Taken by E.M. Leya

CHAPTER NINE

"It's been a week." Matt paced the living room. "We should have some lead by now." He stared at the group sitting around him. They'd hardly left the team house since they'd realized Trenton had been taken.

"We're using every resource we have." Kasey sighed. "I don't know what else to do, where else to look."

Matt knew that. He'd been following traffic cameras and searching license plates for the last few days. He'd thought he found the car that had left the bar with Trenton in it, but it turned out to be stolen. It had been abandoned at a local hospital parking lot and found two days after Trenton went missing. At Noam's insistence, the police had looked for evidence but had found nothing.

"There's got to be something we're missing." Bryon sat on the couch, his arms resting on his knees as he leaned forward, looking over the group.

"We've got nine men, ages twenty-two to thirty-five missing from California in the last two months. We can assume half those are missing because they choose to be, but at least four or five of those men had something happen. I'm digging into each name and looking for any ties that match up. So far, I know two have been taken from bars. I'm working on getting the video from them legally, but if it takes much longer, I'll have you do your work, Matt." Noam rested his arm around Kasey's shoulders from where they sat on the couch.

"Why wait? Give me the names of the bars now. The longer we sit on this waiting for legal resources to come through, the longer Trenton is missing." Matt hated this. They all knew what was probably happening to Trenton, if he was still alive. His gut told him he was, but for how long, he just didn't know.

They all turned as the door opened and Faith rushed inside. She ran to Matt, hugging him tightly. "Dad, tell me you found him."

Matt buried his face against his daughter's hair and sighed. He didn't want her here for this. She was supposed to be enjoying her summer as she got ready for another year of college. She'd made good friends back east, and had opted to spend the summer there with them until he'd had to tell her about Trenton. "No, nothing new yet."

Xander followed Faith in and looked at the group, his gaze serious, but he said nothing. He didn't have to. They all felt the same way, were thinking the same things.

"You shouldn't have come." Beau moved to Faith, hugging her as soon as she released her dad.

"I couldn't stay there. I have to help. There has to be something I can do." She looked around the room. "Don't keep things from me. I'm an adult. I know the world isn't a nice place. Tell me everything you guys know."

Matt sighed and gestured for her to sit down. "We don't have much." He told her about the bar, the drugs, the car. "We're searching, but there's not a lot to go on."

Xander came to stand beside him. Just having him close helped ease the feeling of hopelessness. He had to remember that just like he'd never given up trying to find Faith, they wouldn't give up looking for Trenton.

"I think it's time to call his brother. He needs to know Trenton is missing. I hate we won't have much to tell him, but he deserves to know what is going on. He's welcome to come down and stay at Trenton's apartment, but I don't know enough about him to let him come here and see what we do," Bryon told the group.

"I'll call him," Matt said. "I've talked to him a few times before when Trenton had him on speakerphone. He thinks Trenton and I share office space for some tech company. I'll give him the basics and let him know the police are involved.

"That works for me." Bryon nodded.

"I can't just sit here and wait for more information." Kasey looked around the room. "What do we know on adult trafficking rings in the area?"

"There are a few we are aware of. One only deals with women. The other is rumored to have a pipeline to Mexico and the cartels, but it's in San Diego. There is talk of a trafficking ring that caters to the rich, but finding information on it is nearly impossible. It's a pay-to-play sort of thing. Think of a high-end brothel, only they force people into sexual slavery instead of paying them for it. I've heard movie stars, politicians, and even foreign royalty take part in it. It can be as extreme as you're willing to pay for, including selling humans for slavery, snuff films, child pornography, and so on. Rumor is it's located somewhere here in California, but I can't confirm anything. My guess is there are locations across the world for the rich and perverted to use whenever they want." Matt wished he'd dug into things more.

"I can dig into that stuff," Bryon offered.

"I can use all the help on the computers I can get right now. It's all we have."

"I'm searching court records," Becca told them. "Looking for links to any adult trafficking we've had come through the system.

"I'm also looking up attempted kidnappings at clubs in the area. Things that look to be a bit more than a simple date rape attempt. I've found two cases where college-aged men have come forward saying someone tried to force them into a vehicle after drugging them. In both cases, the men hadn't drunk much of their drink at the bar so the effects of the drugs were limited. They both managed to escape. They were both in the Los Angeles area and happened two weeks apart. I'm meeting with both men to find out if they might know more than is in the police reports. I've also got a friend pulling toxicology reports on both men from the nights the attempted kidnappings happened. If we can find out for sure what drugs they are using, it might give us a lead." Noam glanced at Beau. "If I give you the names, maybe you can see if anything pulls up in the hospital records you have access to?"

"Sure. In fact, give me the name of the drugs used and I'll talk to the other doctors in the emergency room and see if they recall others coming in that fit that profile. There has to be more cases, either failed attempts or missing person's reports somewhere." Beau shook his head. "We all think we are safe from this. That our knowledge protects us. This proves it doesn't. Trenton did nothing that the rest of us don't do on a regular basis."

"Other than going alone." Xander shook his head. "If I'd just gone with him."

"You couldn't have known. We've all turned down offers to go out at one point or another, and we've almost all gone out alone at one time." Matt leaned against Xander, giving him support. He knew how deep Xander's guilt ran and he hated he could do nothing to ease it. He knew how he felt. He'd been the same way when Faith had been taken. He put all the blame on himself.

"The only people to blame are the traffickers. If that's even why they took him. It could be something else completely and our minds just go to trafficking because of what we do. We need more leads. More information." Faith twisted her hair into a tight bun and secured it. "Give me something to do. I don't know what, but I need to keep busy."

Becca stood. "We need to feed these guys. We've all been working around the clock and not eating. If we are going to be any good to Trenton, we need to keep our strength up. Let's see what we have in there to cook."

Faith nodded, but stared back at the rest of the guys. "If you need anything, let me help. Don't shut me out on this. The days of protecting me are over. I can handle this."

Matt stared at his very grown daughter, wondering where the little girl had gone. The years had flown by. "I promise we won't keep anything from you." He left Xander's side and went to her. "I'm glad you're home." He kissed her cheek softly, then tried to reassure her. "We'll find him. We have to."

She smiled. "You guys found me. You can find him."

As he watched her walk off to the kitchen, he couldn't help but pray that she was right.