Chapter 20
MARCUS
Evelyn sat up straighter, her sharp hazel eyes narrowed on Liam. I had noticed her eyes first, back when she was still just my assistant, and I was still pretending that’s all she was.
“Who’s on the list?” Adrian asked.
Adrian had a mind that worked like a blade, clean and precise with a tactical edge that made him successful in the military.
SDS had definitely been a step down for him after his years of running special ops, and I worried he would get bored working with us.
He had never complained, but he seemed settled these last few months in a way he hadn’t prior.
Maybe that was due to having Evelyn close—she had that effect on all of us—or maybe he had found the work he really loved.
Liam started listing off names. “Victor Hale, regional logistics and freight company owner. Some of his freight liners pass through the rail yard. Conrad Mess, a retired federal judge with lots of political connections in all the areas where Kingfisher has been active. Elliott Beaumont, a wealth management firm partner who made his wealth through unknown, possibly questionable means. Raymond Wick, a private security contractor who’s protected some pretty bad guys in the past. He could be using his security connections to act as the middlemen. ”
“I’ve heard of him,” Alexander said. “I’m not saying it couldn’t be him, but he’s not at the top of my list. He doesn’t have the…acumen to run an empire like this.”
“Is that a fancy way of calling him dumb?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow.
I had met the man before and agreed with Alexander’s assessment. So far, none of these people stuck out as a match. Victor Hale could be interesting, especially with his connection to the rail yard, but I had a feeling that wasn’t who Liam was talking about.
“The next few, I’m not sure about, but they do fit eighty percent of the profile, so I included them,” Liam said.
“Thomas Aldridge, a commercial property developer. Stephen Voss, a regional hospital network administrator. He has hospitals in all the areas Kingfisher operates. Marcus Webb, a city council member and urban development advocate. He has family in all those areas and fits the rest of the profile weakly at best, but the algorithm flagged him. Graham Sutton, a university board member and private equity investor.”
Liam stopped and blew out a breath. “The next two are interesting. Daniel Hargrove is a nightclub and hospitality group owner. It’s possible that’s how he’s sourcing the girls.
Patrick Callahan is an import/export business owner.
He has a vast network of logistics, which would make it easy to move girls. ”
“That’s ten,” Evelyn said. “Who’s number eleven?”
Liam looked at Izzy before responding. “Nathaniel Drake, real estate developer and philanthropist.”
Nathaniel Drake? Why would he give us access to the cameras if he was the Kingfisher? Unless that was to throw us off.
Evelyn tapped her fingers on the table, staring out the window.
“I doubt it would be Drake,” Alexander said. “He gave us access to the cameras at the rail yard.”
“The cameras that glitched,” I pointed out. They went down on the one night we needed them. We had been flying blind and without an extra pair of eyes because of it. What if Evelyn had been hurt? Or any of my brothers?
“Yeah, but that was a system-wide glitch,” Alexander said, but I knew him. He didn’t look convinced.
Adrian inclined his head. “Of that list, Victor Hale, Conrad Mess, and Patrick Callahan stick out to me the most.”
“Conrad Mess would have pull and connections at the federal agencies as well,” Dominic agreed.
Conversation moved onto the other names, but Evelyn didn’t participate. She frowned down at the table, her eyes moving across it like she was mentally mapping something.
I leaned over and murmured. “Penny for your thoughts?”
She looked up at me, frowning. “I don’t know yet. Just a feeling.”
“Trust your gut,” I murmured. “It’s always been right.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “Liam, can you pull up the rail yard footage?”
Her commanding voice cut through the chatter at the table, and conversation stopped. Liam nodded. He pulled another laptop out of his backpack and fired it up, connecting to the rail yard footage within seconds. Maya and Izzy didn’t say a word, their trust in Evelyn absolute.
Chairs scraped on the floor as everyone gathered closer so they could see the screen.
“Go back to four days before we found the car full of girls at the rail yard,” Evelyn instructed. Liam typed, and the screen changed. Four views of the cameras filled four boxes on the screen. “Now speed it up.”
Evelyn leaned forward, her chin resting on her fisted hands as she stared at the screen.
“What are you thinking?” Alexander asked.
“Liam said that it looked like it was frozen on the footage from earlier that day,” Evelyn murmured, engrossed in the screen.
“There!” Maya and Evelyn shouted at the same time.
I jumped slightly and pointedly ignored Sebastian laughing at me.
“What is it?” Adrian asked, peering closer at the screens.
“The same bird flew across camera three in the top corner two days in a row,” Maya said.
“A bird?” Dominic questioned. “What if there’s a nest nearby?”
“A possibility,” Evelyn said. “But two days in a row at the same exact time down to the second? Even birds aren’t that exact.”
“What time?” Liam asked, typing on his laptop.
“2:34pm.” Maya said.
The screen shifted so camera three showed up in all four boxes. Liam fast forwarded it to 2:33pm and pressed play. Like it had been perfectly coordinated.
“The footage has been looped,” I breathed out. Drake had played us from the start.
“Is it looped every day?” Alexander asked.
“I’m not sure,” Liam said. “I would have to go through it.”
“I bet it’s not,” I said. “That would be too obvious. I bet he loops it around shipments.”
Evelyn’s face paled. “We could have missed a shipment without even knowing it.”
“It’s not your fault,” Adrian comforted her. “You were the one who caught it.”
“He’s right,” I said. “It’s not your fault.” I knew we would have to keep telling her, though. Evelyn took the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Speaking of someone who took the weight of the world on their shoulders, Alexander pushed back from the table and started pacing. I knew this had to be hitting him hard as well. He had met Nathaniel Drake in person, and it had been his idea to go to him to get the camera access.
“So are we thinking Nathaniel Drake is Kingfisher?” Izzy, ever practical, questioned.
“I think so,” Liam said. “He fits a lot of the profile, and he’s developing the rail yard. Director Keller and Judge Jefferson talked about a mutual friend who would ensure continued access to the rail yard despite the development happening. I’d bet money it was Kingfisher.”
Sebastian nodded. He had spent the most time going through Judge Jefferson’s hard drive. “I agree,” he said. “Besides, what’s that law that the simplest solution is usually the correct one?”
“Occam’s razor?” Izzy raised an eyebrow at him.
“Sure?” Sebastian shrugged. “But it makes sense.”
“I agree,” Adrian said. “But this isn’t an accusation we can just throw around on a whim. Drake is well-known and well-liked in the philanthropy world. He’s nationally respected. We have to be sure.”
“We need proof,” Evelyn agreed. “Concrete evidence that we can turn over to the SID or show to the world if needed. He has reach, a long reach. We need irrevocable evidence. Camera footage isn’t enough.”
“And we need to be careful while we dig,” Izzy cautioned. “If he is Kingfisher, we don’t want to tip him off that we know who he is.”
Alexander nodded. “Agreed. Sebastian, Liam, how do we cover our tracks?”
Sebastian’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been preparing for this.”
He got up from the table and dashed to his bedroom. Evelyn watched him go with a bemused smile. He came back with an armful of laptops.
Liam folded his arms and pouted. “He has more than three laptops,” he said pointedly to Evelyn.
She rolled her eyes. “He lives here. You want to carry them around in your backpack. You’ll have a bad back by the time you’re thirty. You definitely have more than three at your apartment.”
Sebastian handed out laptops to each of us. Maya snagged Liam’s second laptop on the table, and Izzy rooted in his backpack for his third one while Liam complained about boundaries. Evelyn tuned them out, and I had a feeling that this bickering among the three of them was common.
“All right,” Sebastian said, dropping back into his chair and cracking his knuckles.
“Ground rules. Nothing goes on our regular networks. Everything stays on these machines and routes through the VPN layers we’ve got set up.
No direct searches on Drake by name unless absolutely necessary, and even then, we should go indirect.
Shell companies, property records, public filings.
Nothing that pings his name in a way that looks like someone is digging. ”
“He’ll have alerts set up,” Adrian pointed out. “Anyone who is that careful would.”
“Which is why we don’t go at him directly,” Evelyn said. She had pulled her laptop close, her earlier pallor replaced with sharp focus. “We focus on everything around him. His properties, his companies, his connections. We can build the picture from the outside in.”
The room settled as everyone got to work.
Sebastian had set up these secure laptops a couple of years ago, and it was coming in handy now.
They had a closed, secure messaging system, and Sebastian dropped a list of shell companies in there.
I got to work. I wasn’t the best with a computer, but I could read a large amount of information and analyze it fairly well.
Came with being a lawyer. Around me, the occasional murmur of conversation, the click of keys, and the soft dings of the laptops filled the room.
“His philanthropy work is a front,” Maya said after a while, not looking up from their screen. “At least partially. Half of the organizations he funds don’t have functioning boards. They exist on paper, and they have a pretty website, but that’s about it.”
Dominic, in the seat closest to the whiteboard, stood up. “List the names of the suspicious organizations for me?”
Maya listed them, and he scrawled them on the board.
“His property portfolio is extensive,” Sebastian said. “More than what’s publicly attributed to him. Some of it is buried three or four shell companies deep.”
“I wonder if that’s where he would keep the physical records,” Evelyn mused.
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We thought he might keep a physical record. A black book, so to speak,” Evelyn said. “What if one of these hidden properties is his safe house?”
“He has properties all over the Midwest, though,” Adrian pointed out.
“Yes, but I bet he keeps one in each city,” Alexander said. “One, maybe even two, places he can fall back to if it all goes to hell. If we find those, we can find his records.”
“You don’t think he would keep it on his person?” Izzy asked.
Dominic shook his head. “No. If he were to be arrested, anything on his person would become evidence.”
Alexander leaned forward. “How do we find the property then?”
“It’ll be tied to a property he controls that no one knows he controls,” Evelyn said. “It’ll be buried in shell companies.”
“How long will it take to map the shell companies back to him?” Alexander asked Liam and Sebastian.
“A couple of days, if we’re being careful,” Liam said. “Less if we’re not, but—”
“We’re being careful,” Alexander said. It wasn’t a question but a statement. “Everyone stays on this until we have something solid. Whatever you need, we’ll get it,” he said to Liam and Sebastian, who nodded.
Nobody argued. The laptops stayed open, and the room stayed quiet as we all continued typing. For the first time since this all had started, I felt a kindling of hope. Nathaniel Drake had no idea we were coming. And if we could keep it that way, he wouldn’t know what hit him.