Page 244 of Seasons of Love
I didn't have time to think about it because Fred decided to change the subject to talk about the real reason he'd stopped by.
"I'm sorry I've been missing. I know I normally tell you when I go undercover, but things happened so quickly, and I didn't have time to warn you."
"That's okay, you're here now, but you don't look well. Did anything bad happen this time?"
Fred took a moment to choose his words.
"A few years ago, when I was still new in the force, I heard of this pedophile network that had come to an end when they were reported by someone. They were running a massive underground network that provided images and videos to another organization that posted them online. They were difficult to catch because they weren't the ones with the digital print. What they didn't count on was being reported by the son of one of the top guys when he found out what his father was up to.
"When I joined the special missing children's unit, I suggested we create a safe space online where anyone can report any activity where they believe children are being abused. We made it super safe so we couldn't identify the people sending the messages. We wanted to tell the public that they could report things anonymously and we would investigate."
"Did you get a lot of fake reports?" I asked.
"We did, but we also received a few that helped us put some criminals in jail. We hoped that making this public would encourage anyone who was afraid for their safety or the safety of their loved ones to report the activity because we wouldn't know who they were.
"With advances in technology, that website became more or less obsolete. We wouldn't ever shut it down because some people may still have the link and use it, but we didn't get any new reports. That was until about a year ago. There was so little on it, I thought it was a joke, but I still replied to the message. It took two months until I had another message from the same guy using a different name.
"How do you know it was the same guy?" Tiago asked.
"I didn't at the time. It took four messages over six months for the guy to realize that I really couldn't know who he was. That's when he said he was the one sending those messages. I spent some time building his trust. Something told me that he was reporting something big, but also that he was afraid of what would happen not just to him but to others if the information came into the wrong hands.
"I've established that he has access to a number of children that have been groomed and kidnapped. In the last few weeks, I've been working with a network of special agents to coordinate the rescue. What we were missing was the location."
He paused, and my gut feeling told me he was about to pull the rug from under Tiago's feet. I tightened my hold around him and his movement to burrow farther into my chest told me he felt the same.
"I need a halfway house for the kids once they're out. The center is the ideal place because you already have support people in place, and if the press gets wind of this, the first places they'll look are the police stations and hospitals."
"Yes, of course," Tiago said. "The center is closed at the moment because we have some plumbing issues, so no one will be coming in. I'll do anything I can to help."
"There's one more thing."
"Anything."
"I convinced the guy to meet up with me so we could go through the rescue plan. I met him a week ago. Tiago. It's Afonso."
18
TIAGO
"Wha… what?" I wasn't sure I'd heard Fred properly. My mind had been running at a thousand miles an hour, already planning the help we could provide to those kids. We had two nurses who had access to further medical support if we needed and a few social workers who were always available to us. I'd assumed that as a halfway house, our job was to keep the kids safe so they could be assessed and then be taken to a medical facility or back to their families.
Tears started running down my cheeks, and Vítor's arms tightened around me. It was almost painful, but I needed that to stop me from crumbling completely.
"Baby, take deep breaths." I heard Vítor, but he sounded far away. I tried to focus on his voice and count with him in my head as I took a breath and then let it out, but my brain was resisting because it was focused on those words, "It's Afonso."
When I was able to breathe again on my own, I noticed Fred was holding my hands fiercely, and Vítor had moved me so I was on his lap. There was a glass of water on the coffee table. When had all that happened?
I looked at Vítor, unsure of what to say.
"Fred knows where he is, baby, and we're going to bring him home safe, you hear me?"
I was unable to do anything else but nod.
"You met him a week ago. Why didn't you say something?" I asked Fred.
"I couldn't, Tiago. Apart from working on the investigation practically every hour of the day, I'd have been in serious trouble if I was caught sharing any information at the time."
"You said he had access to the kids. What does that mean?" I asked.
