Chapter 23 #2
Lucian’s men, Devlin, James, Skid, and I looked back and forth to each other, but no one had an answer.
The feeling of defeat was pressing down, and the longer Hannah was gone, the more I felt like she wouldn’t ever come back.
I wouldn’t say it out loud, but I feared she might not make it out alive. If that was the case, neither would I.
“What about their women?” a small voice asked, and we all turned to see Regan standing in the doorway with her hands linked in front of her.
“Come in and tell us what you’re thinking,” James suggested, and tentatively, Regan walked in.
Once of Lucian’s men—Johnson, I think—gave Regan his chair. I leaned over and urged her on. “Say what you said again, please.”
“I said, what about their women. You’ve been trying to figure out which of the men could be responsible, but no one’s thought about the women.
The wives, girlfriends, mistresses, etc.
They were the ones left behind without money, without their spouse or whatever, so it would stand to reason that one of them had a grudge and wanted to see this whole thing be resurrected,” Regan explained, and I sat back, stunned.
I’d never thought about the women connected to the Syndicate, other than those who were forced into it without a say.
James smiled at Regan, and she perked up as he said, “That’s a great fucking observation, Regan.”
Everyone got to work, and I gave Regan a hug before she left us. We had a list of wives and known girlfriends, but mistresses might have been more difficult to discover.
But I had to think about what Rylee, Hannah, and Claire endured in that house six months ago, after we’d uncovered the madness. Was it possible that a woman was controlling it all? For what purpose?
“Do we have the footage from the parking lot yet?” I asked James, and he typed it into his computer.
“It just arrived in my inbox. I’ll pull it up on the big screen.”
We all watched as the four-camera footage was broadcast onto the giant monitors on the wall and we queued it to start playing ten minutes before their lunchtime. At eight minutes after twelve, we saw Hannah walk out and speak to a man with dark shaggy hair and baggy clothes.
That must be the trainee she spoke of. We continued to watch as she followed him to his vehicle and got into the passenger’s side.
The entire vehicle wasn’t visible, but Hannah’s window was, so when I saw her yell and spin her head toward the man in the driver’s seat, I knew this was where her abduction took place.
All we needed was a tag number and we would know where to start looking for her. He pulled out of the space, and James screenshotted the license plate before he restarted the video, allowing us to see the vehicle pull onto the road and disappear from our screens.
“We have something to go on, Rhys,” Devlin said and pulled open a screen.
After accessing the Tennessee Department of Transportation website, Devlin clicked on a small icon on the bottom left of the screen. A log-in screen appeared, and he typed something into the fields before pressing enter with a sick smile.
The states database was opened to us, and when he inputted the tag into the system, it spit out a name, address, and a copy of his license photo.
The only problem was, the information provided belonged to someone Lucian had killed six months ago, so we just ran into another dead end.
The sun was two hours from coming up when Lucian arrived, and it didn’t seem like we were any closer to finding out who had Hannah or where they’d taken her.
The lab work was inconclusive as to any relationship with Hannah due to degradation of the sample, but they did say that Hannah’s blood type wasn’t possible if that woman was her mother.
“Adding to Regan’s suggestion, I’m going to bounce something off the wall, if that’s okay?” Lucian asked, and I rolled my hands, silently asking for him to get on with it.
The later it got, the shorter my fuse, and I felt like I was seconds away from blowing.
“We all know Sergey had a fondness for the ladies.” A few of us nodded, so he continued as he sat forward, resting his forearms on his knees as he spoke.
“Did he manage to get the U.S. Marshals to agree to conjugal visits with one of them?” Devlin sat forward and his brow furrowed as he listened to his brother.
“I know the Bureau was so eager to get someone to flip, they would’ve agreed to hookers and blow just to secure the testimony.
So, what’s to say Sergey didn’t work out a little deal for himself? ”
“That would explain how deals were being made while he was under the feds’ control.
His whore could relay his pillow talk and secure him an empire while he was washing his slate clean by testifying against everyone.
Then, he would be at the top of the pile,” Devlin remarked, and I was starting to see their point.
“How would we determine if it happened, and who she was?” James asked as Lucian’s men sat listening.
“The files would have codenames for anyone who had access to Sergey that wasn’t a fed, so we need to go back to that,” Lucian stated.
We dug through the files the Marshals kept on Sergey, and sooner than I anticipated, it seemed we’d found something. After entering the information into Devlin’s system, something popped up that I wasn’t expecting—a name from long ago and a possible connection.
Looking over at Devlin and Lucian, I smiled as I asked, “Are you two going to settle this once and for all?”
The madman and the lunatic stood from their seats, and the rest of us joined them. This battle wasn’t going to test just our patience but also our reserve. We were going to have to balance shock and awe with covert and concealed.
And somehow, we had to destroy every one of those fuckers and save Hannah. No matter what, I was getting my woman out of that madness, and for the rest of our lives, I was going to hold her in my arms and ensure the monsters couldn’t find her.
And heaven help anyone who stood in my way.