Chapter 27 Cole
twenty-seven
Cole
"What we do here. What I did last night." I keep my voice low. "We handle problems that cannot go through legal channels. People who are untouchable. Situations where the law protects the wrong side."
"I have questions," she says quietly.
"I know. Later. When this is done."
She nods. Files it away.
The doors open.
The command center stretches before us—wall screens cycling through data feeds, terminals arranged for maximum sightline coverage.
The hum of cooling fans underlays everything, steady, constant.
Vanessa's workstation dominates one corner, three monitors running parallel queries.
Mira is already at the planning table, posture perfect, watching us enter.
Angelina takes it in. The operational displays. The equipment no private security company needs. The people who use it.
She does not ask questions. She just... sees.
Good. She sees. She stays.
Kade meets us at the threshold. His eyes move from Angelina to me, reading whatever he finds in our expressions.
"You stay for this briefing," he says, "you don't talk about what we are. Ever."
"I understand."
"To anyone. Not FBI. Not Sal. No one."
She holds his gaze. "I'm Sal's niece. I know how secrets work."
A beat. Kade nods.
We move to the planning table where the team is already assembled. The smell of fresh coffee cuts through the recycled air—Miguel handled it before heading back to medical.
Angelina's fingers find mine as we settle into adjacent chairs. Natural, unremarked.
She is wearing the same clothes from yesterday—my shirt, her jeans. Hair pulled back in a knot that is already loosening. The hollow at the base of her throat catches the blue light from the screens.
Focus.
"We have a name for the Gardener." Kade stands at the head of the table, tablet in hand. The main screen behind him displays a professional headshot. Academic, composed. "Victoria Lockwood."
The photo enlarges. Dark hair pulled back. Pale green eyes that seem wet even in a static image. The permanent furrow between her brows that I dismissed as academic intensity when I first reviewed the courtroom footage.
Twenty feet from Angelina. I was watching Adrian. Missed the real threat.
"Dr. Victoria Lockwood. Toxicology researcher." Kade pulls up a second image on the adjacent screen. "Lost her twin sister Rose to a trafficking ring three years ago."
Silence. The second photo holds the room. Rose Lockwood. Identical face. Same dark hair, same pale eyes. Red stamp across the corner: MISSING PERSON.
"She's been testifying in federal courts as an expert witness. Defense side. Pharmaceutical evidence, chain of custody—legitimate credentials, legitimate work." Kade's gaze sweeps the table. "That's why no one looked twice at her."
"She testified in my courtroom." Angelina's voice is steady. Professional. The judge speaking, not the woman whose hand tightens in mine. "Two weeks ago. DeLuca case."
My thumb traces across her knuckles. Once. Controlled.
"Fourteen judges dead across seven states." The map lights up behind Kade. Red markers spreading from Texas through the Southwest, into California. "Started in Houston. Spread west. All trafficking-adjacent cases."
"How'd we find her?" Asher asks from his terminal.
Kade's jaw unclenches, barely. "Vanessa."
Vanessa spins her chair to face the table, already talking before she's fully turned.
"Okay, so the feds were looking at geography, right?
The spread pattern, the 'moving west' thing.
But that's not what connects them." Her fingers move quickly, pulling up displays.
"I kept thinking. Okay, Han, show them the sentencing data—" She's talking to her computer.
"Every dead judge? Harsh sentencing records on trafficking cases.
High conviction rates. Long sentences. That's not random spread. That's a hit list."
"She's taking out the judges who actually put traffickers away." Jax shakes his head slowly. "That's... backwards. Sister gets trafficked, so she starts clearing the track for more traffickers? That's not revenge. That's—" He stops. Doesn't finish.
"That's what made it hard to see." Vanessa pulls up another screen.
Court appearance records, flight manifests, hotel bookings.
"But here's the pattern the FBI totally missed.
Expert witnesses fly in, testify, fly out.
Like, two days max. Victoria? She extends her hotel stays.
Two weeks. Three weeks. Every. Single. Time. "
The pattern visualizes itself. Testimony dates. Extended hotel bookings. Death dates.
Patient. Methodical.
"She sticks around," Damian says from his terminal. "Waits."
"Right, and—" Vanessa pulls up another screen "—she's not a ghost online. I found search patterns. Judges' home addresses, daily routines, medical histories. All researched within seventy-two hours of each death. Different VPNs, different devices, but same behavioral fingerprint."
"And the FBI missed this because...?" The question comes out sharp, clipped—the voice she uses from the bench when counsel wastes her time.
"Different field offices, no centralized database access, each death looked like a random cardiac event in a different jurisdiction." Vanessa shrugs. "They were looking at geography. I was looking at behavior."
"The flowers?" I ask.
"Belladonna." Damian pulls up toxicology reports. "Atropine. Scopolamine. Mimics cardiac events." A beat. "No forced entry. No struggle."
"She published on this." Vanessa pulls up an academic abstract.
"'Bioavailability and Cardiac Effects of Tropane Alkaloids.
' Dosing thresholds, metabolic pathways — basically a manual for calculating lethal doses based on body weight.
" Her mouth twists. "The compound ratios in every autopsy match her methodology exactly. "
"So she poisons them and it looks like heart attacks." Jax's leg has stopped bouncing. "Cold start, clean exit. No victory lap."
"She gets invited in somehow." Kade sets down his tablet. "Professional courtesy, maybe. Fellow expert. Whatever it is, they trust her enough to let her close."
Angelina's grip tightens on my hand. I squeeze back. Once.
"The sister." Mira speaks from her seat, voice clipped. "Rose. Victoria spent eighteen months filing reports, hiring investigators. Legal channels. Then she stopped."
"Then she started killing." Kade's voice is flat. "Best we can tell, someone reached out to her. Gave her direction. Turned her grief into a weapon."
"Who?" Xander asks.
"Don't know yet. That's what we need to find out."
No one speaks. A woman who lost everything to trafficking, now being aimed at targets by someone else.
She has been hunting Angelina. Harsh sentencing. High conviction rate. DeLuca case.
"So what's the play?" Xander sets his tablet down. "We know who she is. How do we get her?"
"That's the problem." Kade pulls up a timeline. "She's careful. Varies her timing, her approach. We could wait for her to make a move, but—"
"But she is patient." I finish his thought. "She could wait weeks."
"She is patient." Mira's voice is cool. "So am I."
"And Angelina's countdown doesn't stop." Damian's query results scroll behind him. "Eleven days."
Silence while options cycle through: surveillance, stakeouts, intercepting her travel patterns. None of them fast enough.
"We need to draw her out." Kade looks at me. "Fastest way to catch a hunter is to give her prey she can't resist."
Angelina goes still beside me.
"Bait." The word comes out flat. Final.
Every tactical response I have ever learned screams no. She is not a mission objective. She is—
"Controlled bait," Kade clarifies. "Full team coverage. We pick the location, the timing. She thinks she's hunting. She walks into a net."
"Her house." I say it before anyone else can. Seven years of surveillance means I know every angle, every sightline, every vulnerability. "Victoria knows where Angelina lives. If Angelina goes home, resumes a routine—"
"Chesca." Angelina's voice is sharp.
"Stays here." I meet her eyes. "Summer break. Vacation with the team."
"She already knows me," Xander offers. "We'll be fine."
"She'll be protected," Kade says. "And out of the operational zone."
Angelina's jaw works. Her fingers flex against mine, then still—a decision settling into place.
"And if she doesn't come?" Steady voice, but something underneath—a hairline crack. "If she waits us out?"
"She will not." I meet her eyes. "You are too perfect a target. Harsh sentencing. High conviction rate. The DeLuca case alone puts you at the top of her list."
"Flattering."
"It should be. You are exactly the kind of judge she hates." I squeeze her hand once. "And exactly the kind we protect."
"She stays at CPG," Angelina says. "Not Sal's. I want her close. I want to know she's safe."
"Done."
"It could work." I do not like that it could work. "But you are not alone for a second. Not one."
"Focus." Kade's voice carries warning without heat. "Asher—Victoria's patterns. Known associates, anything we missed. Jax—rotation at the house with Mira. Damian—your contacts, anyone heard whispers about Victoria's next move."
Nods around the table.
"Cole—you're on Angelina."
"That was never in question."
"I know." Kade's mouth twitches—there and gone. "I just like saying it."
"Xander—you're on Chesca."
"When do we move?" Jax asks.
Kade looks at Angelina. "When do you want to tell Chesca?"
"After she wakes up. Make it sound like an adventure, not a lockdown."
"Then we move tonight." Kade straightens. "Victoria Lockwood thinks she's the hunter. She's about to learn otherwise."
The briefing disperses into purposeful activity. The room shifts into motion. Coffee mugs refilled, queries launched. The rhythm of a hunt beginning.
Angelina stays seated, hand still in mine. Her thumb moves absently across my knuckles—the same gesture I gave her minutes ago, returned without thinking.
"You okay?" I ask quietly.
"I just agreed to be bait for a serial killer.
" She exhales. A sound that's not quite a laugh.
"After spending the night in a mercenary compound with my ex-lover who killed my ex-husband yesterday.
" She turns to look at me. "I'm so far from okay that okay is a foreign country I can't find on a map. "
"That is a lot of exes in one sentence."
Another almost-laugh. "You're not an ex."
"No?"
"Exes end." Her eyes hold mine. "We never ended. We just... paused. For twelve years."
Jūni-nen. The number sounds different in Japanese. Heavier.
"Longest pause of my life."
"Mine too." She squeezes my hand once, then stands. "I need to talk to Chesca. Make this sound exciting instead of terrifying."
I rise from the table and follow her out.