Chapter 22
EVELYN
Ethan Mercer was waiting outside the SID safehouse when we pulled up.
His hands were in the pockets of a jacket that had federal agent written all over it, although it had no visible SID symbols on it.
Despite seeing him through the grainy body camera footage, he was younger than I expected, maybe mid-thirties, with a clean-cut look that matched everything Dominic had told me about him.
He screamed “by the book” all the way down to the sharp crease in his slacks.
The safehouse was a nondescript townhouse on a quiet street in the next city over.
SID had a large office building in this city, and we had left early this morning to get here on time.
All my guys had come along, but only Dominic and I got out of the car.
I didn’t want to overwhelm the girls inside, and I didn’t want Ethan asking more questions than he probably would already.
Mercer’s eyes found Dominic first. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you,” Dominic said, rolling his eyes. Lingering bruises from the crash still littered Dominic’s skin. A special kind of rage filled me every time I saw them. “Ethan, this is Evelyn.”
Mercer’s gaze shifted to me, assessing me even as he tried not to be obvious about it.
Liam had pulled a deep file on Mercer for me last night.
This was an experienced agent, despite his young age.
He was sharp and by the book but seemed to have a soft spot for Dominic, and I wasn’t above exploiting that if it helped us catch Kingfisher.
“Evelyn,” Mercer repeated, raising his eyebrows. “Just Evelyn?”
“For now,” I said pleasantly, smiling when his eyes widened slightly.
He looked at Dominic, who met his gaze steadily. They seemed to have a whole conversation with their eyes before Ethan turned on his heel and headed towards the townhouse.
“You’re running out of favors,” Mercer said as we fell into step beside him.
“You still owe me for San Francisco,” Dominic said. “And Idaho.”
“Idaho was a joint effort.”
“You’re welcome for Idaho,” Dominic shot back.
Mercer made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and led us through the front door.
A female plain-clothes agent sat in the living room.
She nodded at Mercer but made no move to stop us as we continued down a hallway.
Mercer knocked twice on a door at the end before opening it.
The room was plain. There was a beige couch in the middle of the space on top of a blue rug, a white recliner next to it, and a TV mounted on the left wall.
A table was pressed against the back wall with two chairs.
Two women, a brunette and a blonde, sat on the couch, and another woman, a redhead, sat at the table against the wall.
I recognized the two on the couch as Maria and Suzanna. The one at the table was Ginny.
They were in various states of recovery.
They wore clean clothes, but their eyes were careful and haunted, and they stilled at our entry, the kind of stillness that came from learning how to make yourself small to avoid attention.
I recognized the stillness and smiled gently, hoping to break the ice.
Maria and Suzanna on the couch returned the smile tentatively, but Ginny just stared back at us, her spine straightening.
I recognized her from that night. She had been the woman who had tried to escape, the one Director Keller tackled to the ground.
She was young, maybe twenty, with sharp green eyes that tracked every movement we made.
She was beautiful, and I could see how she had become a target for trafficking.
She looked at Dominic, and recognition sparked in her gaze. “I remember you,” she said.
“I remember you too,” Dominic said, softening his body language.
I stepped forward. “My name is Evelyn. I’m not law enforcement, but I’m helping track the man who did this to you. I was hoping you may be able to help me catch him.”
Maria leaned forward, her arms wrapped around her stomach. “I thought they caught the man who did this.” Her eyes flicked to Ethan.
“One of them,” I said, “but we’re still hunting the others. And I need your help, if you’re willing.”
I looked at each of them until they nodded. I wasn’t going to force them to relive this. “Do you remember anything about where you were kept, a warehouse perhaps?”
Suzanna shook her head. “We were drugged for most of it. That whole time was a blur.”
Ginny shifted in her chair as Suzanna spoke, and I crossed the room to the table. I gestured at the empty chair across from her, and she nodded. There was something fragile about her but also something unyielding at the same time. I recognized the steel in her eyes. She knew something.
“What’s your name?” I asked softly. I knew it already, but I was trying to break the ice.
“Virginia. But everyone calls me Ginny,” she said.
I nodded. “Pretty name. You were drugged too, right?” She nodded. “But the drugs don’t work as well on you, do they?” She nodded again, and I ignored Dominic’s confused look.
I didn’t know the science behind it, but redheads burned through drugs faster than most people and required higher dosages.
I had learned this a few years ago on a case of ours.
The woman had been kidnapped by her stalker, and he had drugged her.
She was a redhead. She came out of the drugs early and managed to get out of the house.
She ran into an Archers patrol, who got her to safety, and we dealt with her stalker.
I pulled out my phone and brought up the photo of the number carved into the wall at the warehouse. I turned it toward her. “Do you recognize this?”
Her breath caught, and her hand tightened into a fist on the table before it relaxed. She stared at the phone screen for a long moment, then nodded.
“Can you tell me about it?” I asked, probing gently.
“It’s my—was my number,” she said.
The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, but her soft words seemed to echo. I sucked in a breath. This was confirmation of the ledger we found at the office. He numbered the women. Like fucking cattle.
“Your number?” I asked carefully. I didn’t want to lead her in my questioning, but I needed to be sure.
“They assigned us numbers when they brought us in.” Her voice was steady, but her hands shook. “Mine was 827301. I carved it because—” She stopped and swallowed. “I didn’t know if anyone would ever find it. I just wanted someone to know—if someone found it, I just wanted them to know I was there.”
“Someone found it,” I said. “We found it. You did good, Ginny.”
She nodded, swallowing and taking a deep breath as she straightened in her seat.
“How did you find out that was your number?” I asked.
“I heard the man—I think his name was Keller—tell the man he came in with one night,” Ginny said.
“Director Keller came in with another man?” Dominic asked, crouching down next to my chair.
Ginny’s eyes darted to mine, and I smiled and nodded at her.
She bit her lip but continued. “I pretended to be asleep like the other girls, but they were really loud. Keller brought this man in, and they were inspecting us.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed.
“Keller told the man my number. The man called us his little birdies. That’s why I carved that symbol next to my number. It’s a bird.”
I stared at the photo again. I could see the bird in the symbol now, a squiggle that looked like a bird flying in the distance. Like something a kid would have finger painted in the sky.
“His?” I questioned, focusing on the phrase the man called them. “Like the man was in charge?”
Ginny nodded. “I think so. Keller deferred to him about everything. Whatever the man said, Keller agreed with. He never said his name, though.”
“Did you see his face?” Dominic asked.
Ginny nodded. “It was dark, but I saw it when the door opened and they walked out. He looked back at all of us.” She shuddered. “I’ll never forget his face.”
I leaned forward slightly, so I had her full attention. “If I showed you some pictures, do you think you could tell me if the man is in any of them?”
Ginny hesitated. She looked at Mercer, who leaned against the wall. My blood boiled. Had he told her not to say anything? Was he in on it with Kingfisher?
“Whatever you’re worried about,” I said, “we can protect you. I will protect you.”
“I tried to bring it up before, but the agent didn’t want to hear it.”
I shot Mercer a scathing glare, and he straightened from the wall. His approach was gentle, which eased some of the anger inside me but not enough.
“Which agent?” he asked, stopping several feet away.
Ginny hesitated, and he crouched down to mirror Dominic’s nonthreatening pose. “You aren’t in trouble, Ginny,” he said gently. “But I need to know who it is. They shouldn’t have done that, and if they missed something, I need to know so I can fix it.”
“It wasn’t an SID agent,” she said. “I don’t remember his name, but it was a few days after.”
Mercer nodded like he knew exactly who it was. “I’ll take care of it, Ginny. Thank you for telling me. If you’re up for it, I would like you to take a look at those photos. We want to make sure we catch the right guy.”
Okay, maybe Mercer could live. But I was going to have Liam pull a deep dive on him again. And I would threaten him a little. Lightly.
Ginny nodded. I pulled the photos out of my bag.
I laid six photos out in front of her. Nathaniel Drake’s photo was third, sandwiched between Victor Hale’s and Patrick Callahan’s photos.
Ginny leaned forward, her eyes moving across the photos carefully.
I watched her face as she hesitated on Nathaniel Drake’s.
“It was dark,” she said. “And I was trying not to be seen.”
“I know,” I said. “Take your time.”
A long moment passed, then she tapped the third photo. Nathaniel Drake’s smiling face stared up at us.
“That’s him,” she said quietly. “That’s the man who was there.”
I breathed out slowly. Fuck, this was the confirmation we needed. An eyewitness who could identify Kingfisher as Nathaniel Drake was enough to bring him down. And it made Ginny the most targeted person in this city.
“Thank you, Ginny,” I said. “You have been super helpful.”
I stood and motioned for Dominic and Mercer to exit the room. We stepped out into the hallway, and the door clicked shut behind us.
“She needs to go into proper protective custody,” I said to Mercer, keeping my voice low. “Real protection, not just a safehouse.”
Mercer straightened. “She’s already in our—”
“A federal agency director was just arrested for human trafficking and many, many other crimes,” I interrupted, my tone firm but not unkind.
“I’m not questioning you personally. I’m telling you that we have no idea how far Kingfisher’s reach actually goes, and I’m asking you to understand why I’m not comfortable handing her safety over without conditions. ”
To his credit, Mercer didn’t get defensive. He looked at Dominic. “She always like this?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Pretty much,” Dominic said. “And she’s right, and you know it.”
Mercer scrubbed a hand over his face, suddenly looking much older than he was. He looked back at me. “I’ll watch her personally. She won’t be in the general system. There will be no records for anyone to hack.”
I studied him. He held my gaze without flinching, which counted for something.
“I’m also putting two of my people on the outside,” I said. “Non-negotiable.”
Mercer didn’t ask who my people were. He wasn’t an idiot; he had to have guessed, but he just said, “Fine.”
Dominic turned to Mercer and asked the million-dollar questions, “I need to know if you’re willing to reopen the Kingfisher case.”
Mercer stilled, and the hallway felt like it closed in as we waited for his answer.
“That’s a significant ask. Most of the federal agencies have decided that the case closed when Keller died,” he said.
“I know,” Dominic replied, his voice steady and sure.
Mercer looked at the closed door and then back at Dominic. “When you get close,” he said finally. “When you have something solid. Call me. I can’t make any promises.”
I felt like an eyewitness confirming Kingfisher was Nathaniel Drake was pretty damn close, but I understood his hesitation.
From his point of view, the case was closed, and he had been facing pressure from other federal agencies to close it.
Everyone wanted this swept under the rug.
If he was going to reopen the case, we needed to package it up nicely for him with a tidy little bow.
I nodded. “We will.”
Dominic and I turned to leave, but Mercer’s voice stopped me. “Evelyn,” he said. I looked back over my shoulder. “I want the real bad guy too.”
I tilted my head. “I know. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
A half chuckle slipped out of him, and he shook his head. “Good luck, Dom.”
Dominic squeezed my hand. “Thanks.”
We walked back out into the dreary afternoon. The clouds rolling in over the sun felt like an omen I didn’t want to process yet. I turned Mercer’s last words over in my mind. I want the real bad guy too.
So did I. I had wanted him since before I knew his name.
Since Citadel, since the hit on my men, since every woman he had ever decided was his to take.
Now I had a face and a name and a witness who had looked into that face in a dark room, drugged and kidnapped, and had survived to tell me about it.
Nathaniel Drake had no idea what was coming.