Chapter Nine #2
Jack shook his head. "Just him. The ranch is huge but there was nobody else there. No guards, no staff. Just the old man and all that desert."
Nero studied the directions on the receipt.
Three and a half hours. If he moved now, assembled a team, requisitioned vehicles, drove through the evening, he could be on site by nightfall.
If he waited until morning for proper authorization and a full tactical briefing, he'd lose twelve hours that Amani might not have.
He thought about the photo. Amber eyes, sharp grin, cocktail umbrella. A kid who walked home barefoot at four in the morning because he was a lion and lions weren't afraid of anything.
He thought about what Jack had said: the old man smiled at him like everything was fine.
"Jack. I need you to testify."
The shark's face went gray. "They'll—"
"I know. And I can't promise you safety, because I'd be lying.
What I can promise is that cooperating fully, right now, today, is the only thing between you and a cell next to Dale and Mako and Paulie.
Because I will find all three of them, Jack.
That's not a threat; it's a regular day for me.
The question is which side of this you want to be on when it's done. "
Jack looked at him for a long moment. His eyes were wet and his jaw was working and he looked, in that moment, exactly like what he was: a twenty-six-year-old who had done something terrible and was only just beginning to understand that the rest of his life would be shaped by what he did next.
"What do you need?" Jack asked.
"Everything. Names, dates, the money trail, Grainger's contacts, Dale's contacts. All of it, written down, signed. And you don't leave this apartment until I tell you to."
Jack nodded. He got a pen.
While Jack wrote, Nero made his calls from the apartment's narrow balcony, leaning against the railing in the late afternoon sun with his phone in one hand and his notepad in the other.
Harold first. "I've got the location. Ranch outside Pahrump, three and a half hours. One target, elderly male, crane shifter, no visible security. I need a team."
Harold whistled low. "How solid is the intel?"
"First-person account from one of the kidnappers. He gave me turn-by-turn directions, the buyer's name, and a full confession. He'll testify."
"That's Christmas in July. How many do you want on the entry team?"
Nero thought about it. A full tactical unit would take time to assemble, time he didn't want to spend.
But going in light against an unknown situation was how cops got killed, even when the target was an elderly crane with no security.
Grainger had bought a lion shifter and kept him collared and prisoner.
He might have weapons. He might have resources that Jack didn't know about.
"Four plus us," Nero said. "Small, fast, quiet. People who've worked shifter entries before. I want to be on the road by six and on site by nine thirty. We go in under dark."
"I'll make the calls. Meet at the division at five thirty for briefing."
Next, his supervisor, who authorized the operation with minimal pushback once Nero laid out the evidence chain, and reminded him that Lady Leo already had her team working on it.
Then the analyst, who ran Grainger's name against property records and came back with a hit, a two-thousand-acre ranch registered to a Martin Grainger, purchased thirty-four years ago, no tax liens, no other inhabitants listed.
Satellite imagery showed a large Spanish-style house, several outbuildings, a dirt driveway connecting to an unnamed county road that wound through empty desert for twelve miles before joining a state highway. Isolated didn't begin to cover it.
Finally, Nero called Lady Leo. He owed her an update. He'd blown past that deadline by over a day, but he had something worth the wait.
"We have a location," he said. "Your son is being held at a ranch outside Pahrump. I have a team assembling now. We'll be on site tonight."
Silence on the line. Three seconds. Four. Nero could hear her breathing, controlled, steady, the breathing of someone who was holding herself together by force of will.
"Is he alive?"
"The informant saw him alive at the time of delivery. That was Saturday morning. I have no reason to believe his status has changed."
Another silence. Then: "What do you need from me?"
"Stay by your phone. I'll call you the moment we have him."
"Detective." Her voice cracked on the word, just barely, a fracture so fine that anyone without ferret ears would have missed it entirely. "Bring him home, I’ll call my people off. For now."
"I will."
He hung up and looked at the sky. The sun was getting low, throwing long shadows across the parking lot below. Three and a half hours to Pahrump. Briefing at five thirty. On the road by six. On site by nine thirty, maybe ten if the desert roads were bad.
Somewhere out there, in a house he'd never seen, a twenty-year-old kid was waiting for someone to come.
Nero didn't know him. Hadn't met him. Had nothing to go on but a photo of a beautiful face behind a bar and a pair of tiny black shorts in an evidence bag and the sound of a sister screaming into a phone and a mother who gave him forty-eight hours and meant every syllable.
He got in his car and drove to the division.
He had work to do.