Changed (Second Sight) Read Online Free PDF Page A

she didn’t move. He felt her heart beating wildly and saw that her breathing was shallow.
    “Mac?” she whispered as her eyes slowly fluttered open.
    “Right here,” he said, putting a hand on her arm. She tried to sit forward, staring at him. “Just take it easy,” he said.
    “The Coming Home group on Yahoo,” she said, holding on to his arm with her gloved hand, still breathless. “There were pictures of babies and parents everywhere. It’s an adoption group. Daniel was going to give up Little Gavin for adoption.”
    “Adoption?” Mac said, frowning.
    Isabelle nodded.
    “I saw it,” she said, pointing at the unconnected mouse.  
    An adoption group for Daniel didn’t ring true. Character and action didn’t align. Mac took out his phone.
    “The Coming Home group?” he said, bringing up the browser. A quick search and a few clicks and he was there. Isabelle put her glove back on. It was a forum and there were several active threads. He clicked on one. As Isabelle had seen, there were all sorts of pictures: babies and parents, different houses and cribs. He clicked on another thread. Discussions were going back and forth but virtually all the posts were started by the moderator. This one mentioned re-homing. “Re-homing?” Mac muttered. He scrolled down. Isabelle looked over his shoulder.   “This toddler is being re-homed ,” he said.
    “Re-homed?” Isabelle said, her breathing almost normal. “It sounds like regifting,” she said. Something clicked. The pieces of the puzzle came together. Mac’s eyes defocused and he stood. “Mac?” Isabelle said.
    Character and action.  
    At the Green Earth Commune, there were no children over, say, the age of five. The protected servers and Daniel’s computers held valuable secrets. The money the Cyber Crime unit knew was there but couldn’t be traced had to come from somewhere.  
    The invisible means of support. Daniel taking his baby there. Daniel posting in a forum where children were ‘re-homed’.
    “They’re selling them,” Mac said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    IT WAS INSANELY and ruthlessly easy , thought Isabelle. Put a sex-crazed man together with vulnerable women and then add a way to make profit .
    “We’re clear on this,” Mac said as he slowed the SUV. “Right?”  
    He pulled over on the road that led to the commune, dappled late afternoon sun filtering through the branches of the oaks. He let the right side of the car angle downward into the gravel at the shoulder. The tires crunched to a stop and he turned off the engine.
    Mac was wearing one of the commune’s homemade shirts. He’d found it in Daniel’s wardrobe and though the long sleeves were too short, he’d rolled them up. Luckily, Daniel’s paunch had bumped him up a shirt size or two but, even so, the fabric stretched tight across Mac’s chest and around his biceps. He’d also exchanged his polished, lace-up shoes for some sandals with velcro closures.
    “We’re clear,” Isabelle said nodding. Rather than drive all the way back downtown to drop her off, she’d agreed to wait in the SUV. The last time she’d visited the commune against Mac’s wishes, she’d regretted it. “ Very clear.”
    “This is the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Because of you, we’ve got it.” He took her hand and looked her directly in the eye. “But that’s as far as it goes.”
    Isabelle nodded again.
    “I know, Mac,” she said. “I really do. I have no intention of leaving this car.”
    Sneak and peak, Mac had called it. Something about a federal crime and finding evidence for a search warrant. Mac had gone into profiling mode from the moment he’d made the connections between the commune, Daniel, and selling babies. And the building where they’d rescued Kayla and encountered Darren’s mom, who was also pregnant, seemed a natural.  
    Isabelle couldn’t agree more and yet…that wasn’t the real problem.
    When she’d read Daniel, that’d been the furthest