For the next half hour we hashed out a plan, I had to fight my natural instinct to run and get her but she was safe with her dad, these kids might not be. It was a sick feeling to think that if we didn’t do this right more children might get hurt. The cops in that town had already proven that they didn’t know shit; either that or they were blinded by his stellar public persona. We decided to hit up the FBI. James has assured me in the beginning that there was no way for anyone to trace the eyes and ears he had planted back to me that’s even if they were found. I’ll deal with retracting them later but I couldn’t sit on this new information, not even if it meant detection.
In the end we made an anonymous call and claimed that he’d brought his laptop in for repairs and we’d seen some questionable material. It was all we could do for now and sit back and wait for the results. If they didn’t move fast enough then I’d send James to take care of it. Josh found a way to send some of the pics from the laptop into the bureau making sure to cover our asses so that they’d never know it was from us. We wiped anything that had to do with Kadyn from the laptop and went back through the PC to make sure there was no trace of her there. I knew from our conversations that she was more interested in getting him out of her life for good than in making him pay for what he’d done to her and so there was no danger of damaging any future case. I’d battled with whether or not she would need that closure but her reaction at the mere mention of his name was enough to convince me that she had no need to go there. Plus I think she’d lost all faith in the justice system and who could blame her. He’d find it hard to wriggle his slimy way out of this though if the feds did their jobs.
“Are we done? I have to go get her.” The image of those young girls was burnt into my corneas and I couldn’t help putting her face in their place. I needed to hold her, to feel her soft skin under my hands, the beat of her heart, to reassure myself that she was okay, though I knew that she was.
“Go, there’s nothing more for us to do for now. I’ll keep my eyes on his place and see if anything happens there. The law moves slowly sometimes. You do know that if they don’t deal with this shit we’ll have to right?” I knew he was going to say that because I’d been thinking the same thing myself. As much as I would hate to leave her at a time like this I would get on a plane and go hunt the fucker down myself if need be.
“Yeah I know.” I left the room and the house with my thoughts in a jumble. If the feds did their job this should be over in a matter of days. That’s what I’d been after all along but not like this, I’d wanted to keep her out of whatever was going to happen but again not like this. Not at the expense of others. I couldn’t allow myself to think of what may or may not have happened to the children captured in those pictures. I felt a deep sense of anger and I guess betrayal at the system. How could we as a society let such things happen? They had this guy in their sights because she’d done the right thing when she’d made a complaint almost three years ago. What might’ve happened had they followed up? Obviously the asshole was a criminal as was proven by the deviant shit found on his hard-drive, so why hadn’t they done their fucking jobs? What if he’d killed or hurt someone else’s kid in the meantime?
I’m not sure where I’d thought his obsession was heading, I never allowed myself to think of the sexual connotations because that would’ve just made me lose my shit. But now faced with the reality there was no hiding from it and the fear in my gut was almost crippling. It was stupid to think of what ifs but that’s all that kept playing through my mind. What if he’d got to her? what if we’d never met? That thought most of all left me cold.
To think of life without her in it was almost more than I could bear. I imagined her being subjected to his sick advances and the fear turned to anger. Pounding the steering wheel wasn’t going to achieve anything but breaking my hand so I tried to calm myself as I approached the diner. Just get her and go home Matt. That was always my answer whenever I felt any threat to her, to shut us away in our room where I was sure no one and nothing could get to her to cause her harm. Will I always have this feeling, will I spend the rest of my life feeling that need to protect her always? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that right at this moment the need was strong in me. I’ll have to learn how to not let it become a problem. We can’t live in a bubble, though that shit was sounding better and better everyday. There are some sick fucking people in the world.