden from that man. Who is definitely going to think that he was seen.”
“What about the woman that he was transporting to? Or the numbers that were called from? Any luck on those?” Bruno spoke up, leaning back in his chair with his arm over the back of the couch.
“Both non-working numbers as of early this morning. They were burners from a Walmart in Deep East Texas. Purchased with cash. I pulled up records of when they were bought. A man wearing a big ass sun hat bought them. No identifying marks or anything really special about him to identify him. Cameras in the parking lot show him getting into a nondescript black sedan the moment he gets out of the doors of the building. They were really good about avoiding all cameras in the store and in the parking lot,” Hunt explained.
“Fuck,” Lynn grumbled. “Fucking shit.”
Fucking shit was right.
“The man here is the focus,” Sin suggested. “We need to find him. This is probably a base station for him. He finds the kids here, arranges transport, and sends them on their way.”
I finished off the last of my pizza, my tummy pleasantly full, and leaned back on the couch that I was planted in.
That was when I realized that my pants were way too tight, and they were pushing weirdly on my lower belly which really, really didn’t feel good.
As surreptitiously as I could, I pushed the waistband of my yoga pants—thank God for yoga pants—down until it was on my lower hips.
My ass was probably showing on the backside, but as long as I didn’t get up too fast, I could keep that covered with my shirt.
When I looked up it was to find Beckham grinning at me.
“I remember when I was pregnant with Hiro, anything tight on my belly wasn’t ever comfortable. I couldn’t wear my regular clothes for nine freakin’ months,” she explained.
“That’s me now, too,” Six grumbled as she laid back on the couch, using Lynn as a pillow, and sprawled out with her feet on the coffee table next to the nearly empty pizza boxes. “That’s why I’m not wearing pants and I’m in this god-forsaken skirt.”
“Y’all make pregnancy sound very awesome,” Swayze drawled.
“It’s not all bad,” Wyett said as she joined in on the conversation with us, leaving the men to figure out how to deal with a couple of kidnappers. “At least from what Six tells me. She said that her sex life is on fire. That she has bigger boobs, and that she feels super good when she’s not puking.”