Chapter 13
RAMPAGE
Lucky had printed everything out.
That was the thing about Lucky, he was meticulous in a way that looked like chaos from the outside. His desk was a disaster of coffee cups and Post-it notes in four different colors, and underneath all of it was a system that Rampage had learned, over years, to trust completely.
The garage table had been cleared. Papers spread across it in overlapping rows, printouts, screenshots, a hand-drawn map that Lucky had done himself because he thought visually and didn't trust digital maps to show him what he needed to see.
Savage stood at one end with his arms crossed. Lucky stood at the other, pointing at things with a pen.
"Delling's not the top," Lucky said. "Not even close. He's a collector. Finds targets, confirms viability, handles the initial approach. Once the target is secured, she goes up the chain."
"To where?" Rampage asked.
"That's where it gets bigger." Irish took over and tapped the map.
"Denver is the processing point. We've got two confirmed disappearances there, but the network extends east. The federal contact Phantom looped in thinks they're looking at a corridor from Colorado to Kansas to somewhere in the Midwest. Could be further. "
Rampage looked at the map. The hand-drawn lines connecting cities. The circled points.
"How many collectors?" Savage asked.
"Minimum four that they've identified. Delling is the only one in this region." Lucky paused. "Which means Emily wasn't the only woman he'd been watching. She was just the first one he moved on."
The garage was quiet for a moment.
"The other women," Rampage said. "The two missing from Denver. Were they his?"
"One confirmed. The other possibly. The feds are running DNA from his property." Lucky set the pen down. "Here's the part you're not going to like."
"Tell me."
"Delling made contact with Emily over two months ago.
Not just through the listing but through a neighborhood Facebook group she's a member of.
Small interactions. Commenting on things she posted.
Building familiarity." He met Rampage's eyes.
"He was warming her up. The listing was the endgame, not the start. "
Two months.
Emily had been in someone's crosshairs for two months and had no idea.
Had been building what felt like an ordinary neighborhood digital community, the kind of low-level social contact everyone had, and underneath it a man had been watching, calculating, deciding she was worth the patience.
How much information had he ascertained from her in those two months?
How many innocent looking questions did she answer that gave him insight into her, confirming her value as a target?
Rampage's jaw was doing the thing Irish had mentioned. He was aware of it and was choosing not to address it.
"The federal contact," he said. "What do they need from us?"
"Documentation of the tampering, Emily's account of the interactions, and anything she can pull from her Facebook messages with Delling.
They want a voluntary statement, not a deposition.
Can be done here." Lucky hesitated. "And they want it soon.
Delling's gone dark. The last ping on his phone was forty-eight hours ago.
If he knows we're looking, he's running. "
"He's running," Savage said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah." Irish leaned against the table. "He's running."
Rampage looked at the map. At the lines connecting city to city, at the circled points that represented places women had disappeared, at the single point in Grand Ridge that represented a woman sitting at his kitchen table coloring botanical flowers in wisteria pencil because it was the first thing in weeks that had made her feel safe.
"Set up the meeting with the federal contact," he said. "Day after tomorrow. Here, not their office." He paused. "Emily's going to hear all of it."
Irish raised an eyebrow. "Everything?"
"She's not fragile." He pushed off the table. "She's going to hear what they found and she's going to give a statement and she's going to do it from somewhere she feels grounded. Not a federal office. Here."
"Does she know you are making these decisions for her?" Savage asked.
Rampage looked at him.
Savage looked back, unbothered.
"Set up the meeting," Rampage said, and went back inside.
She was still coloring when he came in.
Head down, hair falling forward slightly, the wisteria pencil traded out now for something blue-green. The page had filled in while he'd been gone, the flower was finished, the leaves detailed, and she'd started on the border pattern, careful and deliberate.
She didn't startle this time when he came to the table. Just glanced up, read his face, set the pencil down.
"Tell me," she said.
He sat. Told her the parts she needed to know. Delling as a collector, the network, the corridor east. Left out the two months of targeted contact for now. She'd get the full picture from the federal agent in two days, and he wanted her to have solid ground under her before that conversation.
She listened without interrupting. Her hands stayed flat on the table.
"Day after tomorrow," she said when he finished.
"Here. My terms, not theirs. I can stay with you. If you want, we can have Savannah on standby for after. Or Makenzie."
"Both," she said immediately.
"Both." He nodded.
She looked at the coloring book. At the finished flower. "He was building a profile on me."
"Yes."
"And I didn't notice."
"People don't." He kept his voice level. "That's why it works."
She pressed her lips together. Nodded, slow and deliberate. It was the way she processed things. He'd been watching her do it all week. It was the way she met hard information with a moment of stillness and then decided what to do with it.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"I'm angry," she said. "I'm really angry. But I’m okay."
"Good." He meant it. "Anger is useful."
She looked at him. "You're not going to tell me to calm down?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Because anger is—" She stopped. Seemed to hear herself. "Most people don't like it when women are angry."
"I'm not most people." He held her gaze. "And your anger is pointed in exactly the right direction. I'm not going to sand it down for my comfort."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Do you ever get angry? Like actually, visibly angry?" She tilted her head. "Or does it just, I don’t know, go somewhere internal and come out as tactical planning?"
He considered the question with the genuine attention it deserved.
"Both," he said finally. "And there's a version of what I felt in that garage just now that most people wouldn't want to be in the room for."
"But you folded it."
"I directed it." He paused. "There's a time and a place. This wasn't it. I learned a long time ago to find a productive outlet for my anger and not let it consume me. It takes a lot to filter your anger into motivation. I haven’t always been able to do this."
She looked at him for a long moment. "That must be exhausting. Knowing how to do that."
"It's just discipline."
"No," she said quietly. "It's more than that." She picked up her pencil. "I think it costs you something. Every time."
He didn't answer that.
She went back to the border pattern.
He stayed at the table with her, drinking another cup of coffee and processing everything that had just happened.