The Belial Stone (The Belial Series #1)(36)

“I linked regular cargo plane runs by a group called Americans for Progress with the same time period.”

Laney started at the name. “Americans for Progress? They’re the political group?”

Danny nodded. “You know them?”

“I asked Drew once about the funding for his research. He mentioned them. I remember thinking at the time that it was an odd project for them to be interested in.”

“Well, Dr. Priddle disappeared shortly after Dr. Drew Masters’…” Danny stumbled over the name. He looked at Laney and Patrick, his face apologetic.

Laney gave him a small smile. “It’s okay, Danny. Go ahead.”

He nodded. “Dr. Priddle disappeared after Dr. Masters was found. And then Laney was attacked a short time after she received an email from Dr. Masters. An email that someone attempted to rescind after Dr. Masters had died. The likelihood that these events are unrelated is less than two percent.”

Laney sat back, stunned. Priddle was missing? And the group funding Drew's research was connected to the missing cons? What the hell was going on?

“So,” Jake said, “now we need to somehow link an archaeologist's research with a bunch of missing ex-cons. Pretty sure they're not hiring them for their research backgrounds.”

Laney looked up sharply, warning bells going off in her head. A dark thought was forming in the back of her mind, but she really hoped she was wrong. “Henry, do you have any background on the missing men?”

Henry hit a couple of buttons on his keyboard. “Yes. One of my analysts put it together. I just sent it to your monitor.”

Laney glanced at the spreadsheet in front of her. Pulling out the wireless keyboard, she quickly flipped through the list of available statistical programs on the computer.

“There you are,” she mumbled, finding the latest version of Stata. Importing the data into the statistical program, she stared at the list of variables. Running some collinearity diagnostics, she nodded. “Okay. All good.”

Creating a negative binomial regression model, she ran it and watched in disbelief as the results appeared in front of her. She looked around the table. “I think I might have found the link.”

She exported her results to each of the monitors.

After looking at the monitor, Jake glanced at Laney, his eyebrow raised. “Laney, did I mention the ‘not going to college’ part of my background?”

Patrick shook his head. “I went to college and I still don't know what this says. What exactly are we looking at?”

“Right, right.” Laney said. She’d forgotten that not everybody spent their down time looking at statistical outputs. “Sorry. Basically, I ran a model to check on the health of the missing men. Prisoners are known for having a slew of medical conditions due to risky lifestyle, substandard health care, and a whole host of other reasons. The missing men, however, are in the top tier, physically speaking. None of them have any ongoing medical issues. They all have clean bills of health. Hold on a sec.”

Her eyes zipped through the variable list. Re-working the model, she added a few more variables. She looked up when the model had run. “And none of them have any family listed. On paper, it looks like they’re alone in the world.’

She looked at Jake and saw his jaw tighten. He wouldn’t show up in any of Tom’s paperwork, either.

Henry drummed his fingers on the table top. “Okay. We have a group of physically fit inmates with no family ties. Why would anyone target this particular group?

“That's just it,” Laney replied, the dark thought now supported by the data in front of her. “You said we need to link the missing men and the research. My uncle mentioned this morning that Drew’s paper is on a sister site to Gobekli Tepe.”

At Jake’s raised eyebrow, she quickly explained about the Turkish site that predated the Fertile Crescent and consisted of multiple concentric circles of ruins.

Continuing her original argument, she said, “My uncle’s never heard of a sister site to Gobekli Tepe. And that kind of site would make a huge impact in archaeological circles as well as being splashed across all media outlets. So I think it’s safe to say no one in archaeology is aware of the discovery. But if there is a sister site and for some reason someone was keeping it quiet, they'd need men to dig. They'd need…”

Patrick finished the thought for her, his eyes wide. “Slaves.”

She nodded, her eyes searching Jake's face for a reaction. Whatever he thought had happened to his brother, she was pretty sure he hadn’t thought of this possibility.

Jake shook his head. “Slave labor? But why take them only from New York?”

“They probably have an in with the parole department that gives them the location of potential targets.” Another thought hit her. “Which also probably means that the site is in the U.S.”

“Is that even possible?” Jake asked. “On this scale? I mean, we’re talking hundreds of men in one place. How could you hide that kind of operation?”

“Actually, it’s probably not as many as you think.” Laney paused, looking at Jake. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she knew she had to finish the thought.

“The monsters who view others as property tend not to take very good care of their ‘property.’ They see the people under their control as expendable. You said this whole process started over eleven months ago. If we’re right, I think a large percentage of these men may already be dead.”