44. War Room
War Room
Fly
Most of the club members walk into Maddox’s war room with me, which is his office during the day. But who knew one of the walls opened up to reveal a security center.
As war rooms go, this one is pretty comfortable with nice couches, chairs, and even a bar, where someone is passing out drinks and snacks. But I still prefer our church…
Which never has a baby in it.
Max is pacing behind the wall of screens with a fussy baby in his arms.
I know the Vincentis start teaching their boys young about the family business, but that seems a bit too young.
The baby is cute, though.
His drool-covered face has a big smile on it as he stares at the screens along with Max, occasionally reaching out and hitting his father’s arm with the toy in his hand.
Does Sheri like kids? I close my eyes and picture a baby girl with Sheri’s eyes and her smile.
My heart thumps heavily in my chest...
“That kid know how to aim a gun already?” Vex walks in covered in weapons…like literally covered. He’s a walking armory.
That man doesn’t play. He has enough rounds on him to take out an entire platoon.
The question is, how does he carry it all? His conditioning routine has to be intense.
“Not yet. But we’ll start working on it soon.” Max jostles the baby around, eliciting a little giggle.
Well, they don’t seem to want to kill each other. That’s a good sign.
“I got some targets with your face on them for him to practice with.”
Is that a smile on Vex’s face?
I’m going to pretend I didn’t see it like everyone else in here who wants to stay alive, though I am beginning to wonder about him.
A big black man walks in with Taylor. He doesn’t have a single weapon on him, which is odd in this bunch. He heads straight over to Max and reaches for the baby. “Let me have my great-grandson.”
Interesting.
The baby reaches for his great-grandfather with grabby little hands and a gurgling grin.
“What’s this problem you have, boy? You know your grandmother doesn’t like me leaving at night, so get to it.”
Max nods like that was all the permission he needed to start the meeting. “As you all know, we found a small cell of women being held in an office building thanks to the mole Chaos sent in.”
Everett hits a couple of keys and brings a live image up of the building as well as the hotel across the street that has way too many lights on for an out-of-operation business…Is every room filled with a woman being assaulted?
A shudder of revulsion runs through me.
“We also found it because the Adders had run into something similar recently. Because that hunch was correct, we decided to go searching to see if there might be any more cells.”
What? No.
The screens change until there are different groups showing in real time.
All the twinkling lights in the hotel rooms makes the bile rise in the back of my throat.
“With that comes a few problems. First, none of the others are in Urbium. They’re spread across the country in major cities.”
A map with markers pops up.
That’s a wide network. The level of organization needed for that…Could it be The Ghost? We thought Carves was just a little campus operation.
It seems he’s just another minion in a huge network.
“Second, if we take out one or two, it’s going to put the others on high alert….possibly even send them scrambling.”
One is a mistake. Two is a coincidence. Three…there’s no way they wouldn’t see us coming and go to ground either executing the women or taking them with them. Neither of which is a viable option. Which every man in this room knows.
“Third, if we get them all out at the same time, that’s a lot of women who will need support, protection, therapy, families found…That’s going to stretch us thin even with assistance from The Nest. It’s going to leave us with holes in our security, which will add visibility that we might not want.”
We all know that there’s only one choice that doesn’t involve sacrificing lives, which isn’t an option. So the question is, how do we get them out without having the currently unknown head come after Maddox or us?
“We need to leave a calling card.” I blurt out the words without thinking.
All eyes turn towards me, even the baby’s curious ones. I almost believe he understood what I just said.
“That’s the opposite of what we want to happen,” the old man chimes in. “We don’t have enough bodies to protect that many women and our own people. It would be too many moving pieces for a head-on assault.”
“We don’t need to leave our calling card. We send the person running it on a wild goose chase.” Preferably as far as possible from us. “There still might be some blowback.” I shrug; with everything there’s risk. “But if this guy’s anger is focused elsewhere…”
“We hunt the hunter.” The old man’s eyes light up. “Good idea. But who do we send him after without signing their death certificate?”
“Me. You send him after me.” Vex’s grin promises pain.
There is no way I’m sending a crazy man after the people who are currently sheltering my woman. “No.”
Vex growls at me.
“Then it makes one of us the prey.” Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.
“Fly’s right. We need to send him after the boogeyman. Someone who doesn’t exist, but everyone fears.”
“Like he’s going to believe it if we leave Grave’s calling card,” Vex sneers. “No one believes he exists.”
Who is Grave?
“If Grave doesn’t exist, how can we leave his calling card?” Everett turns from the computer to face Vex.
“I didn’t say he doesn’t exist. I said no one believes he does. There’s a difference.” Vex starts pacing. “I’d prefer we send him at me.”
“What would your wife prefer?” I snap without thinking.
The next thing I know, I’m against the wall, hanging by my shoulders.
“You never talk about my wife.” Vex went atomic, it seems.
Do I placate him?
The old man stands up with the baby still in his arms. “Let’s all take a breath.”
A smart man would shut up. It seems I’m not as smart as I thought. “Your wife and my woman are friends. I don’t want them in the crosshairs. Find a different target.”
“No one in the crime world knows I’m with her.”
I snort. “Are you willing to gamble her life on their ignorance? Because I’m not.”
Vex lets go, and I land hard on my feet. “His calling card is a marble tombstone. He leaves it in a pool of the target’s blood.”
Do I want to know how Vex knows the answer to that? Gruesome. “That seems like it would be pretty heavy.”
“It’s a miniature tombstone, but the marble is real. I tried tracing it, but the marble is from a big deposit. It’s been sent to cemeteries all over the world for a hundred years.”
“Then we search for the person who carves it.” Maddox walks over with one of his pets wrapped around his shoulders. “That’s probably a smaller group to sift through. Unless he does it himself.”
“Wouldn’t it be wrong for us to sic this creep on Grave? He’s an innocent party in all this mess.” Havoc has that moral compass that several of us find to be a bit more flexible.
Vex snorts. “Our dealer will never find Grave. But if he does, he probably won’t live to speak of it. That’s how the guy got his name. If you meet him, he puts you in your grave. Either way, it’s a win for us.” Vex shrugs like it’s just as easy as that.
“We’re really going to leave this Grave’s calling card?”
Vex shakes his head. “Not the real one. There’s no time to carve the marble. Someone can 3D print a tombstone about this big.” He holds his fingers four inches apart. “To copy it exactly would be disrespectful. And I’m not in the mood to deal with him today.”
Like blaming him for something we’re about to do won’t irritate him? Vex is crazy.
“I can get that printed.” Everett spins back around.
“Then I guess we’ll pick teams and split up. The farthest city is a four-hour flight and about a forty-five-minute drive. So, let’s all plan on starting the rescue in five hours and fifteen minutes.”
“Fly is coming with me. We’ll take the hardest one.”
Is he planning a friendly-fire accident because I disagreed with him? Or is this a keep your friends close and your enemies closer kind of thing?
Though Vex doesn’t have friends, does he?