Chapter 25 #3
“Already there.” The security footage from the courtyard filled the main screen.
Remi froze it on the best image they had of the man carrying Kelsey toward the sedan.
It was a grainy, side profile, and the fucker was wearing a baseball cap.
But it was better than nothing. “Caius, I’m sending you an image. ”
Seconds crawled past, then Caius inhaled sharply. “That’s him.”
Tyrone squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re sure?”
“I am absolutely certain.”
The war-room erupted. Remi started firing questions while Jorja dragged the image through facial-recognition software again. Gunnar was already on the phone. Colt moved behind Jorja’s chair. Mojo abandoned Sullivan’s financials and opened another terminal. Tyrone barely heard any of them.
That’s him.
The same fucking man who had delivered Kelsey to Caius all those weeks ago had walked into their compound and taken her again. That wasn’t a coincidence; it couldn’t be. It had to be a pipeline, right?
“Name,” Gunnar demanded.
“Working it,” Jorja said.
“Caius?”
“I was never given one.”
“Got him,” Remi snapped. A driver’s license photograph appeared beside the surveillance still.
The man was older in one, and heavier in the other, but it was still the same fucking face.
“Luka Petrovic,” Remi read. “Serbian national with multiple passports. Two known aliases. Interpol has him flagged for suspected trafficking, weapons transport, and organized crime, but he’s never been successfully prosecuted. ”
“White Shadow?” Tyrone asked.
“Give me a second.”
Jorja beat him to it. “Yes. His name is in the files we pulled from the Collective. Low enough not to make leadership, high enough to handle international transfers.”
There was the bridge they’d been looking for from Oregon to France. That was how Kelsey ended up in that fucking mansion they’d blown up in France.
“What about Sullivan?” Glenna asked. Tyrone turned toward her. She’d gone frighteningly still. All signs of being broken were gone, and the furious rage of a wronged mama bear was written all over her face. “Where does Sullivan fit?”
Mojo’s chair rolled sharply backward. “Right fucking here.” He threw an email from Sullivan’s private account onto the main screen.
Asset confirmed. Female. Five years. No father listed on current placement documentation. Transfer can be arranged. Apply agreed credit to outstanding balance.
No name.
No Kelsey.
Nothing that would ever have meant anything if they hadn’t known where to look.
Mojo highlighted the date. The day before the twenty-five grand hit Vickers’s account.
“Source?” Gunnar asked.
“Account tied to Sullivan. I recovered it through the bookie’s archive.”
Tyrone stared at the words: agreed credit.
A hundred thousand dollars had vanished from Sullivan’s gambling debt three days after Dwight died.
The rest had disappeared after Kelsey was moved.
Twenty-five thousand had been paid to the woman who changed her placement.
And the day before that payment, Sullivan had confirmed a five-year-old girl was available for transfer. His knees almost fucking buckled.
“Dwight didn’t sell her.” Tears filled Glenna’s eyes, but none fell.
“No, baby.”
“He didn’t owe them money.”
“No.”
Her chin trembled. “Sullivan did.”
For fucking years, Sullivan had let Dwight carry the strain of secrets nobody knew he’d been forced to keep.
Then he’d sat across the fucking table from Gunnar, Colt, and him and looked him in the fucking eye yesterday and told him Dwight Jennings had traded his own daughter to pay his gambling debts.
The truth was so much worse. John Sullivan may have sold out mission intel on the job that got Dwight killed.
Then he’d traded Dwight’s daughter to pay his own.
“I’ll fucking kill him.”
“No,” Gunnar said.
Tyrone turned slowly, but his boss didn’t move.
“You don’t get to kill him.”
“Watch me.”
“You kill him, he takes everything else he knows to the grave. Dwight. Your team. The ambush. Every other kid he might have handed over. Every name connected to this. You want justice?”
Tyrone’s hands curled into fists, and he gave Gunnar a brief nod. “Of course, I fucking do. But I want Kelsey back more.”
“Then we drag every fucking secret out of him first.”
A sharp tone came from Jorja’s computer. She froze, then leaned closer.
“What?”
“Petrovic.”
Tyrone was beside her before she finished saying the name. “What about him?”
“Now that I have an identity, I have his movements.” She opened a map. “He crossed into Italy four days ago using one of his aliases. Rented the sedan in Genoa. Cash deposit, fake documentation, but the rental company fitted the vehicle with a tracker after they had three cars disappear last year.”
For the first time in hours, hope punched through Tyrone hard enough to hurt. “Tell me it’s still transmitting.”
Jorja smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Oh, it’s transmitting.” A dot appeared on the screen.
“Where?” Gunnar demanded.
Jorja zoomed in. “Outside the city. Property’s isolated. No close neighbors. Registered to a holding company out of Monaco.”
Remi was already digging. “Company traces back through two more shells...” His fingers stopped.
Tyrone’s heart slammed against his ribs. “To who?”
Remi looked at him. “White Shadow.”
Tyrone stared at the blinking dot. There. His little girl was there. Or she’d fucking better be. He reached for the holster at his hip.
Gunnar’s hand closed around his wrist. “Not yet.”
“Get your fucking hand off me.”
“We don’t know the property. We don’t know how many men are inside.
We don’t know their weapons, exits, surveillance, whether they’ve rigged the place, or whether Petrovic has orders to put a bullet in Kelsey the second he sees us coming.
” Every word was like being stabbed by a dull, rusty blade, but every single one was also true.
Tyrone slowly released the grip on his pistol, and Gunnar let him go.
“Remi, Jorja, I want everything on that property. Plans, utilities, cameras, vehicles, phones, fucking pizza deliveries. Tal, get me current aerials and find me somewhere we can stage without being seen. Colt, pull the team together. Mojo, stay on Sullivan. I want to know who he’s spoken to in the last seventy-two hours. ”
For the first time since Kelsey disappeared, they had somewhere to go.
Glenna slipped her hand into his. “Bring her home.”
Tyrone looked down at her. Fear lived in her eyes, but so did absolute faith in him. He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth against her knuckles.
“I’ll bring our girl home.” Then he looked at Gunnar. “Build me a fucking mission.”