Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Ramon climbed from the van and looked at the building, with its peaked roof and smashed windows. Red brick tiles. Overgrown trees stretched up on either side, reaching over it as if trying to cover the shame of the building from viewers.
“Nice place.”
Bear shut the driver’s door, and his boots crunched on the gravel as he made his way around the front end of the van. “It’s just a pit stop. I’m not taking this guy anywhere we actually frequent.”
That was fair enough, but while they hadn’t been able to openly talk about what was going on in the van—where the tied-up janitor would’ve been able to hear them—they could now, right?
“Who is this guy?” Ramon motioned with his chin in the direction of the van.
“You tell me.” Bear folded his arms, making his expansive chest look even bigger. But even if some might consider it to be an attempt to intimidate Ramon, he didn’t see it that way. It was, however, a challenge.
“That’s not how this works,” Ramon challenged right back.
“I don’t have to prove myself to you. You all know who I am and what I’ve done.
It’s you guys who dropped off the map. I figured you had something going on I could sink my teeth into.
Something other than getting ready for the birth of a baby. ”
He shifted, as if he was about to walk away.
Bear said, “Fine. You can stick around.”
Ramon wanted to quip back, something sarcastic, but kept his thoughts to himself. One of the other guys came over, and they walked the janitor down an overgrown path and into the building. “What is this place?”
Inside didn’t look much better than outside, not even after they hit the switches on a couple of floodlights that they’d set up. A massive, abandoned warehouse of some kind, with the moonlight coming in through the windows up high at the peak of the wall, where it met the roof.
Ramon was pretty sure he spotted bats hanging in the rafters above their heads.
Bear’s guys walked the janitor across the leaf-strewn floor to one side, dragging his feet through the debris. His head hanging forward. Out cold still?
When they were out of earshot, Bear said, “I guess it used to be a milk bottling plant. Whoever owned it abandoned the place years ago.” He motioned for Ramon to follow him and set off across the expansive room to a set of tables on the far side where Hollace and one of the other guys, who hadn’t been at the office building, worked on laptops.
“We needed somewhere to bring him, or whoever was waiting for us at the company, without them seeing our base of operations. Such as it is.”
They’d get to that. But for now, Ramon said, “I don’t get why you grabbed that guy. Did he do something or say something that indicated he was an agent of Dominatus?”
Hollace sat back in his chair. “Let’s just say, I’m surprised he didn’t try to kill you.
” He turned his laptop so Ramon could see the screen.
“We’ve come across this guy a number of times already.
Spotted him tailing us in crowded places.
Seen him show up where we are. He’s tracking us.
We just don’t know what his endgame is.”
“Was this even about the network, or some name you guys need?”
Hollace nodded. “We do need that name. But even I’m starting to wonder if it’s just a wild goose chase.”
Bear pulled out a chair of his own and sat. When Bear opened his computer, a video call connected, and Hazel, their technician—their equivalent of Maizie—flickered on the screen. “Hey, boss.”
The full-figured woman had a dark pixie cut with three shaved slashes on either side of her head above her ears. “Hi, Ramon!”
He lifted his chin, then went to Hollace. “This guy shows up where you are, and he’s following you. Why be a janitor? He wasn’t lying in wait, ready to pounce. You guys caught him.”
“We set a trap.”
And Ramon was the one who’d fallen for it? At least, along with the janitor. “Who is he?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Hollace said, stretching his arms above his head. “Just as soon as you head in there and get his prints.”
“First, tell me about this name.”
Hollace smirked. “Figures.”
“That I’m not going to walk into this blind?
No one knows what you guys are doing. It’s been months.
At least we managed to out that general.
” Ramon didn’t want to talk about the particulars, especially considering he’d thought the guy had died.
Then it turned out he hadn’t; there was another one running around.
Nope. Definitely didn’t need to discuss that.
He asked, “What progress have you guys made?”
Whether Hollace thought that was amusing or not, Ramon couldn’t tell. “You think I’ll just run down everything we’ve been doing because you asked?” He dumped the two front legs of his chair back on the ground. “Nice try.”
“Tit for tat.”
“Ramon,” Bear called over. “You have that hard drive?”
He handed it to the team leader. “Let me know if you find any suspicious names on that thing.”
Bear looked at Hollace. “Tell him about the money.”
When Bear went back to his call with Hazel, which involved him plugging the drive into his laptop, Hollace was frowning at his boss.
“Tough luck, buddy,” Ramon said. “Tell me about the money.” He lifted his brows.
Hollace looked like he wanted to punch Ramon, but Ramon didn’t really care. He just needed information he could pass back to Kenna.
Yes, this was about him being a double agent for Banbury Investigations, but it also wasn’t.
They trusted Bear and his team. They just didn’t know what on earth the guys here had been doing for the last few months.
Kenna needed to know if they were going to do something that concerned her—or put anyone she cared about at risk.
However, Ramon wasn’t acting when he told Bear and the team that he wanted to be here, and if she didn’t know that, he wasn’t going to tell her.
Truth was, Ramon had felt like he was on protection detail the past few weeks.
He didn’t mind caring for the people on their team, but with the whole of Dominatus to unearth and take down, he’d rather be on the front lines.
Kicking in doors.
Dragging out suspects.
Generally, getting business taken care of.
Much better than feeling like he was sitting around waiting for something to happen. He’d rather make it happen. Like these guys were, hopefully, doing.
Hollace typed on his laptop. “All of Dominatus, each ‘splinter cell’ as it were? Far as we have learned, they all pay a kind of dues to the organization. Each person who is in the group gives a tithe of their endeavors.”
“Seriously?” That was the first Ramon had heard of anything like that.
Hollace nodded, showing Ramon a ledger. “This is a photograph that was taken and handed to us. But we have no idea who took it or where to find this ledger. Somewhere in the world, there’s a paper book where Dominatus keeps a list of all its members.
We’re trying to find the ledger, which means we’re trying to find the name of the person who keeps the ledger. ”
“Like an accountant, or some kind of business manager?”
“Right,” Hollace said. “We think it’s a chief financial officer or accountant.”
Ramon whistled. “One person who can break the whole thing open.”
Hollace nodded. “So, maybe go get a fingerprint from this janitor so that we can find some leverage to get him to tell us who ordered him to surveil us, or who the accountant is.”
“Could be on that drive.” Ramon motioned to the tech he’d given Bear. “Right?”
“We have to know it when we see it. Let Hazel do her job, and you do yours.”
Ramon figured the tone in Hollace’s words was about Bear ordering him around. “Fine. I’ll play.”
Hollace lifted a small device that looked like a GPS tracker or palm pilot. “Scan his fingerprint into this. It’ll immediately upload the image to our system and start running his ID.”
“Back in a sec.” Ramon wandered across the empty warehouse, skirted around a couple of pallets, and headed along the trail left in the dirt from when they’d dragged the guy in. The guys here, formerly Miami Security International, might have actually hit on a way to uncover all of Dominatus.
What would the world think when the president was exposed as one of their assets? Or when nations fell because their leaders were embroiled in this scandal? The fallout of releasing all that information to the public would be destabilizing.
He’d hoped it would reach that scale when they’d dumped the general’s entire research database onto the internet for all to see.
Only the president had brought in the FBI to “investigate,” and they’d kept the entire story focused on that one rogue US Army general as the figurehead.
Not one word about an international conspiracy had been spoken.
Instead, it’d all been about what the general was doing. And how the president had supposedly hired Banbury Investigations months or years ago—he wasn’t sure which it was meant to have been—to uncover it all and bring justice.
Now they were pawns in her game, and the team had the whole online world speculating on what they might be doing next. Picking apart what was known of their actions. Discussing it all to death. At least until another news story overtook people’s attention.
Through the doorway, there was a long hall about as clean as the rest of the place. Two of the MSI guys flanked an opening to the right. Ramon showed them the fingerprint scanner as he approached, and the one closest to him nodded.
Both guards stayed where they were as Ramon went inside the room, a slim space about the size of a prison cell with a dirty white sink on the left side—just without the toilet.
The detainee had been tied to a folding chair, hands behind his back and his ankles secured to the legs of the chair.
He was facing the wall, away from Ramon, so that he could see the guy’s hands but not his face.
His head was dipped forward like he had his chin on his chest. Sweat had dampened the back collar of his custodian overalls and under his arms.
Ramon only needed a fingerprint.
He palmed the scanner and grabbed the guy’s index finger. It flexed in his grip.
He was awake.
Ramon took the print, holding the digit steady while the scanner did its thing. The guy convulsed in the chair, not quite pulling against Ramon’s grasp of his hand, but it was close. A beep sounded from the scanner.
He looked at the screen.
Print not found.
So…not in the system? He looked at the image the scanner had come up with, but it seemed more like a blob than an actual fingerprint. He looked at the end of the guy’s finger and saw a patch of scar tissue. Ramon checked the others, then glanced at the doorway. “Go get Bear!”
“What is it?” The operator on guard peered into the room. “What’s going on?”
“This guy has no prints. They’ve been burned off.”