Free The Baby's Bodyguard by Stephanie Newton Page A

urge to, in a fit of temper, hold her breath until he returned. She had a little baby upstairs depending on her, depending on both of them, to find out what in the world was going on.
    She limped back into the library. Ethan and Tyler’s friend, Nolan, had his head bent over the computer. He was talking to himself and typing. His hair was sticking up in all directions. He wore a tiny silver cross on leather threads around his neck. She hated to interrupt his work, but he was probably the only person who could help her. “Nolan?”
    He didn’t look up.
    “Hello?”
    The computer expert stopped typing and looked up, squinting eyes the color of aged whisky at her. “Sorry, I’m not good with names. Do I know you?”
    She eased into a seat across the table from him, relieved to take some of the pressure off her feet. “I’m Kelsey, Ethan’s friend.”
    “The social worker.”
    “Right, the social worker.” As a general rule, she wasn’t a fan of labels, but if it worked for him, she could deal. “I need some help. We found an SD card with photographs of infants that we believe were trafficked through illegal adoptions. I need to try to find these babies.”
    “You have photographs?” He reached into his bag and pulled out another laptop.
    “I was thinking maybe there would be a way to search for pictures of those babies that were posted somewhere? I know we might not find all of them, but if we found some of them and could find the adoption states, I could subpoena the records, which might bring out more information.”
    “Yeah, it could be a good start at tracking down the people who would actually sell a child to a person desperate enough to buy one.” The anger in his voice took her aback.
    He blinked and the anger disappeared. “Sorry. It makes me a little upset that there are more than four hundred million orphans in the world, but babies are being trafficked for profit.”
    It was the first sign of emotion that she’d seen from the very efficient, methodical Nolan. Also preoccupied, disheveled and disorderly and, apparently, passionate about some things. Intriguing.
    “I understand. I was adopted at the age of ten. If my parents hadn’t taken me in, there’s no telling where I would’ve ended up.” She stuffed her hands into the pants of her borrowed jeans, the legs cuffed because Gracie was two inches taller. “So, is there a program like that?”
    “Sit down.” He slid a laptop across the table to her. “I have … access, we’ll say, to a reverse image search. It’s highly specialized. You enter the picture, the program searches the internet for images with similar referencepoints. You should have some luck, but it’s going to take time. You’ll have to enter each photo individually.”
    An hour later, she’d found four children out of the forty that she’d run through the search engine. She was surprised how many people blogged about their adoption journey.
    So she had names to start with for the four, and those she was passing across the table to Nolan to start background searches. He was having better luck than she was at finding out real information.
    She heard a noise and looked up, wondering if she should worry about the lighting fixtures above them. It sounded like someone knocking on a door, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it was a toddler, banging the side of her bed against the wall. “You’ll have to excuse me. I think I’m needed upstairs.”
    “What? Oh.” Nolan scrubbed a hand through his curly hair, making it stand up even more. “You can take the computer with you if you like. It’s not like I can use both of them. If you find anything more, you can always bring it to me or shoot me an email. There’s wireless here and it’s safe to use.”
    Safe to use the wireless. Something else she wouldn’t have considered. “Thanks, Nolan. You’ve been a lot of help.”
    Kelsey limped up the stairs as fast as she could, taking most of the weight on the handrail.