Chapter 28 #2
Rory was so tired that the lines appeared to be moving on the screen. She rubbed her eyes and blinked, but no help. “Are those lines really moving, or did Carter actually slip something into the food, and I’m tripping?” Yeah, she didn’t need another brownie-like experience.
“No, you’re not high,” Chris confirmed, then quickly looked at Harper. “We’re not, right?”
“No.” Harper cracked a small smile, then went back into intelligence mode.
“The Italian took the bait. That cover story we established for a previous job—weapons smugglers—worked like a charm. An hour ago, we managed to secure the safe transport of our weapons on one of The Italian’s trade routes.
We had less than a minute to hack his server while he processed our payment, and we were only able to download about a quarter of his information before we had to get out, but we still got a lot. ”
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Rory stared in surprise, looking back and forth between the two women. “How is it that no one has managed to do this before?”
“We couldn’t have done it alone. We had to call Wyatt’s daughter for an assist,” Jessica admitted.
Wyatt’s daughter? Right, Chris said she was a genius hacker. Wow.
“No one else has the three best cyber minds in the world working for them,” Roman said, his dark gaze pinned on Harper.
“Dealing with smugglers is like chasing your tail. You go round and round, and the merry-go-round never stops. But that doesn’t mean we won’t stop fighting the good fight.”
Rory turned to see A.J. now in the room, and his comment had Liam startling awake. Liam ran a hand down his face and yawned before he and A.J. joined the table, standing off to the side. Bear turned in a few circles to find a new comfortable position and went back to sleep.
“So, what does this mean?” Rory’s focus returned to the two brilliant women before her. “Can we find his location? Arrange a meeting?”
Rory had tried something similar on the Dark Web in the past, but she wasn’t nearly as tech-savvy, and The Italian never took the bait.
She also didn’t have a cover story that looked like the real deal as an assist. Of course, The Italian probably would’ve used her as bait, the way Carter had turned the tables on her in France.
And she still had no idea why The Italian didn’t seem to want her before now, especially because in the world of bad guys and smugglers, everyone believed she was worth a fortune to The Italian.
“We haven’t been able to isolate his location.
Not yet, at least. Look here.” Harper pointed at a few of the lines on the screen.
“Those moving lines aren’t his trade routes, they’re where his IP addresses have once been, or where he presently has them pinging to lead people to believe it’s his current location,” Harper explained.
“But we scored big by getting a list of The Italian’s trade routes. ”
Jessica tapped a few keys and moved the cursor, and a new map appeared, this time with a string of steady lines. Lines that connected various locations all over the globe. “We uploaded his trade routes to this map so we could have a better look.”
“But we stumbled upon some inconsistencies between your list of twenty-five smugglers and these trade routes,” Harper said, her voice low.
“What is it?” Rory asked, and Chris reached for her hand as she waited for the bomb to drop. The metaphorical other shoe to fall. And this shoe would be far too big for Bear to drag around.
“First of all, you successfully helped take down seventeen guys in total. Fifteen from the list, plus Santiago and Josef. That is insanely impressive,” Jessica began, and why did Rory feel like she was being prepped with a compliment before the bad news?
“But the remaining ten names, aside from one who died of natural causes, and another who was killed by a jaguar—guess an animal he illegally captured got some payback . . . well, those remaining eight names on the list aren’t connected to The Italian. ”
Shoe. Officially. Dropped. “That can’t be right.” Rory heard Chris mutter hell and suddenly realized she was squeezing the life out of his hand.
“We cross-referenced every trade route he runs, and from what we can tell, they’re all separately controlled by small criminal groups or individuals. No big players. No connection between them, either.”
“What about the research Rebecca and I did tying those names to The Italian?” She’d handed all the proof over to Jessica and Harper. Was it bullshit?
“The proof you pulled together online linking the names is now gone,” Harper announced, and Rory squeezed Chris’s hand even tighter.
“What about the other smugglers, the ones I successfully went after? Santiago admitted to working with The Italian.” She wanted to stand. To pace. But she tried to pull herself together and remain seated.
“The Italian controls the fifteen trade routes linked to the smugglers on your list that you helped take down. Plus, the routes of the two men you chanced upon who weren’t on your list, Josef and Santiago,” Harper said with a nod.
“There’s a but, right?” A.J. asked, stealing Rory’s thoughts. “Always a but.”
“From the information we gathered, The Italian didn’t garner control of those routes until after you took down those fifteen smugglers,” Jessica announced in a soft voice as if hoping to weaken the blow.
“But according to the intel we pulled from The Italian’s server, the routes Josef and Santiago used were under his control long before you went after them. ”
“I need you to spell this out for me because what I think you’re suggesting is that I helped The Italian take out his competition, and he took control when I was done,” Rory cut straight to the point, her voice trembling as she stood, releasing Chris’s hand in the process.
“Rory,” A.J. whispered, and although Chris stood with her, she couldn’t take her eyes off Jessica.
“It’s possible while Rebecca was being shadowed in Colombia, you popped up on The Italian’s radar. You said she missed a meeting with Josef to save your life just outside his compound. Maybe The Italian later made the connection you were the one to take down Josef, and he—”
“You saying this asshole tried to turn lemons into lemonade?” A.J. interrupted Roman, and Rory stepped back, her chair sliding on the wood floor.
Her chest tightened, and she was struggling to find her breath.
Was this a panic attack?
Before she knew it, Bear was at her side. Tail wagging. Eyes on her. Concern in his gaze and prepared to comfort her.
She set a hand to Bear’s head and did her best to find her breath.
“I hope I’m tired and misinterpreting this, but if not, does that mean what I think it means?” Liam asked, speaking up for the first time, his Aussie accent floating through his words. “Are we saying Rebecca set up Rory? Did Rebecca work for The Italian?”