Windy worked to get her friend conscious. "Come on Jimmy, open your eyes!"

"Dana. This is Windy. Windy this is Dana." Jimmy almost looked drunk waving his hands above his body.

"What the hell is he talking about?" Marie stepped back thinking Jimmy was possessed.

"Long story, Marie. He is delusional."

The two heard sirens getting louder. "That must be the paramedics for Jimmy. I will go down to the street to make sure they get up here." Marie rushed to the door.

"Thanks, Marie." Windy acknowledged her helpful gesture.

"Marie? What are you smoking Win, that's Dana." Jimmy seemed to be stuck between his dream and reality.

"Hang in there, Jimmy." Windy looked around before speaking again. "You may not believe it, but I still love you."

Alex paused at the door when he heard Windy confess her love to Jimmy. Then he cleared his throat to let Windy know he returned. "Hey Windy, did you finish everything?"

"Hey, Alex. Yeah, they are on the table. Bring them here, I need to go over the plan before the paramedics get here."

"What? I didn't agree to that!"

"Come here or my friend dies!"

"Damn it, Windy!" Alex warned. "This had better be easy!"

"Even you can pull this off." Windy coached Alex then slipped into the bedroom.

The paramedics made their way into the apartment. "I haven't had a lemon Marange pie in years." Alex opened his apartment door. "Oh, hello."

"Hey, I'm Alex. My friend was hit in the back of the head when he was mugged a couple of days ago."

"A couple of days ago?" The paramedic quickly turned questioning Alex's timing. "A little late to be calling us now."

"He felt fine until just a little while ago." Alex convinced the paramedics.

"What's his name?" The first paramedic grabbed his bag from the stretcher and knelt beside the sofa.

"James Dunn, but he goes by Jimmy."

"Jimmy! Jimmy! How ya doing, buddy? Can you hear me?" He tried to get an answer to assess the patient.

"Windy?" Jimmy called out.

The paramedics looked at each other. They had no idea what to think. "Hey, Jimmy look at me." He snapped his fingers to see if  the patient could focus on him. "Right here. Hey."

Jimmy turned his head but did not open his eyes. "How's this?"

"Has this man been drinking?" The second paramedic asked Alex.

Alex shook his head. "Not since before the weekend."

"What the hell is this?" The paramedic poked at Jimmy's shoulder. "He has a couple of sutures."

"That happened the day before. Ah, Jimmy is accident-prone. Like a magnet for bad luck." Another lie, but Alex played his part well.

Windy looked on from the bedroom. "Come on guys get him to the hospital!"

"He is not doing so well." The paramedic assessing Jimmy looked to Alex. "Does he have insurance, sir?"

"Yeah, Holiday Cross. He is visiting from Minnesota."

"Here for Carnival?" Another question from the second paramedic to continue the assessment.

"Yeah, it out started great, then this!" Alex shook his head. "Come on Buddy, open your eyes for the man!"

"Let's get him on the stretcher and down to the ambulance. Are you coming with your friend?"

"Yeah, yeah, I can do that." Alex rolled his eyes. "No problem."

The paramedics wheeled Jimmy out of the apartment. Marie gave Alex a quick kiss. "Call when you find out anything."

Alex winked at his wife. "I will, Honey."

When the door closed, Windy opened her laptop needing to know more information and headed for the email server for Precinct Nine. This involved identifying every person who wrote anything remotely referring to Jimmy and the prostitute.

Windy traced an email to the beat cop who investigates prostitution complaints and prosecutions. Sharon Templer, aka Scaron. Found next to suspect, John Doe. Sharon overdosed on heroin, John Doe suspected of injecting the lethal dose. "Delete."

"Delete?" Marie did not believe it could be done so easily. "You can do that?"

Not wanting to answer Windy simply diverted the conversation. "Marie, could I get a coffee? I will be busy for a few hours."

"Think you could help Alex?"

"I am planning to help him." Windy explained the complication. "A little more tricky with someone already known to the law. But I think I can help."

The hacker methodically clicked her way through the information opening window after window. Logically working through the Precinct Nine email server in search of clues to why Jimmy is being framed.

Sharon's name appeared several times. "Arrested, made bail, fined. Rinse and repeat. Not a glamorous life for Sharon. Hang on." Then a breakthrough for Windy. "What have I found?"

She opened an email from Captain Chambered asking specifically for Sharon to be brought in. "Four days ago? Why?"

Windy cross-checked the arrest logs. Sharon did not appear on any reports. "Security footage?" Windy used facial recognition software to help her in the search. She let the program run through the video logs while she went back to the emails.

A pattern began to emerge in front of Windy. Sharon appeared to just be one of dozens of prostitutes summoned before being added to the missing person list then added to the deceased list of prostitutes. "This is so screwed up!"

The alert to the facial recognition software dinged. Windy pulled up the video and watched the emaciated woman sit down in the interview room. "No sound available? Hiding something, boys? Now did you leave by the front door or back door, Sharon?"

Windy could not find the video. "Okay, play it that way. There's more than one way to find the video. You can only...delete the video. And where do deleted videos go? Nowhere."

Windy located the deleted video showing Sharon leaving through the back door. Alive just hours before being found next to Jimmy. "So how did you go from Precinct Nine to the Alley with Jimmy? Something stinks here guys."

"Do you always talk to yourself?" Marie hovered around the kitchen table.

"It helps me to be accountable to myself. I remember things when I say something more easily than just thinking it."

"Sounds like something I should try. My memory really...sucks." Marie nervously laughed.

"You should, but a word of warning, it drives everybody around you crazy." Windy looked up. "It drives Jimmy crazy!"

Marie laughed again and was about to walk away but Windy had a thought. "Marie, have you lived in New Orleans all your life?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Do you recall this many women disappearing in New Orleans at any time?"

"Difficult to say." Marie shrugged. "This is a city where people come and go. Some love it and for others, it just isn't good. When someone went missing, we just thought they moved on."

"Statistics show there are thousands of missing persons. Mostly women." Windy clicked on a list of unsolved cold cases. "Even if seventy-five percent of these cases were just people moving on, there would be over five thousand people still unaccounted for."

"My God! What...what happened to them?" Marie sat heavily onto a chair.

"I have no idea. The average age of a girl that went missing is seventeen."

"Seventeen? They're just kids."

"The average age of a man is eighteen."

"Still very young. What does that tell you, Windy?"

The hacker looked directly at Marie. "In the twenty-first century, I would suggest a human trafficking ring spanning decades, right here in New Orleans."

"Human trafficking in the United States?" Marie could not handle this revalation. "No way!"

"I have read some nasty things online about modern-day slavery." Windy looked directly at Marie.

"You mean the sex trade?" Marie's eyes grew wide.

"More."

"What more is there?" Her jaw slacked.

"Forced labor, servitude, forced marriages even organ donation."

"No no no no! Not here!" Marie stood and wagged a finger to Windy.

Windy shook her head and continued. "Everywhere, including here in your beautiful city. No place is free from this. And it is both men and women."

"How do you know so much about this?" The look on Marie's face told Windy she found it difficult to believe her.

"I am a descendant of slaves from here in the southern states. My great-great-grandmother was only a child when her parents sent her north with the underground railroad."

"Oh my God, Windy. I don't know what to say."

"Nothing to say, Marie. I always move forward but I never forget."

"How was your childhood?"

"Growing up in Montreal was no more difficult than other families of color anywhere in North America." Windy shrugged. "And you?"

"I grew up poor here in the city. My parents immigrated but they could only find low-paying jobs. They both died shortly after I was married. They had a hard life. That's why living like this with Alex feels pretty okay."

"Marie, it looks like a comfortable life for you and Alex. Speaking of Alex, it has been a while. I would love to know how Jimmy is doing."

"So, you and Jimmy never married? No chance to rekindle that spark?" Marie tested Windy.

"Not in this lifetime. I never go backward. Never for a man. Can we change the subject?"

"Yeah, sure. Tell me more about human trafficking." Marie slipped back down onto the same chair across from Windy.

"You really want to know?" Windy raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, of course."

"I have been a part of an online group discussing human trafficking. We talk about being able to recognize people who are forced into bad situations."

"Like in Asia and India?"

"Like Canada and here in the United States. Port cities mostly. No one is immune from people using other people."

"Where do you think they take the people from here?" Marie asked quickly.

"Some young men and women may still be in the same city they were abducted. Working underground brothels, workhouses and some go to work in agriculture. But some are rotting in foreign prisons for being used as drug mules."

"Does your group protest."

"We have protested in front of big chain stores for using products from forced labor in factories and farms that pay far too little in wages. But nothing ever changed."

Marie, almost afraid to ask, asked anyway. "What do you think has become of Lana?"

Windy sighed heavily adding a shrug. "I don't know. It sounds like she is another person that will be lost in the underworld."

"You make it sound so sinister. I don't even want to go outside anymore!"

"Marie, you are safe." Windy assured the young woman. "But I need to get back to researching." She lowered her gaze back to her laptop.

"I will make more coffee, if you'd like?"

"Yeah, yeah. That would be great, thanks Marie."

Windy returned to the deleted emails. This server stored these emails in an unused portion of the drive. "What have I found? Oh, I know you! You are the information nobody wants to be found. But I found you."

Windy search had just yielded gold. "Captain Chambered, this does not sound becoming of an officer or a gentleman. Your language is offensive. Sharon was a human being not a piece of rotting meat."

Sharon leaving the station just hours before being found with Jimmy did not add up. And this gnawed at Windy like a headache that just wouldn't go away. "Why Jimmy? What is the connection?"

Marie brought Windy another coffee. "You found something?"

"I think I have. I need more but it's safe to say, Precinct Nine is not as upstanding as police should be. Maybe you should be afraid, Marie."

"Why?"

"Most of the missing people have passed through Precinct Nine before disappearing." Windy gave a fake smile.

"How do you know that?"

"I had one of my programs running the numbers for the last hour. Eight hundred and fifteen passed through Precinct Nine with an error rating of only one point five."

"And?" Marie wanted more information.

Windy had more. "And...that tells me we have a problem. Jimmy was likely planted to take the fall for these guys."

"Now what?"

"I need to get Jimmy out of here! As soon as I can." Windy stood and closed her laptop.

"What about Lana? What about helping Alex? You can't go before that!"

Windy sat back down grabbed her hair and screamed. "Crapppppp! Okay...no leaving before everyone is taken care of."

"That is good. And to make sure...I will be watching you closely!" Marie pulled a handgun from a kitchen drawer and pointed it at Windy.