Chapter 27 – Evelyn
EVELYN
The low hum of the van’s engine mirrored the low hum of anxiety thrumming through me.
“Everyone in position?” Agent Ethan Mercer, Dominic’s SID contact, asked through the comms.
“In position,” Dominic confirmed.
One by one, my guys sounded off, followed by the eight SID agents spread throughout the rail yard.
Liam had tapped into SID’s comms as soon as we arrived, although they were listen-only on our end. Dominic and my guys were wearing a second set of earpieces, a closed channel that fed directly back to Liam and me.
Liam and I were safely parked a few blocks away, monitoring the rail yard through the cameras we’d placed the night before and the body cams worn by Alexander, Marcus, Sebastian, Adrian, and Dominic.
It was a poor substitute for actually being there, but I had to take what I could get.
The guys wanted me back at HQ with Maya, but that was too far away.
It was bad enough they were going into danger without me.
I refused to be a mile away in case something went wrong.
My team was already scattered across the city in case he didn’t show up or something went sideways.
Izzy was at the hospital with Danny and Grace, as we still couldn’t connect Grace’s shooting to Kingfisher directly.
I wasn’t taking the risk that it wasn’t an isolated incident perpetrated by one of the many powerful people we had pissed off over the years, so Izzy and Danny were on high alert.
Maya was stationed at the Archers HQ. They were prepared to post all the information we had on Director Keller and Judge Jefferson public if something went sideways.
They were also responsible for calling in the cavalry—their father, Captain Patel—if we needed backup.
Agent Mercer had agreed with Dominic that involving the local police was a bad idea when we didn’t know how far this reached.
There would be no backup for my guys outside of the SID agents if things went sideways.
My gut had been churning since we made the plan.
Kingfisher was a formidable enemy; we couldn’t underestimate him.
We had one shot at this. I glanced at the clock on one of the monitors.
Thirty minutes till the meeting time outlined in the emails.
Beside me, Liam was solemn, his usual playful personality nowhere to be seen as he typed rapidly.
Fifteen minutes before the meeting time, a white box truck turned into the rail yard.
“Incoming,” Liam said to the guys. “Box truck approaching from the west. Two in the cab.”
A SID agent called out the same thing a few moments later. “Everyone, hold your positions,” Agent Mercer said. “No one moves until I say so.”
The box truck rolled to a stop, but neither the passenger nor the driver made any moves to get out. I strained to make out the identity of either occupant, but the camera angle was wrong.
“Can we see who’s in the truck?” Alexander asked.
“Negative,” a different SID agent replied.
“Negative on our end, too,” Liam said. “The camera angle isn’t right. Checking traffic cameras now.”
I stopped pacing behind Liam and sat down as we traced the box truck’s journey.
“There!” I pointed out an ATM that was across the street from a traffic camera that showed the box truck at a red light. The camera would have a perfect view of the driver and passenger.
Liam’s fingers flew across the keys as he hacked into the ATM camera. “Got it.”
The picture quality wasn’t great, and I ran one of Maya’s programs to enhance it. I sucked in a breath. “Director Keller is the passenger. Don’t recognize the driver.”
“Tracking the driver now,” Liam said.
The truck’s engine cut, and I inhaled. This was it.
Nothing happened. Seconds stretched into minutes, the rail yard suspended in a terrible stillness.
What was happening? Had the director sensed something was off? If they drove away now, we’d lose our only chance to catch him like this. We’d never get another opportunity this clean. Were they stalling for backup or waiting on their “shipment”?
The questions spun faster and faster in my brain as the silence stretched on.
Minute after minute ticked by. At two minutes to the meeting time, a train’s loud horn screeched through the silence as the rumble of a freight train got closer.
The roar of the freight train rumbling through the rail yard drowned out the camera’s audio.
“We lost audio,” Agent Mercer said. “Hold your positions until I say so. We’re going to have to catch them in the act.”
I tensed even more. My muscles already felt too tight for my skin. Without audio, it was harder to make a case. But if we had to wait for the director to do something, how much longer would those women have to suffer?
The freight train screeched loudly to a halt, the engines huffing in the quiet. Like a spell had been broken over the rail yard, the cab doors to the box truck opened.
“Confirmation of Director Keller.” One of the SID agents crackled over the comms. “One other unknown.”
From Adrian’s shadowed position under one of the rail cars, I watched the director step out of the cab of the box truck.
He wore a navy-blue suit and looked out of place in the dingy rail yard.
He buttoned his suit jacket as he walked around to the back of the truck.
He looked confident and unbothered about the whole thing, like he was going out for a drink instead of trafficking women.
My stomach twisted as I realized his confidence probably came with years of doing this.
How many women had suffered at the hands of this man before anyone realized what was happening?
The driver joined him. He stood six inches shorter than the director but had a broad frame.
A dusty orange baseball cap covered his head, and a scowl twisted his face.
The director motioned to the box truck’s door, and the driver produced a key from his pocket and unlocked it.
He rolled the door up, and a muffled curse sounded over the comms.
“I’m counting at least eight girls inside and a guy with an AR-15,” Marcus whispered.
Fuck. That was a lot of firepower. If I were there, I would aim to take him out first. Neither the driver nor the director held a weapon as they motioned the girls forward, but I didn’t doubt they were packing.
“Two more men approaching from the east,” an agent said. “They came from one of the cars on the train.”
“Five hostiles total,” Agent Mercer said. “Everyone, hold your positions.”
“When do we move in?” Dominic asked quietly.
There was a long pause while we waited for Agent Mercer’s answer. The men were forcing the girls out of the truck and gathering them in a small group. The approaching men from the train shook Director Keller’s hand before leering at the girls.
“Ethan, when do we move in?” Dominic repeated as the man inside the truck jumped out and shut the truck door.
“We need to make sure the case is airtight,” Agent Mercer finally said. “We wait until the girls are on the train.”
“And what if the train leaves?” Marcus hissed.
“We have agents tracking the train. We’ll intercept the girls along the route.”
No, no, no. That wasn’t part of the plan. If those girls got on that train, who knew where they would end up?
“That wasn’t the plan,” Dominic hissed as one of the men shoved one of the girls forward.
“Plans change,” Agent Mercer shot back. “We have to gather as much evidence as we can. We have one shot at this.”
One of the men from the train started back in that direction, while the truck driver and the other man from the truck started shoving the girls in the direction he was leading.
“Fuck!” I tore off my comms so I wouldn’t distract the guys.
“What do we do?” Liam asked, his eyes wide.
“I don’t know. I—” I watched in horror as one of the girls tried to make a run for it.
She broke from the group, darting sideways, and the director tackled her to the ground.
I winced as she went down hard. He dragged her to her knees, a sneer on his face as he yelled at her.
I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the train starting back up.
I could only watch in frozen silence as he unbuckled his pants.
The girl sobbed at his feet. I couldn’t just stand there and watch this. I had to do something.
“Freeze!” Dominic shouted, stepping out from his hidden position behind a rail yard. “Release her!”
“Hayes! What the hell are you doing?” Agent Mercer demanded, but Dominic ignored him.
I watched the monitors as all my guys unveiled their positions. It took a beat for the SID agents to catch up, but they did, their cover blown from the moment Dominic yelled.
The guy with the AR-15 lifted his weapon and started firing.
I heard a pained grunt, then the guy’s head snapped back, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.
I watched through Alexander’s body cam as one of the other guys lifted his gun, but Adrian materialized behind him, placing his gun to the base of the guy’s skull.
“Drop your weapons,” Agent Mercer demanded as they closed in on the group.
Director Keller threw the girl he was holding to the ground and ran for the north exit of the rail yard. Neither Liam nor I had a chance to say anything before Marcus was there, tackling him to the ground like he had tackled that poor girl.
Director Keller thrashed in Marcus’s hold before Marcus was able to grab both of his arms and cuff him. He rolled him over and onto his feet, and the director froze.
“Wait, I know—” He looked past Marcus to someone else. Marcus turned, and I saw on his body camera that Dominic was approaching. Blood ran down Dominic’s arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Agent Hayes, what is the meaning of this?” the director demanded, like we hadn’t just caught him in the act of trafficking eight girls.
“It’s over, Director Keller,” Dominic said, folding his arms. “Or should I say, Kingfisher?”
For a second, the director just stared at him.
Then he laughed.