Chapter Nine
The traffic camera footage came through in the afternoon of the second day, and it was exactly as damning as Nero had hoped.
The image was grainy, municipal cameras weren't known for their resolution, but it showed a black van parked under a streetlight at three forty-seven AM.
At four oh eight, three figures emerged from the alley between the warehouses.
At four eleven, a fourth figure appeared from the direction of the club, walking alone, shirtless in the warm night.
At four twelve, the fourth figure stopped.
At four thirteen, he charged. At four thirteen and six seconds, he was on the ground.
Nero watched the footage three times. The quality was too poor for faces, but the van was clear enough.
Black panel van, older model, no rear windows.
The plates were partially obscured by mud, deliberately, probably, but the analyst managed to pull a partial: first three characters, enough to run against DMV records then compare those records with known shark shifters in the Shifter Enforcement database.
There were only seven hits for sharks with criminal records.
Three of those were already in custody from the Playground bust. Two sharks were confirmed out of state.
That left two possibles, and one of them, a shark named Dale Reeves, had a van matching the general description registered in his name. The partial plate also matched.
Nero ran Dale's known associates through the Playground files.
The network maps the task force had built were dense and tangled, but names connected to names connected to names.
Within an hour, Nero had a list of six sharks who'd been banned from Kinky Kritters, who'd been loosely connected to the Grizzly's operation, and who were currently unaccounted for.
Three of them had been flagged for possible involvement in prior kidnapping-for-hire schemes.
Small stuff: debts collected, people moved from one place to another for money, work that sharks did when someone else was paying and they didn't have to think too hard.
But the pattern was there. These weren't sharks who'd acted on their own.
Someone had hired them. Someone with money and a specific target in mind.
The crane. The caller had said "sold him to a crazy old perv out in the desert." A buyer. This was a commission job.
Nero needed the buyer's identity and location, and the fastest route to both was through the sharks themselves.
The two who'd been tackled and arrested at the Playground weren't going to talk.
Sharks in custody lawyered up faster than any other species, a survival instinct that translated neatly from ocean to courtroom.
But the caller on the tip line was a different animal.
Whoever he was, he'd called in the kidnapping within hours of it happening. He felt guilty. Guilty people talked.
Nero looked at his list of six possible sharks and started eliminating.
The caller had been at a casino with a pool audible from the gaming floor.
He'd been alone, no background voices suggesting companions.
He'd been nervous but coherent, which meant he wasn't drunk or high.
And he'd known details: Amani's name, Lady Leo, Kinky Kritters, the desert, the crane.
That was inside knowledge. The caller had been part of the kidnapping crew.
Three of the six sharks on his list had known gambling habits.
One of those three, a shark named Jack Morrow, had a pattern of frequenting the Palermo, a mid-range casino on the south end of the Strip known for its rooftop pool.
The Palermo's pool was on the third floor, directly above the gaming floor, with an open-air design that would carry splash sounds down to the slots.
Casino with a pool audible from the floor.
Nero pulled Jack Morrow's file. Twenty-six.
Low-level muscle. No violent priors. Known associate of the banned sharks.
Last known address: an apartment complex off Tropicana, nothing fancy.
He'd been on the periphery of the Playground network but had never been directly linked to any of the Grizzly's operations.
A follower, not a leader. The kind of guy who went along with things because saying no to sharks was harder than saying yes.
The kind of guy who called a tip line afterward because he couldn't sleep.
Nero grabbed his keys.
Jack's apartment was on the second floor of a stucco building that had been beige once and was now the color of surrender. The hallway smelled like carpet cleaner and someone's burnt dinner. Nero knocked and waited and listened with his ferret ears for movement inside.
Shuffling. A pause. The creak of someone approaching the door and stopping on the other side of it.
"Jack Morrow. Shifter enforcement. Open the door."
A longer pause. Then the deadbolt turned and the door opened six inches, held by a chain, and a face appeared in the gap that looked like it hadn't slept in days.
Heavy-lidded eyes, sallow skin, the grayish pallor that sharks got when they'd been out of the water too long and their bodies were starting to protest. He was younger than Nero expected.
The file said twenty-six but the face said twelve, if twelve came with dark circles and the haunted expression of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I don't know anything," Jack said.
"You called the tip line from the Palermo casino at approximately eleven forty-two AM to report the kidnapping of Amani, Lady Leo's son, by members of your own shark group.
" Nero said it calmly, factually, without accusation.
He watched Jack's face go through four distinct stages of panic in under two seconds.
"The line is anonymous. I didn't trace the call.
I'm a ferret, Jack. I have very good ears.
The pool at the Palermo has a distinctive echo off the gaming floor, and you used the word 'chum,' which narrowed things down. Can I come in?"
The chain came off. The door opened. Nero stepped into an apartment that was small, clean, and smelled overwhelmingly of salt water and anxiety.
Jack backed up until he was against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed over his chest in the universal posture of someone who wanted to be smaller than they were.
"They'll kill me," Jack said. "If they find out I called, they'll kill me."
"They won't find out from me. Sit down."
Jack sat. Nero didn't. He stood in the middle of the small living room and let the silence work for him, a technique he'd learned early in his career. Guilty people couldn't stand silence. It pressed on them like water. Eventually they had to come up for air.
It took Jack about forty seconds.
"I didn't want to do it," he said. His voice cracked on the word "do." "They said it was just a job. Pick up a guy, drive him out to the desert, get paid. They said the buyer was some old man who wanted company. They made it sound like nothing."
"Who's 'they'?"
"Dale. Dale Reeves. He set it up. He's the one who got the job from the crane. Him and two others, Mako and Paulie. I was the fourth." Jack's hands were shaking. "I helped carry him to the van. I was there when they drugged him. I was there for all of it."
Nero let him talk. He didn't interrupt a confession. He let it unspool at its own pace because the pace told him things, which parts came easy because the person had been rehearsing them, and which parts came hard because the person hadn't been able to look at them yet.
The easy parts: the logistics. The van, the route, the timing. Dale had scoped the walk for two weeks. He knew Amani left at four, walked alone, and lived four blocks from the club. The plan was simple: three from the alley, one in the van, grab him, drug him, collar him, drive.
The hard parts: the delivery. Jack's voice dropped when he got to the ranch.
"The old man was waiting for us. He'd paid in advance; the money was already in Dale's account.
Fifty grand, split four ways. He just came out and looked at Amani like he was something he'd ordered from a catalog.
Called him 'little cub.' Made us untie him.
" Jack pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"He was so scared. Amani. He was trying not to show it but I could smell it on him.
Everyone could. And the old man just smiled at him.
Like everything was fine. Like this was normal. "
"The buyer's name," Nero said.
"Grainger. Mr. Grainger. I don't know his first name.
Dale handled the details. He's a crane, lives on some ranch out past Pahrump, middle of nowhere.
I can—" Jack got up, went to the kitchen counter, and pulled a crumpled receipt from a drawer.
On the back, written in pencil, was a set of directions.
"Dale gave us all copies in case anyone got separated on the drive.
It's about three and a half hours from Vegas. "
Nero took the receipt. Directions, not an address.
Turn-by-turn from the highway to an unnamed road to a property that probably didn't show up on any map.
Desert properties were like that. Miles of nothing, then a gate, then a driveway, then someone's entire world hidden behind a ridge line where nobody would ever accidentally find it.
"What do you know about Grainger?"
"Old. Rich. Lonely, I think." Jack's voice had gone flat, the way voices go when the adrenaline of confession burns off and the reality of what you've done settles in.
"Dale said he'd lost his mate years ago and wanted a new one.
He was specific about what he wanted, young, male, submissive training.
He'd been looking for a while. Dale found him through contacts in the shark network, guys who arrange things for people with money. "
"Does Grainger have security? Other people on the property?"