Chapter 25.

"Good morning," Charlie said, her perfectly painted lips curved in what she hoped was a gracious and sincere smile. Her red, curly wig once more partially hid her face, along with the gla.s.ses with the purple frames.

"h.e.l.lo," the young woman greeted, returning her smile. "May I help you?"

Charlie noted the name badge on the woman's scrubs. Xia. No last name...or maybe that is her last name. d.a.m.n, I can't tell. With a quick look to the side, she observed the crowded waiting room of the Cheung Clinic, most of the plastic chairs filled with families or moms with their children. The noise level was high and Charlie leaned in a little closer so that her request could be heard.

"I hope so," she replied. "I'm working on behalf of an anonymous donor who is looking to make a donation to an organization that supplies a.s.sistance to the area's homeless."

The woman's smile widened and she said, "Wonderful. Let me give you a brochure on the clinic." Reaching over to a plastic holder sitting on her desk, she whipped out a shiny, tri-fold brochure.

At a glance, Charlie knew it held no new information for her. "Thank you, but I have this information. I was hoping to arrange a tour or speak to someone about the special services for the homeless."

Xia's eyes narrowed instantly, but her smile remained on her face. With a spread of her arm, she said, "What you are looking at is essentially all there is to see. Of course, behind me are the examining rooms which, I'm sure you can understand, would be off limits to protect the privacy of our patients. We also have a small lab, x-ray equipment, a sonogram machine, EKG equipment, and a few other specialized rooms to a.s.sist with the families that come to us."

"How on earth do you provide all of this?" Charlie asked, her voice dripping with awe.

"We obtain funding through many sources, and the director uses his influence with the area's societies looking to a.s.sist."

"I was under the impression that you also had room for some patients to stay overnight if necessary."

"I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. We are only a walk-in clinic, not a hospital."

"Oh, so no surgeries can be performed here?" Charlie prodded.

"Certainly not. Our physicians deliver care to the people who come, regardless of their ability to pay or not."

Tapping a fake nail on her chin, Charlie wondered what her next step should be. This woman was not going to let her gain any further information. Deciding to push her luck, she added, "So, no one from this clinic solicits the homeless in the area to get them to come? No one seeks out potential patients and gives them...oh, I don't know...perhaps a card to bring in with them for access to special treatment?"

At that statement, Xia's wide-eyed, tight-lipped expression hardened her face as she glared at Charlie. "No. Certainly not. As you can see from our packed waiting room, we have no need to solicit for patients. We are stretched thin as it is."

Nodding her head toward the noisy, chaotic waiting room, she smiled. "Yes, I can see that you are. Well, I will certainly let the benefactor know what I have learned." Turning, she headed out of the clinic and walked down the street, hailing a taxi at the corner.

The driver glanced in the rear-view mirror, his eyes hidden behind his sungla.s.ses. "Any luck?"

Charlie smiled up at Luke and said, "They're hiding something. I know they are. Did you get it on tape?"

Luke spoke into his earpiece and, after a moment, nodded his head. "Yeah, Jude's got the video and audio right now." Within a few minutes, the two alighted from the taxi and jumped into the waiting Saints' SUV.

Lin w.a.n.g's cell phone vibrated during a long-a.s.s, boring staff meeting and she discreetly checked the caller. Slipping out of the room with an apologetic grimace to the man sitting next to her, she walked out of the room and down the hall.

"w.a.n.g," she answered succinctly.

"Problem."

"Immediate?"

"Maybe."

Disconnecting, her grimace was no longer fake as she pondered how best to get to her contact while in the middle of the FBI headquarters. The noise from around the corner indicated the meeting had ended and she was glad to have only missed the last minute of it, to avoid suspicion.

"Got a problem?" came a deep voice from behind.

Startling, she quickly recovered as she turned, a small smile that did not reach her eyes on her face. "Nick, I hear you've been a.s.signed to a.s.sist with the investigation into Eli's murder."

Nodding, his typical impa.s.sive expression in place, he observed her carefully, noting she avoided his question. "Yeah. I'm reviewing the forensic evidence to see if it matches up to any of the cold cases I've worked on."

The two continued down the hall toward another group of offices, their physical differences almost comical. Lin's pet.i.te stature next to Nick's six foot, four-inch muscular frame caused her to have to twist her head while leaning back to look into his face.

"You seemed upset by your phone call," he reminded. "Everything okay?"

"Yes, absolutely," she quipped dismissively, stopping at her cubicle. "I'll forward you the file I've worked on, if you'd like."

"I've already started but see no reason not to avail myself of your work as well," he replied smoothly before watching her turn toward her desk. "Just email it to me." He watched her nod, tight lipped, as she sat down, before heading to his own office.

Once she ascertained he had left the vicinity, she used her phone to send a quick message. Lunch. 1.

Forty minutes later, at one p.m. exactly, Lin walked into a dingy diner on 7th Street in the small, but historical, Chinatown district. Sliding into the booth, already occupied, she quickly ordered in Chinese and waited until the waiter left. Turning to the woman sitting across, she demanded, "Talk."

Xia Wu leaned forward and said, "A woman came to the clinic today. She was nosing around for what we do for the homeless."

Lin lifted her eyebrow expecting Xia to continue.

"She wasn't just there to ask questions about the clinic...she wanted to specifically know if the homeless were sought out and given cards for special treatment."

"T m de," Lin cursed, her lips twisting in anger. "Who the h.e.l.l can she be?"

"I don't know. She was a red-head with big gla.s.ses. Long fingernails. Nicely dressed. Said she worked for a benefactor who wanted to donate to the clinic."

Lin, no longer listening to Xia, her mind already problem-solving, knew she could get the clinic's reception area's security video, but antic.i.p.ated not being able to identify the woman. Unless... "Did the woman touch anything?"

"Uh, uh...no," Xia said, her face lined with worry. "Wait a minute, I handed her a brochure and she had it in her hand, but I don't know if she kept it."

"Go back there, right now, and double check. If she left it, I want it." Seeing Xia hesitate, Lin bit out, "Now!"

The young woman immediately slid out of the booth and, with a longing glance toward the waiter just bringing out the food, hurried out of the restaurant.

"What do you mean we aren't going to do anything?" Charlie asked, disbelief evident in her strident voice and her gaze darting around the Saints sitting at the table.

"Charlie-" Luke began.

"Don't patronize me," she said, glaring at Luke before turning her ire toward Jack. "This girl's told me that something's going on. They blatantly lied to me when I went in and asked about their homeless services. It's got to be tied into Eli's suspicions. And we're doing nothing?"

Luke placed his hands on Charlie's shoulders, applying just enough pressure to get her attention. "You need to listen to Jack so we can figure out what to do."

Plopping back down in her seat, Charlie pinched her lips together, knowing Luke was right but struggling to maintain her composure all the same. Taking a calming breath, she nodded. "I'm sorry I'm making a spectacle of myself," she said. "I just can't sit around and not do something to help."

Jack offered her a grim smile and replied, "Charlie, what you've found out is good information. Now we need to find out more. We can't go in guns blazing someplace without due cause. I've got a license for private investigating and, while we're no usual PI business, we have protocols. Right now, you have no evidence of wrongdoing, nor any evidence that someone is in imminent danger. But," he threw up his hand to stop her from retorting, "what you do have is compelling information that we need to investigate further."

Charlie noticed the sympathetic looks thrown her way by the other Saints but instead of feeling comforted, she wanted to growl.

"What you've found out is really good," Monty praised.

She observed him closely, pleased that he was not patronizing her. Slowly letting out her held breath, she realized they were all on the same side. "I don't know how you do this," she admitted, her anger slipping away.

"It's not easy," Jude agreed, "but this just means that it's time for us all to dig deeper with what you've given us."

"Okay," she agreed, reaching out to hold Luke's hand that had been resting on her leg. "What now? I don't want to lose momentum in the case."

"Good," Jack acknowledged, "because we need you more than ever. This Penny is the first real link we've had to something that Eli might have been talking about and we don't want to lose her." Turning to Luke, he asked, "What have you found?"

"Based on Charlie's impression that the name Eli meant was possibly Jian and not Jun, we have found quite a few doctors with that name. I thought that it might be like the English name of John, something common and therefore harder to narrow down. But with the name that Penny gave her, it is too much of a coincidence that the Cheung clinic is run by Jian Cheung."

"How did you find her again?" Bart asked.

Charlie looked over to the large Saint, his blond surfer appearance belying his sharp mind. She also knew from his wife, Faith, that he doubted quickly and strived for facts to follow. Intuition was not his forte.

Jude smiled encouragingly at her, saying, "Connect the dots for him."

Feeling Luke's hand still on her leg, giving a squeeze of a.s.surance, she chose her words carefully, so as not to be dismissed. "We know Eli discovered something to do with the possible illegal harvesting of organs. With little else to go on, I began to try to find any clinics or doctors with the name of Jun, but did not have any success. So, I did some research into who was likely to be involved in organ harvesting. The overwhelming information points to what the Chinese have been doing in their own country with prisoners or political enemies. But I knew you couldn't just do something like that here. People would question. The family would go public if they thought something was wrong."

"So what was next?" Bart continued to press.

"I thought about who would be the most likely victims. Who wouldn't have a family to search for them or question for them. And I came up with the homeless and young runaways." Her eyes searched the group of men around the table, finding them listening attentively. Come on...believe in me.

Pressing her advantage, she continued quickly. "And what I realized is that not only is this the largest possible group for something like this, they are the most likely to become victims of human trafficking...being sold into slavery. And do you know who is one of the largest organizations dealing in trafficking?" Having their rapt attention at this point, she said, "The Chinese mafia. The triad. The tongs. And their ties to the Chinese government is strong."

The silence around the table settled in as each Saint pondered her words. "So I placed notices at all the shelters and soup kitchens that I could in the northern Virginia and lower Maryland area, asking for contact with anyone who had used free clinic services in the past year. Sifting through them, no one gave me any real information that I had not already discerned except for Penny, the young teenager who is staying at the Cheung clinic. And she just told me that her friend has agreed to have a kidney removed."

Rubbing his hand over his beard, Jack regarded the impa.s.sioned woman sitting amongst the hardened men. Finally turning to the others, he said, "So where do we take this?"

Monty quickly responded, "I'll get hold of Nick and see what information he has on this clinic. He can let us know if there are any suspicions from the FBI or any reports."

Grinning, Bart leaned back in his seat and said, "Cam and I can do a little night time reconnaissance."

The others smiled in response, knowing the two best friends enjoyed breaking and entering as part of the investigations the Saints worked on.

Luke agreed. "I think that makes sense. I'd like to know what's going on in there that we can't divine. Charlie and I'll continue to delve into the Clinic's systems. I can tell you that on the surface, they are a walk-in clinic for the indigent and do not list any other resources. So, if they are housing patients, it's not on their books."

"If they do that only for the homeless, then they could keep it hidden," Blaise added.

"Right," Jack agreed. "Monty, contact Nick. Jude, work with Luke and Charlie to cover more bases. Patrick, you saddle up and go out with Bart and Cam tonight. Marc, you fly them up. Chad and Blaise, help them get their equipment ready."

With everyone's a.s.signments given, Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. They believe me! Now to find out what the h.e.l.l is going on!

Chapter 26.

Lin, a smile on her face, walked back from the lab, a file held close to her chest. It took almost three hours for her technician friend to give her the fingerprint a.n.a.lysis which, of course, only gave the closest matches. Lin knew Eli's house had been dusted for fingerprints and, while there were not many, she believed his former cla.s.smate and friend had been one of them-the elusive Charlotte Trivett.

Sitting down in her cubicle, she glanced around to make sure no one was watching and opened the file. Running down through the list of possible matches, she searched for just one name. And there it was. Charlotte Trivett.

Slamming the file closed, Lin rubbed her forehead, wondering how best to proceed. Uncertain of her next move, one thing was evident...the threat needed to be eliminated.

Charlie lay back in the hammock once more, discovering it was fast becoming her new go-to place when she needed to unwind and let her mind process a problem slowly. Leaving the investigation into the accounts of the Cheung Clinic to Luke and Jude, she stayed home today, going back over the information Eli had given her before he was killed. He had rambled quite a bit, but the words came back to her.

"It's a Chinese based medical company that has a database of organ needs to match donors. On the surface it would look normal."

She rolled the words around and around in her head while the white clouds floated through the autumn blue sky. Chinese based medical company. Chinese based medical company.

"He may have known."

"What?" Charlie shouted out loud. "Oh my G.o.d, how did I not remember Eli saying that?"

Flinging from the hammock she tripped on her way into the house, scaring the birds at the feeders. Running to her computer, she searched for her old contacts. There he is...Hai Zhou. With a few more clicks, she discovered his mother still lived in California. Grabbing her phone, she placed the call, hoping Hai's mother spoke English.

An older woman answered, "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mrs. Zhou?"

A pause followed and Charlie realized that her knowledge of the culture was limited. Maybe his mom's name isn't Zhou. Just as she was getting ready to ask again, the woman answered her question.

"Yes, this is me."

"Ma'am, I am an old college friend of your son. Hai? I know it's been several years since he went back to China but I'd love to talk to him. Do you have his contact information? Phone number or email?"

This time the pause was much longer and Charlie pulled her phone away from her ear to check the screen, wondering if the connection had been lost. Seeing that they were still connected, she prompted, "Ma'am, are you there?"