The mention of the fresh vegetables made everything click. “You’re a fucking genius.” I jumped out of the chair with Patty in my arms. “We need to go find Brock. I know what they are using to transport women, and I might know who is behind the whole thing. It might also answer some questions about Carl.” I wanted to scream for not figuring it out earlier.
“Let me ask Jessica to watch over Izzy.” Patty pulled out her phone and sent a quick text. Seconds later, her phone beeped. “She’s on her way up.”
We walked down the hall to Patty’s home office. She’d decked out the room when we first moved in, putting up four huge monitors on the wall and a computer station with six monitors. Brock had taken it over the day before.
When we walked in, he was chewing on a piece of licorice and held a Mountain Dew in the other hand. “Still haven’t found who the girl's mother is.” He didn’t look up from the computer as he continued to type on the black screen. Even after being with Patty for so many years, I still didn’t understand the code they typed. I only knew that they produced the answers I always asked for.
“Can you look to see if all the vendors use the same transportation company?”
“Yeah, give me one second.”
Patty pulled away and sat down at the other computer station, and her fingers started flying as fast as Brock’s. I knew they would have the answer for me within seconds.
“Six of the vendors use Nexus Transportation. And the man we spoke to earlier uses them,” Brock said.
I was reasonably confident this would lead us to the answer. Now we had to figure out who owned the company.
Patty grumbled, “The company is buried under five shell companies.”
“Of course, it is. Let’s not let the information out of this room. I’m still not sure who we can trust. But if this company can give us a link, we might find records of payment. Brock, have you gotten anywhere on figuring out if any of the men working for me are corrupt?”
“Fredrick was good, and if any of the men are corrupt, he worked hard to delete their pasts. You have so many people working close to you—it will take a while to dive deep into each person’s past. I started with Wes.”
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about with him,” I replied. “I’m not sure how much I trust Tucker after the shit he pulled.”
“I thought the same about Wes. Something from his past doesn’t look right, and he’s the only one you’ve told things to, and those things got out.” Brock paused to take a bite of licorice. “Tucker’s service record is clean. I’m working to see if Fredrick made it look like Wes tried to cover up his past. I need more time to dig through the information. Neal took a break to play with the kids. He’ll be back soon.”
“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Patty asked.
I sighed. “No, you are not chopped liver, Pixie, but you haven’t seen your friends in a year, and tomorrow everything is going to change. Do you really want to sit behind a computer all day, doing background checks?”
Her gray eyes darted to the screen before bouncing back to me. “It’s been so long since I did this. I miss it.” She sighed. “But I guess I can socialize with the girls while Brock sits here and has all the fun.”
Brock rolled his eyes. “I know for a fact you were sending bots against my network a few weeks back. So don’t give me that shit that you’re not getting to code much anymore.”
Patty’s lips turned up. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
I sure as hell had no clue what they were talking about, and I really didn’t care. My only thoughts were on figuring out who the shell company was so I could take it down. The part where we did a rescue was what I was good at. Sitting around, gathering intel was not part of the mission that I enjoyed.
“Holy shit,” Brock yelled. “One of the many shell companies was created by Fredrick.”
I leaned in farther, reading the information on the screen, but I didn’t understand how he’d figured out it was Fredrick. “Nothing on there links to Fredrick.”
Brock clicked a few more times and brought up another document. “You know how hackers like to leave a signature. One of the dumbest things they can do, since all links lead back to them, but some people have big egos and love to show off their work. Look right here in the bottom right corner.”
In any other document, I would have overlooked the small crown with an F on it. Brock pulled up three more records, and they all had the same thing. The shell company had been created or altered by Fredrick. At least now we could ask more questions.
“I’ll have Wes put Fredrick in the interrogation room. I think it’s time we get answers.”
Patty’s face lit up. “Are you going to waterboard him?”
“No.”
“Tie an electrical cord to his nipples and attach it to a battery?”
“No.”
She didn’t stop. “Break his fingers one by one until he talks?”
“No.”
Patty threw her hands in the air and huffed. “Well, how the hell do you think you are going to get him to talk? Do you really think he’s suddenly going to spill his guts? Wait, I have an idea. Earlier today, Kat paid someone at an animal both. I bet she bought us an alligator. We could use the alligator to chew on his leg until he gives us answers.”
“Jesus, Patty. None of that is going to happen. I swear to God, she’d better not have bought a fucking alligator, and if she did, I’m sticking it on your plane, Brock. That shit is not staying here. I don’t have a fucking pond for that crap.” I ran my hand through my hair. “As for how we are going to get him to talk, I plan to shoot him up with Sodium Pentothal and ask questions until I get the answers we need to shut this underground shit down.”
There were many misconceptions about Sodium Pentothal in the world. Many thought it was a truth serum, which was incorrect. It didn’t force someone to tell the truth. But it slowed the speed at which your body could send messages to your brain, which made it harder to perform high-function tasks such as lying. So more truths came out than lies.
This latest discovery brought us one step closer to Carl, because Fredrick didn’t have the funds to set up the shell company. The farther we dug, the closer I got to taking Carl down.
12
Patty
God, there had to be something wrong with me. I was getting turned on watching my husband hold a man down and press a needle into his neck. Yep, I’d completely lost my mind. Kat and I sat behind the two-way mirror, watching Antonio and Sam on the other side.
“You’re so lucky to have an interrogation room in your place.” Kat tapped her finger on the glass. “This wouldn’t only work for the bad guys, but I could use it when I want to figure out which one of my boys ate the last cookie.”
Antonio turned toward the mirror and smiled as if secretly communicating with his wife.
“I can’t wait to jump my husband after he’s done with this interrogation, and he knows it.”
“Is this something you guys often do? You said you don’t have an interrogation room.”
Kat tilted her head. “We don’t, but Antonio and I work with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. I’d watched Antonio help on a few cases while I stood behind the mirror. Afterward, I pulled him into the men’s bathroom, and we had sex. The police chief wasn’t very happy. Needless to say, we are banned from the restrooms at the police station. But I’m not sure I would have sex in them again, anyway. Your sister went on a rant about how unclean they are. That was at the forefront of my brain while my husband fucked me.”
* * *
Sam
Ten minutes after I shot the drug into Fredrick, I noticed that it was taking effect. He looked a little worse for wear compared to the day we arrested him. Dark circles had formed under his brown eyes. His long hair was a ratted mess.
“It looks like jail hasn’t treated you well in the last few days.”
Antonio smiled. “This guy doesn’t even know what prison re
ally looks like. I’m pretty sure that was five-star food you were feeding those inmates. We need to have a serious talk about how you treat the scum of the earth. Or better yet, I could take him back with me and stop by the Hole.”
The Hole was a top-secret prison the military used to hide the lowlifes, the place only the top terrorists were taken to. Over the years, I’d dropped off a few of the men we’d caught there. It took a specific breed of man to run that prison and work there. Light interrogation, I could handle, but I’d never been one to electrocute someone for information.
I looked at the mirror. Kat and Patty were on the other side. I’d tried talking my pixie out of coming, but she insisted on being part of this. I agreed to let her if Kat stayed with her. Brock stayed back in Patty’s lair to work on digging deeper into everyone's backgrounds. I knew he would find the information we needed.
“Did the guards say if he’s talked at all?” I asked.
“Nope, this little fucker’s kept his mouth shut for the last week. I’m pretty impressed he didn’t even brag about fooling you. I’m sure that would get him some credence.” Antonio glanced at Fredrick. “Well, maybe he wants to be someone's bitch in prison.”
Antonio was fucking with Fredrick, trying to get a rise out of him. This wasn’t the first interrogation Antonio and I had worked on together. Years before, when we were both on a mission in a small village in South America, we caught the second-in-command for the local cartel. We didn’t have Sodium Pentothal to help push our questions through. Instead, we spent the days hounding him until he made a mistake. The little slip about where he’d been two days before we found him gave us enough information to track down the four Navy SEALs being tortured.
“I did nothing,” Fredrick ground out, sweat dripped down his forehead. The young man was fighting the drug.
Antonio’s brow shot up. “Did you hear that, Sam? The fucker is innocent. Damn. We wasted a perfectly good drug on the bastard.”
Maybe Patty’s idea of electrocuting the fucker would work better because he fought the drug harder than I expected. He wasn’t as weak as he looked. “You can drop the I don’t know shit act. Next time, don’t be an idiot and leave a call sign. You would think people would figure this shit out.”
“My call sign is just the proof that I’m the greatest hacker around. People try to copy it all the time. There's no proof I put it on whatever you're talking about.”
I had no clue if that was true or not. Patty would know, but I had a feeling Brock could link the information back another way since he was already close. “Well, I was going to say that hacking into the system to change ownership of a company over to you and burying it under a hundred shell companies was impressive. But since it wasn’t, you make more sense. You did a shitty job while you worked for me, anyway.”
“I know what you're trying to do—twist this around and make it so my ego can’t handle someone else taking credit.”
Antonio grabbed another needle from the table, walked over, and pressed it against Fredrick’s skin. He struggled with the answers, so I knew most of what he said was a lie, but I wanted to get to the part where he couldn’t even use his brain to think up the lies.
I pulled out the pictures of four of the missing women. They were the ones we knew about, but I guessed there were more we didn’t know about. “Let’s have a chat about these women.” I placed each photo down on the table. Each of them looked different. There was one redhead, a blonde, and two women with black hair. There wasn’t a pattern, which made it even harder to figure out if the missing women were all linked to the same disappearance.
“They're a little old for my taste, but Patty, on the other hand…”
I made a fist. The fucker was getting under my skin. I wanted to pound his head into the metal table. “You’re a little scrawny for her.” I motioned back to the pictures. “Now, take a closer look at the photos. Do you recognize any of them?”
He studied the photo, his jaw flexing, water dripping on the table. “I know the redhead. She’s part of the Zarus Church.”
“Church?” This wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d heard a little about the Zarus. Mostly, they were a group who had a different belief. They’d never caused problems, so I never looked much into them.
Fredrick leaned back and laughed. “You walk around this place, acting like the shit and like you know everything going on. Your men don’t like you. Hell, most of them are working against you. Your right-hand man has you fooled.”
I stared at the man, trying to figure out if he was actually telling the truth about Wes. Was I so fooled I didn’t even know my right-hand man was working against me?
Antonio leaned over, whispering in my ear. “I’m not sure if I believe everything he is saying. Let’s get more information and have Brock look into it more.”
“How much can we give him before killing him?” I asked. Fredrick’s eyes widened at my question.
Antonio glanced down at the needles filled with white liquid. “I’m not sure. It’s not like he’s giving us any information now. And it seems he’s still lying. Maybe this shit is expired. Where the hell did you get it.”
I shrugged. “Found it a few months back in the armory. Does it expire? If it does, they should write the date on the actual bottle.”
Antonio rolled his eyes. “This shit looks like it was bought aftermarket. They probably watered it down.”
“I’ll be right back.” I got up and walked out of the room and down the hall to my office. I grabbed a hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch and three shot glasses before I made the trip back to the room.
Antonio and Fredrick were glaring at each other as I set the bottle and shot glasses on the table. I poured three shots to the top of the glass then passed one to Fredrick and one to Antonio.
My longtime friend drank the alcohol quickly. I took a sip and set it back down. Fredrick reached forward with his cuffed hands and grabbed the glass. He downed the liquid and scrunched his nose like a wuss.
I poured another full glass and filled up Antonio’s. This time, only Fredrick shot the whisky down, not grimacing as much as he had the first time. I loved the taste of the old whisky as it went smoothly down my throat. It was meant to be savored. But the young kid didn’t know that.
“Are you ready to work with us or not?” I asked.
“I have no reason to work with you. This country was better before you came here and got involved.”
It was better when the crime lords were running everything, and the people were poor in the street?
I took another sip of the expensive whisky. “Not even to protect your sister?”
“She will be free soon.”
Bullshit. “Nope. Patty could put her in prison for life, since she is the acting queen.”
“For now.”
He was slipping. There was a plan to go after Patty. My nails dug into my palms with each second I sat across from the little fucker.
“In a few hours, she will be queen.” I let the tidbit of information fall to see how much he knew.
“That can’t be possible. A coronation needs to happen, and the king needs to sign the power over to her.”
The media kept going down the same road, saying a formal meeting at the church and a list of other activities needed to happen. But those were the steps to take if the king died, not if he decided to hand the power over himself. “Nope, doesn’t need to happen that way. When Patty turns queen tomorrow, she can have your sister tried.”
“You always think you have everything figured out, Sam, but your plan isn’t going to work.”
“If things were so perfect, why did you get caught? You knew we would have those cameras on.”
He did do an excellent job of hiding his face. “It seems you don’t trust the bitch either. I’m surprised you haven’t left her ass after you looked at the tracker feed you stuck on her.” His eyes flicked to the glass, and his lips turned up.
“I don’t need to know every place Patty goes. I trust her.�
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The man across the table gave a slow shrug. “From what I heard, Patty got around a lot back in the day when she would come to Shialia. The guards said not much had changed.”
Antonio leaned forward. “Is that the best you got? You really think we are going to fall for the accusation that Patty’s sleeping with the guards? You should be coming up with a way to save your sister or your own ass.”
“Carl will get me out of this.”
I shook my head and took the last sip of the whisky. “You’re wrong. When I find your stepfather, I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes for causing me so much work. And if you don’t start cooperating with us, I’ll make sure your sister is tried for treason and put on death row.”
The man growled. “You can’t do that. We are royalty, and someone had better start treating us like we are. It’s been long enough that King Beckett hid his brother from everyone. He stole the crown from my stepfather, and my stepfather’s going to get it back.”
“Are you saying Carl is William’s brother?” Why would King Beckett keep these details quiet? “The press would've figured it out years ago.”
“Their dad had an affair, and my stepdad was the true older sibling and the one next in line to the crown. However, nobody wanted the royal family to be tarnished, so he was banished to the back, treated like shit while King Beckett screwed every woman around. Which still seems to be the case. Patty is no better than her piece-of-shit dad.”
Antonio pressed a hand to my shoulder, a reminder I shouldn’t beat the crap out of a man in handcuffs no matter how much I wanted to see blood flowing from his mouth. I’d been upset about the alligator Kat planned to buy. Not anymore. I had a laundry list of bodies it could eat for weeks. I really wanted to start with the asshole across from me.
“You know you haven’t given me any information that is going to save your ass. Furthermore, I will work to make sure your family is kicked out of this country.”
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