Page 34 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

All it does is make my head hurt, fill it full of questions I’ll never get answers to.

I do what I do, and that’s the end of it.

“Is this your form of apology?” I tease, lightening the conversation. “It needs work.”

“Not in this fucking lifetime.” He laughs into the speaker.

There we go. That’s much better.

“Did you and Rook find anything at terminal 13?”

I step into my slacks, changing the subject.

“Stephen wasn’t there.”

“Fantastic.”

“But James Whittaker was.”

My eyebrows pull together. “Coraline’s father?”

I hear a door close wherever he is, and Briar’s voice cracks through the speaker, muttering a hello.

He doesn’t answer me, the line quiet. How nice of him to put me on mute while he makes out with his girlfriend. I glance down at my watch, biting the inside of my cheek.

Lyra should be back by now.

Alistair clears his throat. “We saw him meet at the port gate just after midnight, exchanging a set of keys for a hefty black duffle bag from two men. Rook snapped some pictures and is going to get Silas to walk him through how to run it through his computer to try and get some information on them.”

Interesting.

“So James uses Coraline as his way in with Stephen. Prove he’s loyal to the ring,” I conclude.

“That’s Rook’s theory too.”

I walk to my bed, flicking through the files I’ve been going through, all of the evidence we’ve collected and a few stolen documents from the police department, thanks to Rook.

Shifting through, I quickly find the photo that Sage had found in her father’s belongings. The picture showing Frank Donahue, Greg West, Stephen, Conner, and James in the parlor room. We knew from Lyra that they had all been friends during their college days.

But did a couple of college parties and hard drugs bind the five of them enough to start a sex trafficking ring? How many men in this town are selling their own daughters to pay off some debts? The quick cash of human trafficking doesn’t seem worth it, especially for someone like Whittaker.

I grab a sheet I’d printed from the internet, reading the contents. “Why is James involved? Elite is one of the most profitable petroleum engineering companies on the West Coast. It’s unlikely he needs the money.”

“Greed is a nasty fucking thing—there is never enough for people like that.” Alistair’s voice is bitter, hating the taste of his own family’s wealth. “The Halo needs space to hide the girls coming and going, right? Elite’s company campus spans three cities. That’s a fuck ton of land.”

Plenty of room to hide shipping containers full of missing girls without raising suspicion.

“So, Whittaker provides the safe house to hide the girls before they’re sold overseas. Frank kept it quiet for the money, Greg was a pawn, and Stephen is pulling the strings.” I press my fingers into my eyes. “And we have nothing solid to prove any of it.”

“Bingo.”

I run a frustrated hand through my damp hair. The world is moving outside without me while I remain stagnant in this room. The guys are working to get information on the Halo, and I’ve looked over files from the murders, but none of it is useful. None of it tells me who this Imitator character is.

My hunting is limited, and I feel like a caged animal in this room, useless and without purpose.

We keep gathering puzzle pieces that don’t fit together, with no guidance on how to fix them. I knew getting involved in this was a bad idea from the start, that once we were in, it was over. We wouldn’t stop until it was finished.

I throw the papers onto the made bed, straightening them carefully before picking up the book lying next to them.

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