Safe Place to Hide || Chenford / The Rookie

Chapter 10

"So we looked into Beyond Crystals — on the surface, it seems to be a pretty basic web-based business, with a larger than expected social media marketing budget, but it was surprisingly complicated to track down the owner," Angela says.

"I won't bore you with all of the details, but it's a red flag that the company was specifically structured to mask the owner's name via a complex network of linked shell companies. It's possible that this company is still legit, but that type of setup and the effort that went into obfuscating links to actual people and other legitimate businesses isn't an uncommon way to cover tracks on illegal activity like money laundering, prostitution, or even trafficking.

"Anyway, we still have a lot of digging to do before we can justify a warrant — the company structure itself isn't illegal, but I wanted to let you know, we finally found a name linked to the ownership of Beyond Crystals, Jayce Hansen."

Lucy stiffens, "Did you say Jayce?"

"Yes. Jayce Hansen. Why?"

She meets Tim's eyes. "Um... no reason. It just sounds familiar. I wonder if I may have heard Tamara mention him or something," Lucy lies carefully, frustrated that she can't directly share what she had overheard in Scott's apartment without compromising her own less-than-stellar decision-making.

"Oh. Okay. Well, great — if it comes back to you, let me know. I'll take anything that could help tie this all together. At a minimum, it looks like Tamara, Cara, Marissa, and Jenna were doing some advertising online for this company. You remember those payments I mentioned? Well, the dates are within a few days of sponsored posts Tamara made on her profile, so we're thinking that's the source; we're just waiting on final confirmation from the payment processor."

Lucy presses her lips together, processing the fact that Tamara had been receiving payments from what was, at best, a shady business and, at worst, some sort of front for illegal activity. "Do any of those girls really have enough of a following to warrant that?"

"It's hard to say — none of them have the types of followings that you'd typically associate with a so-called influencer. But it's not unheard of for a company, especially a local one, to recruit people in their target demographic with smaller, but more specifically targeted followings for advertising, or so our resident social media marketing expert told me when I asked the same question."

Angela continues, her tone becoming more serious, "It's still too early to know anything for sure, but we don't know what these girls could have stumbled into. I know we talked about you continuing to work on Marissa and Jenna, but if you're not comfortable..."

"No!" Lucy answers quickly, too quickly from the way that Tim's eyes narrow at her. "I just mean that I think I should follow up with them. I haven't asked them about Beyond Crystals, yet or about the specific event they attended with Cara; I may be able to get us something more concrete."

"That sounds good, just be careful, okay? And let us know how it goes."

"I will. Thanks, Angela."

Tim glares at her as she ends the call. "Do you really think it's a good idea for you to keep investigating this?

"Do you really think I'm going to stop? Would you? And, besides, like you said, we don't even know if the notes are related."

Tim rolls his eyes, clearly annoyed by having his words turned around on him. "I could just order you to stop, you know."

"You could, but you won't."

He lifts his eyebrows at her challenge, "I won't?"

"Call it a hunch, but somehow I think you much prefer babysitting me to tailing me."