“I sent Ted and Espinosa to Silver Spring, Maryland, to look for a garage where I think this young man might be working. The kids aren’t just in Silver Spring, they’re all over the map—Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda, etc. They finally found him, and his name is Antonio Vargas. He had a story to tell, and Ted got it all. Espinosa has the pictures to back it up. The young man gave us a few other names, and those people gave us more names, kind of like a domino effect. In total, Ted and Espinosa, along with Dawson and his partner, managed to profile sixty-seven kids. I call them kids because the lot of them just turned eighteen. Male and female. Those profiles just broke my heart, Lizzie. Here are these kids living in foster care and not having the love and affection of a set of parents. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the foster parents didn’t care about them, but nothing can take the place of a set of birth parents.

“Each and every one had a refrain: ‘I can’t wait till I’m eighteen, so I can get out of here.’ And when they did get out, look what happened to them. One girl, Melanie Blackman, is so musically inclined and gifted she was accepted to Julliard, but when she tried to apply for grants and open a bank account, apply for a part-time job, she was told she had such a poor credit history it wasn’t possible. Not one of them understood about credit reports, FICA scores. Each one of those kids has a story. We’re going with six of them in the paper. Ted did a superior job on the profiles. While we’re only doing six profiles, we are listing the names of all the others.

“I called Annie right away, and she’s working with some of her people to, as she put it, ‘arrange something for those youngsters.’ She’ll make it happen, too. One way or another, she’ll see to it that those kids get their lives back. Count on it.”

“That’s great, Maggie. I can’t wait till we get ahold of the people responsible for all of this. When we’re finished with them, Bonnie and Clyde are going to wish they had never been born. Just imagine each of them having their fifteen minutes of fame going up against Harry or Yoko!”

Maggie laughed. “It won’t be pretty when it happens.” Maggie kicked off her shoes and sent them sailing across the room. Her backpack landed on the sofa, then her suit jacket settled on a chair next to it. She followed Kathryn to the kitchen. “Talk,” she said as she peered into the fridge.