Chapter Five
Veda
Tiny rolled the Bronco through the gates of the Kiss of Death compound several minutes later.
We parked inside one of the big garages and exited the vehicle.
Griffin urged me toward the rear of the structure, and we moved through the compound from there.
The camo netting overhead covering the paths between buildings turned the weak morning light a sickly green as Griffin walked me into another building and straight to Knight’s office.
Griffin rubbed my back almost absently as if to gentle me.
It probably made me too stupid to live, but I not only enjoyed the feel of his big, warm palm on my back, the motion soothed me.
Dawn had barely broken, but Knuckles and Knight were already waiting, a cluttered table between them.
I clutched the laptop bag to my chest and the ledgers in my other hand.
“You find your building intact?” Knuckles asked, his voice low.
“No,” Griffin said. “They’d already been there. We ran into four of them.”
“Yeah. Diesel told me.”
“Three dead. One guest coming for a conversation with you when you’re ready.”
Knuckles nodded once, his gaze moving to me. “You hurt?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
Griffin cut in. “She’s got a cut on her hand.”
Knuckles gave Griffin an annoyed look. “It should’ve been looked at already. Don’t let it happen again.”
“It’s fine,” I said, looking between Knuckles and Griffin several times.
I had no idea what game they were playing, but I refused to be part of it.
“Modern medicine pretty much guarantees I’m not going to get gangrene and die as long as I have it seen before it gets infected.
” I gave them an impatient look. “Can we move along?”
Griffin gave me a crooked smile. “Honey, Knuckles believes that we all look out for the women and children we protect. That includes you. You can show them where to start and what you found. OK?”
I sighed. “I can agree to that, I guess.”
“Good.” Knight gestured to the table. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
I stepped forward, setting the three ledgers down one by one.
The first was a printout of Carl’s original.
The second was my handwritten copy, bound in a three-ring binder with color-coded tabs marking each section.
The third was another printout, this one with the pages covered in a shorthand I’d developed over four months of surveillance.
Knuckles picked up Carl’s ledger, flipping through it with practiced hands. “What are we looking at?”
“This is Carl’s actual book,” I said. “The one he kept. The other two are mine.” I tapped the second ledger.
“This one is a copy of every entry in Carl’s book, organized by business, not by date.
And this one…” I opened the third ledger, revealing columns of coded entries and what looked like random strings of numbers.
“This one is what Carl was hiding. It’s the real operation.
The cover ledger has a system built into it.
Look at the margins.” I flipped through several pages of Carl’s ledger, pointing to the seemingly random notations along the edges of each page.
“Each of these is a key. The letters correspond to specific entries in this book.” I tapped the third ledger.
“And the numbers next to them are dates, while the other numbers represent the merchandise.”
Knight picked up the third ledger, studying the coded entries with narrowed eyes. “You cracked this?”
“I’m an accountant,” I said. “Not by profession, but by training. It’s what I was doing at the tax office three blocks from éclipse. Carl’s system was complicated, but it wasn’t genius. He wasn’t hiding it from the NSA. Just the vicious sociopath who killed him.”
I flipped to a page in Carl’s ledger. The entries here looked legitimate with column after column of names and payment amounts, with dates in the first column and what appeared to be service descriptions in the last. “This page is all regular club transactions. But see this?” I pointed to a small, almost invisible notation in the margin of JM/4158.
“JM is Justice Marlin,” I said. “A judge. The number is a date, but not the one on this page. April 15, 2018. And this number here…” I pointed to the amount in the far-right column. “That’s a payoff. Five thousand dollars.”
I turned to the third ledger and found the corresponding entry.
“And this is what he was paying for. The service entry.” The line read simply TD-CR-2, followed by a seven-digit number and another five-digit figure.
“TD means ‘transport date.’ CR is ‘collected by road.’ The 2 is the number of passengers. The seven-digit number is the transport itself, probably a car or a van. And the five-digit number is the delivery fee.”
Knuckles went still. “Passengers.”
I nodded. “The terminology is consistent. Service providers, deliveries, clients. Everything’s coded, but it’s not hard to break once you see the pattern. Every week, at least one transport. Sometimes two or three.”
I flipped to another page in Carl’s ledger, this one water-stained across the bottom third, the ink in the last few columns blurred but still legible.
“This is from three months ago. See this entry?” I pointed to the name Tessa Garrison.
My voice caught on her name. “My sister. She started working at éclipse as a server. And then she disappeared.”
Knight pulled up the corresponding entry in my decoded ledger and read it aloud. “SC-O-1. Client request. Approved. Special handling.”
“SC means ‘special collection,’” I said. “I haven’t figured out what the O means. And the 1 is one passenger.”
Knuckles’ jaw worked. “Who’s the client?”
I pointed to the amount in Carl’s ledger, and then to the client code in mine. “DW.”
“That’s Darius Webb,” Griffin said, his voice flat. “A justice on the state supreme court.”
Knuckles and Knight exchanged a look I couldn’t read. Knight turned back to his laptop. “Keep going,” Knuckles ordered, his voice grim.
I turned another page. “The names form a pattern. Politicians, business owners. Some are out of state. A few are international.” With each name, the silence in the room deepened.
“This one,” I said, pointing to a page with a torn corner. “He started to rip this out, then stopped.”
The entry read FM-3-5. Urgent. Priority. Full fee.
Knight’s fingers tapped. “Three weeks ago.” He turned his screen to Knuckles. “Full fee is fifty thousand.”
“Half up front, half on delivery,” Knuckles clarified.
I shook my head. “Not on this one. What does FM mean?”
“Front money,” Griffin said quietly. “Full payment, all at once. And 3-5 is three passengers, five transports.”
I reached for the next page, but Knuckles stopped me with a raised hand. “That’s enough for now.”
I straightened, my back aching from hunching over the workbench. My palms had gone clammy, and the cut on my hand had settled into a dull, insistent beat. “I have more. A lot more.”
“We know,” Knuckles said. “You’ve been brave as hell going after your sister’s captors alone.
But you’re standing in the middle of something much bigger than one woman can carry.
I’m not even certain how my club’s gonna handle it.
So, I want Knight to go over the rest independently.
Then I want the two of you to compare notes.
If he needs help with locating something, will you help him? ”
I blinked up at him, shocked but pleased at the way he phrased his request. I suppose, logically, I knew I didn’t have much choice, but I couldn’t take offense when I’d been expecting to have to fight my way into helping. “Absolutely, I’ll help.”
He leaned forward, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I’m putting the full weight of my presidency and every piece of leverage I hold as one of the Miles family’s most brutal enforcers behind finding your sister and delivering the men responsible to whatever justice looks like when the law isn’t invited.
Which will very heavily depend on the shape we find your sister in when we recover her. ”
I stared at him, the implication of his words sinking in one by one. “What do you want in return?”
Something like approval flickered across his face, almost a smile. “The same thing you want. To make sure all the right people pay for what they’ve done.”
I glanced at Griffin, who stood beside me. His jaw was set, eyes giving nothing away, but he gave me a single, almost imperceptible nod. “Tell me what you need from me,” I said, turning back to Knuckles.
“Everything you’ve got. Every name, every date, every dollar. Everything you’ve figured out, and everything you’re still working on. Knight will take it from here.”
Knight nodded, already turning back to his laptop. “I need access to your files. All of them.”
I reached into the laptop bag and pulled out the external hard drive I’d salvaged from my apartment. “Everything’s on here. Encrypted, but the key’s in the front pocket.”
Knight took it without comment, plugging it into his system. The screen filled with lines of code, scrolling too fast to read. Knuckles turned to Griffin.
“Get her settled,” Knuckles said, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest. “Make sure she’s got everything she needs.” He looked at me. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow, once me and Knight have a chance to review everything with Gunnar, we start putting this together.”
Griffin nodded. “Come on,” he said to me. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
I glanced at the ledgers, still spread across the flat surface. “Thank you,” I said, the words feeling inadequate. “For believing me.”
Knuckles shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet. You don’t know what you’ve started. This isn’t going to be easy.”
With a nod, Griffin urged me out the door. “Come on. The sooner you can shower and rest, the better you’re gonna feel.”