Chapter 6 #2
He squeezed once, then let go. “Now go. Brief Parker. I have to inform Rafe. The same way I expected to be informed as your Alpha, he expects it as my king. And if you even think about going rogue, I’ll have Doc shoot you myself.”
Wrecker grinned, stood, and clapped Bronc on the back. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, boss.”
I got up, and Bronc followed me with his eyes. “Don’t fuck this up, Arsenal.”
I nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
We left the office, and I could feel the shift in the air. The tension was still there, but it was pointed outward now. At an enemy, not each other.
We were a pack again. And nothing on earth or hell was going to keep me from getting Harper back.
Wrecker’s tech room was the nerve center of the Iron Valor compound.
He’d recently built an addition to his ranch-style house to accommodate more equipment.
The large room was wired with enough power to light the Dairyville night.
The inside was chaos: every inch of wall hung with monitors, whiteboards, cables, and at least three different flavors of tactical vest. The table in the middle overflowed with laptops, tablets, paper files, and coffee mugs of Parker’s fancy pour-over coffee she was famous for.
Rocket, Parker’s dog, was sprawled across the worn leather couch but hopped up the moment we entered. He made a beeline for me, tail a jet turbine, and jammed his head under my hand for a scratch.
“Somebody missed his boyfriend,” Parker drawled from the swivel chair, legs tucked up, pink highlights shining through her dark brown hair, hoodie sleeves flapping as she typed. She didn’t look away from her triple-monitor setup. “Wrecker’s late with his breakfast again.”
Wrecker grunted, dumped a box of scones from Aspen’s bakery, and flicked Rocket’s ear as he passed. The dog huffed, then went right back to licking my knuckles like they tasted like beef jerky.
Parker pointed a remote at the wall, lighting up the primary display. “Alright, gents. Here’s the info.” She hit a key, and the screen filled with a list of business holdings in Maltraz’s portfolio.
Wrecker swept all the loose gear off the nearest chair, dropped into it, and started running his own laptop. “These all of ‘em?”
“All as of the time he thought he was draining Iron Valor accounts,” Parker said. “I’ve started working out from there. I’m focusing on warehouses and trucking companies now, looking for logos that carry his sigils.”
The holographic display hummed to life, casting blue shadows across Parker’s face as she leaned forward in the spinning chair.
“Maltraz’s empire’s got more layers than a good lasagna,” she said, fingers dancing across two keyboards at once.
A spiderweb of corporate entities bloomed across the main screen - Cypress Holdings, Blackmast Logistics, a dozen others with innocuous names.
My finger traced a glowing connection between them. “Shell companies feeding shell companies. Classic laundering.” My eyes adjusted to the light of the screens as they parsed data streams. “But there’s a through-line here.”
“Bingo.” Parker punched a key, and six red pins stabbed into a map of the harbor district. “All these ‘legitimate’ shipping subsidiaries lease dock space from…” The screen zoomed in on a crumbling warehouse complex. “…Steiner Maritime Properties.”
Wrecker’s soda can crumpled in his fist behind them. “Our friendly neighborhood restaurateur and strip club owner owns the docks now?”
“Not directly.” Parker spun up tax records that blurred at the edges - redacted sections glowing like infected wounds.
“Steiner’s got a silent partner. Something called Horizon’s Reach LLC, registered in the Caymans.
” Her nose wrinkled. “Which just happens to share a P.O. box with Maltraz’s ‘retirement fund.’”
I tilted my head toward the shipping timetables suddenly scrolling beside the map. “These cargo manifests. The weight distributions are off.”
“Like they’re reporting half the containers they’re actually moving,” Parker nodded, pulling up customs documents that shimmered with digital tampering traces.
“And guess which patrol routes get ‘rerouted’ whenever these ghost ships come in?” She threw military deployment charts onto a secondary screen, the gaps in coverage pulsing like open wounds.
The room buzzed with the quiet fury of puzzle pieces snapping into place. No smoking gun yet, but the shape of the gunpowder trail was forming; a shadow empire built on stolen lives, its roots sunk deep beneath legitimate businesses. I gripped the edge of the console, my voice a low growl.
“Find me a thread. However small.”
Her grin was all teeth and reflected screen light. “Already tracing Horizon’s bank feeds. If Maltraz sneezed near those docks, we’ll find the tissue.”
Outside, thunder rumbled - either a coming storm or the distant detonation of one of Wrecker’s “stress relief experiments”. The real explosion was happening here, in the electric space between data points and human desperation, where monsters hid behind spreadsheets.
I watched the screen, following the arrows and lines. “They’re not moving drugs. Too careful.”
“No,” Wrecker said. “Bodies. Nothing that leaves a chemical signature.”
I ran a finger over Rocket’s spine, thinking. “If they’re moving them by rail, the containers will be lined. Shielded.”
Parker grinned, “Already on it. Most of the shipments are labeled as perishables—produce, seafood, that kind of shit. But when you cross-reference the weights, half of the containers are ten percent heavier than listed. That’s a lot of celery.”
“Or a lot of spelled people,” Wrecker added.
He leaned in, scanning the scrolling data. “Notice the pattern? Every third Friday night, a double batch unloads from the railcar to the holding facility at the docks. Cargo then gets loaded onto a Maersk freighter.”
I traced the route in my mind. “That explains why they have witches on the payroll. They have to have someone on hand to spell their merchandise and control the scene.”
“That’s my guess as well,” Parker said. “And they ship these poor people overseas. Every final destination is either Korea, Thailand, or some private port in the Philippines.”
Wrecker turned, eyes cold and bright. “That’s a Maltraz signature if I ever saw one. It’s evil. Only the sickos with enough money can buy a new pet every month.”
Rocket whined and nudged my hand harder. I gave him a rub behind the ears, trying to steady the burn in my chest.
“Alright,” I said, “so we know where they’re going. Question is, how do they get them out? You can’t just walk human cargo past customs, even spelled.”
Parker grinned wider. “That’s the sickest part. Most of the containers have a double wall—hidden space inside. Some even have oxygen tanks, rations. They’re built for survival.”
Wrecker’s hands hovered over his keyboard. “You remember that story from last year? Four kids found alive in a storage unit, no memory of how they got there?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “I’d bet that was a dry run. Now they’ve perfected it.”
I felt my jaw grinding, a remnant of an old military tic. “How many have they moved?”
Parker scrolled, lips pursed. “Hard to tell. But by my count, at least three containers a month, minimum seven heads per.”
I did the math. “Thirty a week. That’s over 20 a month.”
Wrecker nodded. “Now extrapolate that over a year. Between humans and wolves, they are devastating families and packs.”
I sat back, Rocket’s head in my lap, and tried to process it. I thought about Harper, about the girls at Eyrie, and wondered how many of them knew what waited at the end of that line. Probably none. Maybe all.
I forced my voice to calm. “What about the witches?”
Wrecker shrugged. “They handle logistics. Blackmail. Find a way to wipe the memories if needed. Remember, we have our own witch, and she is the most powerful of them all. She can make damn sure nobody talks.”
I thought back to the way Aspen had disintegrated the Wyrdmother of the Verdant Hollow Coven when she tried to hurt Big Papa. That girl has witch and angel power. I wouldn’t cross her.
Parker chimed in, “I’d bet most of the witches in that club aren’t high-power.
But the ones running security, they are likely carrying some kind of dark magic.
I know my girl Aspen can wipe them all out, but you know her heart is as tender as can be.
I hope it won’t come to that. But she’d hate the idea of those women being taken. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”
Wrecker smiled, sharp as a blade. “We don’t need the manifest. We need the list of drivers. Every one of them is either human or wolf, and nobody swaps runs without approval.”
He gestured to the board. “We start at the port, work backward. Find the last-mile guys, squeeze them until they break. Once we have a name, we track the holding facility. That’s where they keep the girls before shipping.”
I picked up a pen and circled the warehouse address. “We hit this site first. Parker, you keep tracing the digital. Wrecker and I will do recon, see if there’s a weak link in the fence.”
Parker raised an eyebrow. “And Harper?”
I swallowed. “We extract her first. If she’s still at the club, I’ll go in. Alone.”
Wrecker’s eyes flicked up. “Not happening. You get her out, but you’re not soloing the hit.”
I met his gaze. “You want her safe? This is how it has to be. They know my face. She knows my scent. If I don’t do it, nobody will.”
The tension stretched until Rocket barked, snapping us all out of it. Wrecker laughed, dry and low. “Fine. But if you go dark for more than five minutes, I’m calling in the National Guard.”
Parker turned back to her monitors. “And I’ll have drones on standby, just in case.”
I grinned. “Good.”
I stood, gave Rocket one last pat, and walked to the board. The addresses and names blurred together, but one word kept burning: Harper.
She’d spent three years in that place, waiting for a miracle. She was going to get one.
I traced my finger along the shipping route, from the docks to San Pedro, then up the coast to some no-name town in northern California. I remembered Maltraz’s signature: hit fast, hit hard, then move before anyone can follow. This was his hand. Maybe even his endgame.
Wrecker came up beside me and clapped me on the shoulder. “You got this, Jess.”
Parker wheeled her chair over and bumped my hip with her knee. “Go get your girl, Arsenal. We’ll cover the rest.”
I nodded, took a breath, and looked around the room. The screens flickered, the lines pulsed, the data crawled across the glass in cold logic. But under it all was the heat of the hunt. The promise of violence, of righting a wrong the world had let fester.
I checked my phone. One unread text: a photo of the vacant lot next to Wrecker’s house. A piece of land I’d always meant to buy, but never had the time or the nerve. Now, I looked at it and saw something different: a blank slate. A start.
I closed my eyes and pictured Harper there, sun on her hair, bluebonnets at her feet. I sketched a house in my mind: strong walls, wide windows, a porch that ran the length of the front. Room for our own dog, and maybe a pup or two.
But first, I had to get her out. Whole.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
The team moved, each to their station. Wrecker prepping surveillance, Parker hacking deep, Rocket wagging his tail like the world was already fixed.
I watched the board, the route, the future I could almost see.
And for the first time in five years, I believed in it.