Talin's sense of horror multiplied a thousand times over.
"Second confirmed victim: Miu Li, age thirteen, died eleven months ago. She was a walk-in at Shine's Oklahoma facility. Did some tests, was entered into the tracking system, and disappeared." That peanut, he put closer to the saltshaker. "Victim number three: Hana Takuya, age fourteen, in her first year of an accelerated course funded by the Japan-Korea War Widows Trust. Its major donor is Shine.
"Victims four and five, Depe Lacroix, age ten, and Zoe Charles, age fourteen, threw me because they seemed to have no connection to Shine. Until," he said, mouth a grim line, "I traced their families and found they both had younger siblings who had been tapped by the foundation. Seems logical that Shine must've approached the older kids, too, and been rebuffed."
It continued like that until Max had connected all fifteen victims to Shine.
"My God." Her mind refused to believe. "But Shine is good...they help kids. They helped me." She rarely trusted, but she had given them a sliver of it.
"They might still be good," Clay said, to her surprise. "You have to have considered the idea of a mole in the foundation."
Max nodded. "Either that or Shine is a slick front for some very bad things. But I doubt that. If you're out to hunt kids, there are cheaper ways of doing it than by setting up a multimillion-dollar foundation. Whatever the truth, it's our best lead."
"You can't attack head-on." Talin leaned forward, desperate. "If they think you're getting too close, they might kill Jon." Hope, she thought, hope. Johnny D was still alive.
"I know." Max tapped the saltshaker. "That's where you were supposed to come in. You have a legitimate 'in' at Shine. I was going to ask you to go in, be my eyes and ears."
"But now she's been warned off, it's too dangerous." Clay slid his arm down to rest around her waist, his hand curving over her hip in a blatantly territorial gesture. "There's no question of her going in."
She bristled. "Hold on. You don't get to dictate - "
"He's right," Max interrupted. "If it is a mole and not a case of the entire organization being dirty, that mole has to be pretty high up. The bastard clearly has access to preliminary contact reports from around the country. He or she will either make sure you don't see anything useful or shut you up for good."
"Men," she muttered, agreeing with them but loath to show it, given Clay's arrogant pronouncement. "Okay, even if I don't go in, we need information from the inside somehow."
"Anybody you trust there?" Max asked.
"Dev - Devraj Santos," she said without hesitation. Clay's hand tightened on her hip. She retaliated with a scowl. "He's a good guy."
"He's also the director." Max's face was grim.
"No. He'll help us." She turned to Clay. "You know what I mean. Tell him."
After a taut second, he nodded. "Talin's instincts about people are pure gold."
His support warmed her even as she realized he was calling her Talin again. They had only been together a day and already she knew that meant trouble. A strange exhilaration in her gut, she returned her attention to Max. "That's not everything, is it?"
Max nodded. "First thing - absolutely no one but me, the medical examiner, and a couple of detectives I trust - knows this. The bodies were all missing some organs."
It was too much. Her heart felt frozen in her chest.
"Which organs?" Clay's hand stroked over her hip, jerking her out of her shell-shocked state and firmly back into the present. "Could we be talking black market?"
Talin saw where he was going. While the world had come a long away in the field of artificial and cloned organs, certain parts of the human body continued to defy medical science's efforts to create perfect replicas. Added to that, a small subsection of society preferred donor organs over cloned ones. "Did they take the heart or eyes?" It was impossible not to remember those eyes filled with laughter and hope.
Max nodded. "But I think those removals were a front for the real goal, red herrings to divert our attention in exactly this direction."
"I don't understand." Talin frowned. "Hearts are the most expensive and difficult to clone and eyes follow close behind."
Clay suddenly went predator-still. "There's one other very complicated organ you haven't yet mentioned."
Talin watched the men's eyes lock, felt the murky truth pass between them. But her mind refused to make the connection. "What?" she asked, frustrated.
"The brain, Talin." Max's tone was full of quiet grief. "All the victims found early enough to perform a soft tissue analysis were missing their brains."
Clay sensed Talin's shock, her driving pain. It threatened to tear the heart right out of him. "How good was the surgery?" he asked, holding her tighter.
"Top of the line. This is an organized operation, not some lone whack job, especially if you factor in the geographical spread of the victims, the schedule of body dumps, and the lack of evidence - the kids had literally no trace on their bodies but for a single fiber."