Chapter Eleven
MIA
“You’re folding those wrong,” Jackal called.
Bear kept working. “They’re restraints, not fitted sheets.”
“Presentation matters.”
“And your presentation is currently sweatpants and a hospital bandage.”
Jackal looked down at himself. “The bandage is unfortunate. Everything below it is still operational.”
Viper, seated beside him with a laptop open across one knee, did not look up. “You look unemployed.”
I covered a smile with my coffee mug and went back to the screen Raven and I had been working through since breakfast. One of the contacts pulled from Varga’s phone belonged to a dispatch supervisor at a transport company.
So far, he looked exactly like his title suggested since he handled driver changes and vehicle assignments when schedules fell apart.
A few messages between him and Varga lined up with weeks when Cerberus had been moving women through southern Germany, so we couldn’t dismiss him completely.
We just didn’t have enough to know whether he was involved or whether Varga had been using an ordinary dispatcher without telling him what the vehicles were really carrying.
Wolf agreed there was no reason to grab him yet. Bear stayed ready in case something changed, while Raven and I kept digging.
Wolf had dressed for work inside the office instead of a raid, black cargo pants and a fitted shirt with his lower face covered by the plain mask he wore around us.
The heavier tactical belt sat on the table beside him while Bear checked the smaller pieces of equipment that would go with the team if the dispatcher gave them a reason to move.
Raven leaned closer to my screen. “Looks like his work phone stayed at the office overnight. His personal phone went home with him.”
“And Varga was messaging the work phone?”
“Yes.”
I looked back at the activity log. “So we don’t even know if this supervisor was the one answering him. Someone else on shift could have had the phone.”
“Exactly.”
Wolf looked over from the other side of the table. “What do you want to do?”
I turned the monitor toward him. “Watch the office another day before we grab anyone. If that phone is shared between employees, taking one supervisor might tell us nothing and warn the rest of them that we found the number.”
Wolf read through the log. “And if he leaves with something useful today?”
“Then we follow him.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Something about the quiet approval in his voice made my pulse jump.
At the other end of the table, Bear opened a narrow pouch and checked what he had packed inside. Flex cuffs and zip ties sat near the top, but my eyes kept drifting toward the retention webbing before I could stop them.
The marks around my wrists had been gone for days and my shoulder felt normal again, but seeing the webbing still brought back the pressure around my hands with uncomfortable clarity.
The memory of Wolf’s fist closing at the base of my hair came with it, along with everything I had spent the last few nights trying to separate from the anger of what happened.
Bear lifted the flex cuffs. “If the dispatcher comes with us willingly, these stay in the bag. If he runs or reaches for something, Viper controls him and I secure him once the area is clear.”
“Use the webbing if you have to move him through the back exit,” Wolf said. “Less obvious under a jacket.”
My attention went to him immediately and when Wolf caught me looking, I knew there was no point pretending I had suddenly become fascinated by Bear’s pouch.
He stood at the corner of the table with a handwritten list in front of him, marking things off while Raven worked at his screens and the others stayed occupied on the opposite side of the room.
I moved closer and leaned against the table beside him.
“You sure find a lot of reasons to use that thing.”
Wolf kept his attention on the list. “It’s useful.”
“If that’s what you’re into.”
His pen slowed against the paper before he finally looked at me. He studied my face for a moment, then leaned closer until his voice dropped low enough that the words stayed between us.
“You have no idea what I’m into, Mercer. And if you did, you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
He went back to the list as though the conversation had ended there, leaving me beside him with absolutely nothing useful to say. I slowly returned to my screen and tried to pick up where I had left off, but I barely found the right page when Raven swore under his breath.
Wolf looked over from the table. “What?”
Raven turned one of his monitors toward us. “We finally have something on Strasbourg.”
He had spent most of the morning working backward from the warehouse paperwork.
The company on the lease was mostly useless, but one of the old payment records showed the name of a small accounting firm that had handled its bills the year before.
Raven contacted the firm through our French liaison and asked who had managed the account.
They gave him Elise Moreau’s name and agreed to pass along a message instead of handing over her personal information. Elise called back less than an hour later.
I moved my chair toward Raven. “And she actually agreed to talk to us?”
“Eventually. She wanted to know how we found her first.”
“Reasonable.”
“Once I explained that we were looking into the warehouse and not her accounting firm, she told me she still had copies of some of the old invoices.”
Wolf came around the table. “Why does she still have them?”
“The company stopped using her firm last winter and left several bills unpaid. She kept copies while they were trying to collect the money.”
“And she’ll meet us?”
Raven nodded. “She won’t send the records electronically.
Someone from the warehouse company came looking for them after the account closed, and whoever it was already knew she had handled the books.
That made her nervous enough that she wants to hand everything over to the authorities once, answer our questions and be done with it. ”
I looked at Wolf. No wonder she was nervous.
“What’s in the records?”
“She mentioned vehicle storage and driver expenses. There may be names or companies attached, but she won’t send photographs.”
A person who had actually handled the warehouse bills was far more useful than another collection of shell company searches. She could tell us who gave instructions, who paid them and whether anyone from the company ever showed up in person.
Wolf looked at me. “You speak French.”
“Yes.”
“Comfortable interviewing her?”
“Yes.”
He turned back to Raven. “Set the meeting.”
Raven checked the message again. “0200. Small café west of Strasbourg. She wants somewhere public.”
Wolf glanced at the clock. “Drive?”
“A little over two hours,” Raven said.
“Fine.”
“You’re going?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Wolf closed the folder he had been working from. “Because Moreau is scared enough to refuse an electronic transfer, and somebody already went looking for the same records we want. I’m not sending you alone.”
There was not much to argue with in that, which was inconvenient.
“What about everyone else?”
“They stay here.”
He nodded toward the screens where Raven was still working through Varga’s phone records.
“We don’t know if Strasbourg gives us anything yet. I’m not pulling the team away from the leads we already have for one interview.”
I could not argue with that either.
Wolf picked up the thin Strasbourg folder Raven had started building. “You have twenty minutes.”
“I’m already dressed.”
His attention moved over me briefly, taking in the black jeans fitted close through my hips, the white button-down tucked loosely at the waist, and the boots I had pulled on without much thought before coming downstairs.
My hair was down in its usual waves instead of tied back for once, falling over my shoulders and making the whole look feel softer than anything I had worn around the compound lately.
His eyes returned to my face without comment.
“Then you have nineteen.”
I grabbed my notebook. “You’re very generous.”
“Mercer.”
I stopped.
He held the folder out to me. “Read what we have before we leave. You’re asking the questions.”
I took it from him.
“All of them?”
“You’re the analyst. She handled the records. Figure out what you want from her.”
When I first arrived, Wolf would have handed me a report and expected me to work around whatever decision he had already made, but now he was giving me the whole interview.
“Give me ten minutes,” I said.
“I already said you have nineteen.”
“I heard you the first time.”
Wolf headed toward the garage while I sat down with the file.
Elise Moreau had handled the warehouse account for less than a year. There was nothing complicated about what she did. Bills came in, she processed them and somebody from the company approved the payments.
What interested me was that some of those bills did not make sense for a warehouse that was supposedly sitting mostly empty.
Drivers were being reimbursed for overnight trips and motels, vehicles were being stored for short periods and payments sometimes came through companies that had nothing to do with the name on the lease.
If Moreau remembered who approved those expenses, we might finally have another person between Varga and whoever sat above him.
Maybe Kade.
I wrote down what I wanted to ask her and closed the folder.
Raven glanced over. “Ready?”
“I think so.”
“Good. He’s already in the garage.”
I looked toward the door. “Of course he is.”
Raven smiled. “You know he’ll leave without you eventually.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Do you want to test that?”
I stood and tucked the folder under my arm. “Absolutely fucking not.”
The garage smelled faintly of the same cold concrete and fuel when I walked in.
Wolf had chosen the dark Mercedes instead of one of the tactical vehicles and was putting a small field bag into the trunk.
He was dressed plainly under his jacket, although the black mask still covered the lower half of his face, with his hair pulled back by the zig-zag headband.
I stopped beside the passenger door. “Are we expecting trouble?”
“No.”
I looked at the bag.
Wolf shut the trunk. “That doesn’t mean I drive two hours into France without being prepared.”
“Right. Normal road trip behavior.”
He held out his hand.
“What?” My hand slightly twitched in response.
“File.”
Oh. I gave it to him, and he dropped it on the back seat and went toward the driver’s side.
“Know what you want from Moreau?” he asked.
“I want to know who approved the warehouse expenses and whether she ever met Varga. If she recognizes anyone else, even better.”
Wolf nodded. “Good.”
I opened the passenger door.
“Anything else?” he asked.
The question brought the operations room conversation back with embarrassing speed.
You have no idea what I’m into, Mercer. And if you did, you wouldn’t be able to handle it.
For half a second, I wondered whether he knew exactly where my mind had gone.
“No.”
His eyes stayed on mine long enough to make me suspect he did.
“Get in.”
“You have a gift for making normal sentences sound rude.”
I got in anyway.