Chapter Twenty-Eight
Titan descended upon the office park. They arrived in SUVs and helicopters.
They bypassed police tape and trumped every official-looking badge.
Rage rolled off Callum. He didn’t know whom to talk to, whom to trust. He wanted to burn the goddamn world down, but couldn’t until he used every resource to bring his woman home.
Then he would kick off his revenge tour, taking out every single thing he deemed responsible for today.
The door smacked open. A man he’d never seen strode in. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Years of stress were etched on his face. All at once, Callum knew who he was and didn’t know whether he should trust him.
“We haven’t met since you joined Vivian’s team.
Jared Westin.” The man held out his hand, eye ticking at the moment of Callum’s hesitation before they shook hands.
“We will bring your woman home.” Jared held up a hand to block Callum’s explosion of distrust. “I take responsibility for whatever caused this to happen. Now, sit down. I’m going to tell you a story. ”
His hands balled into fists. He didn’t have time for this bullshit corporate ass-covering. “I don’t have time for fuckin’ story hour—”
Jared paced to the window overlooking the circus in the parking lot. He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “It’s not an easy story to share, but you need to hear it. And you’ll trust me when I’m done.”
Doubtful. Callum yanked back a chair and forced himself to sit. If this was the next step to getting answers, he’d momentarily follow directions.
Jared cracked a couple of knuckles and stared out the window. His face darkened, as if he were reliving a bad memory. “Years ago, there was a man who nearly destroyed my world. His name was Buck Baer.” Jared’s eyes narrowed on Callum. “Ever heard of him?”
Callum shook his head. “No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think so. He’s been dead for a while. Good fuckin’ riddance.” He pulled out a chair at the head of the table. “We were battle buddies. But Buck Baer was in it for the glory. Then, after the Army, he wanted the money. Not a bad thing, but he took it too far.”
“Great story, but we’re wasting time.” Nothing Jared had said made Callum believe Jared was any more invested in finding Grace than any other client.
“Baer pulled strings and orchestrated my fucking nightmare. He captured the woman I was going to marry.” Fury flexed in his square jaw.
“After I found Sugar, I took his everything. His property. His company. His contracts. Everything. I cleaned out the dirty and kept what didn’t stink like shit, and I turned that into this.
The division of Titan Group that you work for today. ”
The similar betrayal, fury, and panic resonated. As did Jared’s revenge.
Jared pushed out of the chair and stalked to the windows again.
He studied the activity below and turned to Callum again.
“I have been burned by the people closest to me and the people who fought beside me. I get it. I know what’s in your head right now.
Probably better than anyone you’ve ever met. ”
“So what?”
“I’m vouching for this team and the people who I’m bringing in as an additional layer of security. If you work with us, we will bring Grace home. I give you my word.”
The confidence in his rough voice offered the first shred of hope that Callum had felt. His molars clamped, and he didn’t trust his voice.
“We will bring Grace home. If I have to, I will personally deliver her to your doorstep—”
“I will be wherever she is.”
“I get that, and I’ll make sure it happens.”
He wanted to trust this guy. But it meant he needed to trust his team. Callum swallowed hard and had never felt so helpless.
“It’s a horrible feeling,” Jared grumbled, “not to be able to manhandle your way to a solution.”
“Like you’re reading my mind.” Callum moved to the windows and peered out next to Jared.
Law enforcement canvassed the office parking lot.
He didn’t know what they might find that would help.
Investigators were interviewing everyone in the surrounding offices.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I feel fucking helpless.”
“I did too.” Jared clapped him on the back as though to say it would be okay. “Now that you know why you should trust me, let me give you what I’ve learned. The feds believe they have what’s needed for a grand jury indictment. They wanted to avoid subpoenaing her.”
“What could she possibly know that is worth this much effort?”
“Marino is in deep with a Triad out of Shanghai. On paper, they look like Vegas investors who dabble in crypto trading. But actually, they’ve got an entire hedge fund propped up like a Ponzi scheme, laundering crypto.
There’s enough money moving through their entities to theoretically never stop grifting unless someone pulls a cog out of their well-oiled machine.
If that happens…” Jared let out a low whistle.
“Lots of everyday people around the world will have their investment portfolio disappear in an instant, and lots of criminal enterprises will find they don’t have the money they thought they did. ”
Callum blinked. “What on earth could Grace possibly know about that?”
“Prosecutors believe Marino used her aliases, VPNs, and communication network to hide his tracks. She was the front and didn’t know it while she was so-called dead.”
Callum connected the dots between what Jared said and all of Grace’s concerns, the way she lived, and her paranoia. “Marino knew where she was the whole time?”
Jared nodded. “Probably, and he was also using her as a third-party aggregator of sorts, laundering through accounts that she opened and thought she closed before opening new ones. She was staying hidden because the world thought she was dead, and it was a fantastic solution for Marino.”
Every possibility ran through his head. Dean had said her skills erasing her tracks had been beyond what one person could do, and he hadn’t been wrong.
Callum had asked about it, and she didn’t explain the complex layers of hiding her tracks beyond VPNs and ghost accounts.
“He’s not behind the Molotov cocktail or the safe house breach.
Forget that those are two wildly different approaches to keeping her quiet.
It would serve no purpose to endanger the communication network he built through Grace.
If she’s actually dead, his system disappears. ”
Jared nodded. “The different approaches tell me there’s disagreement in the Triad.”
“They know what the DOJ is investigating. But why take her now? She has nothing with her. She can’t access her VPNs and emails. Just to keep her quiet?”
He raised his shoulders. “Sure, and keep her accounts away from the DOJ. The faction that wants to kill her probably has a shakier relationship with Dominic Marino than the group that abducted her.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Then… that’s good news?”
“Relatively speaking.” Jared rubbed the back of his neck.
“Look, there could be multiple bogeys in this shitstorm. The AG’s office could have empaneled a grand jury without Grace.
They obviously needed access, and given what happened today, where it happened, the Triad has a mole embedded within the feds’ ranks. ”
But not Titan’s?
“Our intel also leaked,” Jared said, as if reading Callum’s thoughts. “I don’t know how yet, but I assure you that I’ll tear everything apart and make sure that never happens to us again. Because it is an us, Callum. You’re Titan. That means something. Maybe you don’t realize it yet, but you will.”
Callum didn’t trust a soul here—yet part of him yearned to be so interwoven into a team again that it felt like family.
Jared tilted his head toward the office door.
“I’m going to introduce you to men from our central headquarters team.
They’re older. They’re experienced. They’ve been through this before.
Every move will be redundant. Just to double-check that nothing shady is going on with your team.
I trust them, but you don’t have to until this is done. Are we on the same page?”
Callum thought over the offer and Jared’s transparency. The man had been down a similar road with his wife’s abduction. He understood the stakes. He trusted his team. Callum sawed his jaw but nodded. “All right.”
Jared turned. “Let’s go.”
They passed conference room after conference room, each filled with attorneys and their office staff, law enforcement, and investigators, until they reached the farthest conference room. A man approached them from the opposite direction.
“Turbulence out of Boston was a nightmare,” he said to Jared and then introduced himself. “Parker Black. I’ve had my eyes on this since Boss Man said go.”
They entered the conference room. Dean offered Parker an appreciative look. “Took you long enough.”
Gage sat with two men, introduced as Rocco and Roman.
Jared pulled Vivian and Gage into a separate conversation, leaving Callum with Dean and Parker in a huddle near Rocco and Roman.
Dean leaned back from the table. “Callum, give me a second?”
“Yeah.”
“I understand where you’re coming from. I get the distrust. I want you to know I run sweeps on my assets. I trust my people.” He grimaced. “But there’s obviously a breach. I see it. I believe it. You need to know it didn’t come from me.”
Callum held his stare a beat longer, searching for a lie in the way Dean spoke, but didn’t find it.
“We’ll find the problem,” Parker promised. “But our highest priority is finding Grace. Agreed? We chase shadows and problems later. We find her now.”
Callum nodded. There were leaks and moles, but based on what Jared said, Callum believed it wasn’t the people in this room.
He waited while Parker and Dean compared notes, then looped in Titan’s hierarchy of Jared, Vivian, and Gage.
Rocco and Roman made small talk, but Callum wanted to climb the walls.
Investigators pulled him in and out of the conference room several times.
Each time he recounted the same thing, he wasn’t sure how that information fed into the group working in this room.
Finally, Jared called everyone to the table and said to Callum, “You’re not going to like this.”
Callum steeled himself.
“We have a plan, and you’re going to talk to Marino. Face to face. Explain what you know. What’s happened. Lean into the idea that something Marino sees as a possession is in danger.”
His chest tightened. He forced his voice steady. “Are you joking?” He shook his head. “He won’t meet with me.”
“Yeah, he will.” Jared pointed to Parker and Dean.
“He’s unaware of what’s happened to Grace but knows the groups within his network who have expressed varying ways to keep her from speaking to the DOJ,” Parker said.
Dean added, “The chatter’s only been getting more heated. No one is showing their hand to him yet. He can open doors we can’t.”
“Think it through,” Jared demanded. “He sees Grace as his property and as a source of his laundering network. He doesn’t have all the information, which has got to be a kick in the nuts. He’ll talk to you, and we’ll figure out a way to track his next steps.”
Callum would have to keep his fists at his side. “Fine. Set it up.”
“Already done,” Vivian said. “Gage is going in with you. Rocco and Roman will be on site. We’ll probably place others throughout the meeting location.”
Callum’s frozen trust was thawing. He could trust these people. He had to. “When?”
“Chopper’s outside waiting to take you to the airport. There’s a jet that will take you to New York City. You’ll meet Marino at a hotel.”
“We already have Delta team tracking his every move,” Rocco added. “You’ll know if he does anything suspicious before you get there.”
“And, Hale?” Vivian crossed her arms. “Don’t kill the fucker after you have what you need from him.”