Chapter Sixteen #5
All I could see was Keller dropping before his pistol cleared the holster.
I looked away.
Raven didn’t push it. He knew his point was made.
Outside, ambulances moved in and out of the property for more than an hour.
The final count settled at thirty-one women.
Six matched names from Haus Eberhardt. Two were the women Keller had sent me photographs of that morning.
Four had injuries serious enough for immediate transport, while several more were dehydrated, malnourished, dissociated or heavily sedated.
German police recovered forged documents for at least twenty-two separate identities in the processing room, plus phones, cash and enough pharmaceuticals to fill an evidence table.
The ambulances leaving with survivors should have made the site feel lighter, but it didn’t.
Keller was dead and Kade was gone.
By the time Wolf returned to the command vehicle, dusk had settled across the industrial road.
He had removed the plate carrier for now but still wore the tactical belt, dust streaking one knee of his pants.
The skin around his eyes looked drawn, but he was still moving like there was another hour of work waiting for him.
“We’re done here,” he said.
Raven closed the evidence case and locked both latches.
“German chain is signed. Digital copies are sealing now.”
Wolf nodded. His attention moved to me.
“You ride with us.”
“Was planning to.”
The drive back to Stuttgart was almost completely silent. I sat behind Raven with the briefcase strapped to the floor between my boots. Wolf rode in the front passenger seat, one elbow against the window, mask still on. He did not turn around once.
Viper was in the vehicle ahead with Hawk. I had seen them only briefly before we left the site.
A shallow cut from the catwalk glass had crossed Viper’s cheek.
Hawk walked straight to him, caught the front of his vest and pulled him close enough that their shoulders hit.
His other hand went to the back of Viper’s neck while he checked the cut, the movement rough and protective at the same time.
Viper did not joke or shrug him off. He wrapped one hand around Hawk’s forearm and said quietly, “I’m good.” Hawk kept him there for another second before letting go. Neither of them seemed to care who saw it.
Jackal rode with Bear because his side had started bleeding through the dressing after he ignored at least three separate instructions about not moving too fast. Bear had looked one sentence away from sedating him personally.
Normally that would have generated enough commentary to fill the entire trip, but nobody was in the mood.
I watched the highway lights move across the window and kept seeing Keller turn toward the steel door after managing one word, just enough to make Kade turn before the gunfire started.
I looked down at my hands and could still feel his blood. Raven worked quietly beside me, reviewing photographs of the case contents without opening the encrypted drives.
After almost forty minutes, he stopped on the Paris invitation again.
“This foundation is real,” he said.
Wolf finally moved in the front seat.
“Useful?”
“Potentially. Private capital, charitable front, very old money and some big political connections. Guest list won’t be public. The credential number in the case looks active.”
“Kade connected?” Wolf asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
I looked at the invitation.
“He wouldn’t carry it for no reason.”
Wolf’s head turned slightly toward the windshield.
“He carried a lot of things for reasons we don’t understand.”
His tone ended the conversation.
We reached the compound after dark. Bear took Jackal straight to medical as Hawk and Viper went to clear weapons and return equipment. Raven carried the briefcase to the operations table with both hands, and I followed because I was not letting it out of my sight yet.
The compound felt almost unnaturally warm and bright after the warehouse, every clean surface making the blood and concrete I had just left behind harder to forget.
Bear’s coffee mug still sat beside the sink where he had put it hours earlier.
One of Jackal’s shoes was under the couch.
My notebook from the morning remained open beside Raven’s keyboard to a page of missing-person names, written when they were still photographs and lines in a file instead of women we had carried out under blankets.
Raven set the case on the table and reopened it beneath the overhead lights. The evidence looked even more substantial spread across a clean surface.
Wolf came in from the equipment room after securing his rifle, the tactical belt still at his hips. The metal hardware shifted with the same click when he stopped at the end of the table. I heard it and kept my eyes on the evidence.
Raven glanced between us and collected the encrypted drives.
“I’m going to start imaging these.”
Wolf said, “Do that.”
He left with the drives, leaving the operations floor quiet.
“My office.”
I crossed my arms.
Wolf’s eyes hardened.
“My office, Mercer.”