Shauna wound down her report on Hannah’s Home activities, staffing and finances. We were at about half capacity, with thirty of our fifty-six cabin spots being filled on a rotating basis as survivors returned home and others took their place. We discussed plans for another eleven four-person cabins, bringing out available capacity to one hundred survivors and agreed that we should start work on them within the next month. Using the standard cabin design from out last expansion, Shauna would only need to consult with our architect for the placing of the new cabins. Shauna would verify the availability of the contractors that had built the last set of cabins and see if she could get some a discount before finalizing with them.
From a staffing perspective, a new cook had been hired, as well as two more councillors and two more teachers. Diane had been able to make the most of our relationship with Galt University by integrating Hannah’s Home into the curriculum. Galt’s schools of psychology, education, and law all had professors that were giving out extra-credit assignments that involved working with the survivors and helping them overcome their challenges.
Financially, the foundation was doing great. My efforts with James were paying off and we were able to meet all of the foundations’ expenses using only our gains in the market. In addition, the auction of the largest diamond that I’d found with Mark on our day off at the diamond mine last year had been completed in Europe a few weeks ago and the money had been transferred to the foundation accounts. James would have a total of over forty million dollars to play with now. Finally, Gabriel had been successful in transferring all of the money from the Serpentine and Basilisk accounts into our own, secret, off-shore accounts and he was confident that over the next few years, he’d be able to bring that money in through anonymous donations to the foundation.
“What are your plans for all that money, Abby? This place doesn’t need it and the money keeps growing.”
“I have two projects that I’d like to see the foundation take on. The first one is the expansion of Hannah’s Home to other parts of the country and eventually to Europe as well. We should start thinking of how many we’d like to open up here in the United States and where. Then we’ll see if there are other compounds like this one available for sale at a decent price. Maybe Sister Clara can help us out there by letting us know who to reach out to at the Church. Ideally, our future expansion properties will have clinics like Sister Clara’s on site.”
“That’s great, but the way things are going now, that won’t actually eat into much of the foundation’s coffers since you’ll be expanding piecemeal. By the time you open the third Hannah’s Home, the second will have been paid off by the returns in your trading account. What’s your other plan?”
“That’s going to stay a secret for now. I want to lock it in before I tell anyone about it. I need six more months before I can share it with you and everyone else.”
“You and your secrets. Where does this obsessive need to keep things to yourself come from? Or is it just that you love the ‘big reveal’ moment and shocking people?”
“Have you been talking to Mark lately? This sounds more like him that it does you.”
Shauna gave me a wicked grin. “I might have spoken to Mark the other day while you were taking Jake and Harry through that VR simulation. Your name might have come up and it’s possible that some of your penchants were discussed.”
I started laughing. “Penchants? Yeah, now I know for sure you were talking with Mark. Who even uses that word anymore? I think Shakespeare was the last one before Mark. Anyways, enough with Analyze Abby time. Did you get a chance to look into our copy of Agora database for Ana, or do we need to wait for Kevin’s report in an hour?”
“She’s in it. It took me a bit to find her, since she’s not listed under her real name. I had to use the approximate date of her abduction. She was assigned a number and I had to enter that number in another database to track down where she was sold to. It’s listed as a farm in Wyoming. Google Earth shows almost nothing around for miles. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“Is she still there?”
“There’s no way to tell. Agora only keeps track of the initial sale. Kevin will have found out all this and might have more information. I guess you’ll be calling in Roger on this one.”
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“Depending on what Kevin says. Maybe they’re already mounting an operation to rescue her.”
“We’ll find out in just a little bit.”
We did. Kevin was early and we had him join us in the conference room with Jenny and Gabriel. He started off by thanking us again for the offline copy of the Agora database.
“You have no idea what kind of storm you stirred up with that database. My boss has been put in charge of a massive taskforce, comprised of agents working for over ten different law enforcement agencies, whose task is to track down every one of these victims and bring their kidnappers to justice. For my part, I’m reporting my progress directly to the head of the FBI every week and have over fifty agents under my command. We’ve also uncovered some European leads and we’ve passed those on to the CIA. They’ve been working in conjunction with Interpol to shut down that end of things.”
“Have you guys made any rescues yet? Should we be getting ready for a large influx in survivors here at Hannah’s Home?” Shauna was leaning forward eagerly in anticipation.
“Yes and definitely. We’ve moved on the more prominent traffickers and customers first, as they have the most resources to hide once they find out we we’re after them. Thirteen politicians and five actors have already been arrested and charged. There are dozens more high-profile arrests to be made. We’ve been keeping the whole operation very quiet. We’re trying to avoid spooking any of them and having them kill their captives. Coordinating all the moving parts in the task force has been a bear, but we’ve finally got the bear moving forward. We’ve freed over fifty captives so far. By the end of next week that number should be at two hundred. The week after that will see that number double.”
“That’s great news, Kevin. Hopefully, some of them will come here for help and we’ll be able to do our part in helping them restart their lives. From what you just said though, you should be too busy to be here giving us a report. Why are you here?”
I was being a little rough with Kevin because I was disappointed by the number of rescues so far. His explanation made a lot of sense, with all the care they had to take not to get the captives killed and with the interdepartmental coordination that was required, but they’d had the Agora database for over two months! As Roger, I could have rescued more that fifty captives in two months by myself. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, realizing that as Roger, I didn’t need to bother with all the legal niceties like evidence and probable cause and convincing judges and juries and so on. They did have to worry about all that, in addition to the fact that they were going after powerful people with deep pockets, so I guessed that it made sense that they’d want to make sure that they did things by the book.
“I was originally coming here today to ask you for Roger’s help. When Shauna sent me the information on Ana, I looked into it and found that we had another reason to talk. With Ana, I have some good news and some less than good news. Which do you want to hear first?”
“Good news first. Always.”
“Ok. We found Ana in the database. She was sold to a farm in Wyoming and she worked there until two weeks ago. She was used as slave labor and assembled parts for resale in an underground bunker. She was not sexually abused during her time there. The farm owners were ok with keeping working their captives to exhaustion every day while giving them little in the way of food, but they drew the line at sexual abuse of minors. Once the minors came of age though, they had no issues selling them to the highest bidder. I know all this because we raided that farm last week and rescued the nine girls working there. The farm was owned by one of those politicians that I mentioned. We have enough on him to put him away for life.”
“So where’s Ana now?”
“That’s the bad news. We don’t know exactly. A different group of slave runners were shipping her to Florida. They go slow and pick up slaves from all over when they’re making these cross country trips. However, we do know where they’re going to end up since we know who the buyer is. Ideally we would be waiting there when their runners make their delivery. In this case, we can’t be there. We’re spread out too thin as it is and we don’t have the manpower to have a team standing around waiting for days for Ana and the rest of the girls to show up. The plan is to circle back in a week and catch them then.”
Kevin must have seen the anger on my face because he leaned back in his chair and put up his hands in a warding gesture. “It’s not my call, Abby. I made the case for having the police go in and help the girls. The higher ups weren’t interested. It’s not a glory thing, they’re just doing the math differently. They want to take down the whole network, not just one part of it. They know the girls will be harmed by it, but they’re thinking of all the girls down the line that won’t be.”
“Do you have any idea how many times those girls can be violated in a week? It’s a miracle that they haven’t been sexually abused so far and you propose to wait until they’ve been raped a few times before you go in there and save them? Are you guys out of your minds? I’m not going to let them be sacrificed for some potential benefit so some other girls down the line. Tell me where to find them and Roger will take care of it.” I stood up and put my hand out for his file. Reluctantly, he handed it over and I started going through it until I found the address and headed out the door.
“Wait, I need to talk to you about Roger.” Kevin called from his seat.
I continued my exit and said, “We’ll talk about it once Ana is back in Edna’s arms!” and slammed the door behind me.