Chapter Fifteen #2
“We’ll get you more,” Raven said.
Keller looked at me. “Mercer, one of the women from Eberhardt gave us two names yesterday. Friends she says were moved with her before she was brought there. If we find them and they will not speak to my officers, I may need you again.”
“Send me the names.”
“I will.”
He ended the call.
The screen returned to the property image.
Wolf remained standing at Raven’s shoulder while the rest of us worked.
He did not tell anyone to move faster because he didn’t need to.
Hawk left his coffee on the counter and went upstairs for field clothes.
Viper reassembled the optic and cleared his end of the table.
Bear disappeared toward the garage to check the medical and breaching loadout while Raven started pulling every vehicle associated with the site.
I opened the old facility records and worked through them with him.
The building had been designed for trucks, not people.
Three loading bays opened into a central distribution floor, with insulated storage rooms along the north side and an office block near the front.
The refrigerated section had heavy internal doors and drainage built into the concrete floor.
The old plans showed emergency exits, but two had been closed during a renovation years earlier.
I kept looking at those rooms and remembering the deadbolts at Haus Eberhardt.
Cerberus did not need to build prisons when businesses had already built rooms meant to keep temperature and sound from moving in or out.
Raven found the first stronger link by 7:42.
One of the fuel cards attached to the transport account had been used by a van on the Eberhardt schedule the night the seventeen women disappeared. The same card had been used again outside Offenburg three days later and twice more within five kilometers of the cold-storage property.
“That’s enough for movement,” I said.
“Enough to say the route comes here,” Raven corrected. “Still not enough to say the women are inside today.”
“Keller has three vans going in and none coming out.”
“I know. I’m being annoying because you taught me to be.”
“I regret everything.”
Wolf’s voice came from the opposite side of the table. “Keep regretting it.”
I turned toward him.
He had changed into a plate carrier and was checking his belt, the HK416 resting on the table beside him while he moved through magazines and equipment with the same quiet precision I had watched during training.
The black retention webbing hung folded beside the holster.
I looked back at Raven’s screen and concentrated on the fuel card.
By 9:15, German authorities had enough to authorize a closer surveillance position and prepare an emergency entry if the evidence developed.
Keller moved a small team into an adjacent industrial property under a maintenance cover while Hawk and Viper left separately to inspect the outer approaches without crossing the perimeter.
The next two hours gave us the piece Wolf had been waiting for.
A white van entered through the east service gate at 10:18.
German surveillance photographed the driver and Raven ran the face against the evidence recovered from Varga’s phone and found him in three courier images, including one taken outside Lyon after a transfer connected to the same higher-level approval number.
Then another man stepped out of the passenger side.
Dark hair reached his shoulders.
The photograph was grainy because Keller’s officer had shot it through two layers of glass from across the industrial road. The man’s face was turned away at first, one hand holding the door while he looked toward the building.
My body recognized him before Raven advanced to the next frame. The second photograph caught enough of his profile.
Kade.
He wore a dark jacket and black trousers, half his hair pulled back loosely at the crown.
The easy version from Stuttgart was gone with the white linen shirt and champagne, and there was no pool or Luca laughing nearby to soften the setting.
He looked calmer than the men around him and far more dangerous because I knew what those vans might contain.
Raven enlarged the image.
Wolf came around the table.
“That’s him,” I said.
Nobody questioned it.
I kept my hands flat against the table so I would not do anything stupid with them. I had spent time alone with Kade in a cabana. I had heard his voice closer than anyone else on the team. I looked back at the image.
“How long has he been there?”
Keller answered through the open channel. “Vehicle arrived six minutes ago. No departure yet.”
Wolf’s voice went colder. “Keep eyes on every exit. Do not approach him.”
“Understood.”
Raven pulled up the wider case board and placed the new image beside the Kade file.
The evidence around him had grown ugly since Stuttgart.
Varga’s phone put his approval structure above emergency route changes.
Haus Eberhardt connected that structure to forced transfers after escape attempts.
The Strasbourg account now touched drivers and a site that could be holding women we had failed to reach the first time.
Wolf looked at the board for several seconds before addressing the room.
“Kade is secondary to the rooms.”
Jackal had come downstairs dressed for work by then, his recovery restrictions visible mostly in the way Bear had removed half the equipment he would normally carry. He leaned against the edge of the table.
Wolf continued. “We take him alive if the opportunity is clean. Nobody leaves a victim unsecured to chase him. If he creates a lethal threat, you treat him like anyone else holding a weapon.”
The words were aimed at everyone but they still felt personal.
I looked at Wolf. “And if he runs before the building is clear?”
“Then he runs. The women come first.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
There was no room to argue with the priority. He was right.
Kade had spent months turning up beside routes, cars and people who disappeared before ARC could get there.
If he was inside that building now, taking him alive could open more of Cerberus than every phone we had seized combined.
But if the six K4 codes belonged to women from Haus Eberhardt, they had already been moved once while we were too late.
They were not becoming secondary again.
Keller arrived at the compound shortly after noon with an evidence packet under one arm and the tired expression of a man who had already spent half his day in a car.
He shook Wolf’s hand, nodded to the rest of the team and handed me two printed photographs.
The women from Haus Eberhardt had given names for both.
One was twenty-two. The other was twenty-six. Both had disappeared months apart from different countries. Neither photograph matched any woman we had recovered.
“If you see them, medical first,” Keller said. “Questions later.”
“Agreed.”
He studied the operations screen. “My prosecutor signed emergency authority. We have reason to believe people are being unlawfully held, and the armed security plus the Eberhardt vehicle gives us enough to move if your surveillance confirms the interior.”
Wolf nodded toward Raven. “We’re working the cameras.”
The cold-storage facility had its own network, older and uglier than the systems Raven preferred but connected to the outside world through a business line that had never been fully decommissioned.
He could not simply open every camera without risking an alert, so he worked from traffic, external network behavior and one compromised maintenance credential Keller’s cyber unit had obtained from the original alarm contractor.
An hour later, Raven got a single interior feed.
The image came from a loading corridor near the front offices. The quality was terrible. The camera had a wide angle, washed-out color, graininess and a timestamp nearly four minutes wrong.
It still showed a woman.
She crossed the corridor carrying a plastic bottle of water with both hands. A man walked behind her close enough that his arm stayed within reach of her shoulder. She wore gray sweatpants several sizes too large and slippers despite the industrial floor.
Raven froze the frame.
Nobody spoke.
Another woman appeared twenty seconds later.
Then a third.
Wolf leaned closer. “Any exits from that corridor?”
Raven brought up the old plan. “North storage rooms and the rear loading floor. If the renovations match the archive, this door takes you into the insulated section.”
Bear studied the plan beside him. “Main personnel entrance is bad. Narrow approach and camera coverage. Loading bay two gives me a better frame, but it’s exposed from the rear lot.”
Hawk’s voice came through the secure radio from outside Offenburg. “North embankment gives me the rear lot and both loading bays. East roof line blocks the side door.”
Viper added, “West service lane is clean enough for approach. Fence is low, no anti-climb.”
Wolf absorbed the information without repeating any of it.
“Jackal?”
Jackal looked at the road map. “If anyone runs on foot, south gets them into residential streets. East is industrial dead space until the rail line. I’ll take south and push east if they move vehicles.”
Bear glanced at him. “You are not sprinting anywhere.”
“I can pursue at a medically responsible speed.”
“That is not a thing.”
Wolf cut the argument off before it became one. “Jackal stays mobile with German support. No solo foot pursuit.”
Jackal looked unhappy with the restriction but did not challenge it.
Wolf turned to me and Raven. “You stay command-side until I clear medical in. Mercer goes with Keller’s team after that if they need language or identification help.”
I nodded with no argument.