Page 182 of Darling Wildfire
“Fuck, are we old?”
“Nah, although missions hurt more now, that’s for sure,” Knight said. “I’d kill for my twenty-year-old body again. That thing was resilient as fuck! I could sleep on the hard ground for a week and then go get in a fight.”
My lips turned up in a smile but it didn’t reach my eyes.
“We look damn good for fifty though,” Knight smirked.
I took another drink, realizing with a jolt that I’d turned fifty and hadn’t even stopped to acknowledge it. I’d been going full speed ahead for the last decade and now that I knew Emersyn was alive, it was just one more thing on my plate.
“We’ll find her,” Knight said. “And then we’ll kill Vetticus…and anyone else who needs to die.”
He turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“You accomplished what you set out to do all those years ago when you showed up on my doorstep with a vendetta and a dream. Now you have an empire, you have the financing and firepower. But most importantly, you have us—and we’re ready.”
89
THERON
The next morning, a little hungover but feeling more like myself, Deathwing showed us into his war room. Several men stood upon Deathwing’s entrance.
“This is Theron North and some of his team.” He gestured to his men. “This is Kyllion—my second. Seven, Lincoln—and Rune is behind the computer there. Rune, pull up the boards.”
An electronic evidence wall appeared on several huge screens along one wall.
“Makes it easy to transport when it’s digital,” Rune said when he caught West’s jaw dropped. West had joined us this morning and the rest of my team was expected later this afternoon.
“Looks like the paper one visually—” Rune continued.
“But so much better,” West said in awe.
Deathwing gestured to Rune. “West, have Rune set you up with anything you need.”
He pointed to three images posted at the top of the board he’d pulled up.
“This is Greg Mahoney, Alex Palmero and an organization we don’t know much about yet that we call the Faceless. There are more—rings and secondary people—but this seems to be the biggest ring and the main players we encounter the most. Mahoney and Palmero are ghosts and spook easily so we’ve been targeting the grooming houses. Taking down an auction is nearly impossible. They just pop back up again. Until we chop off the head, targeting those doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mahoney is part owner of the Red Auction and Palmero runs adventure style businesses.”
A list of establishments appeared under Palmero’s photo.
“We’ll look through the documentation from the boarding house and see if any of these pop up.”
We spent the rest of the morning combing through the documentation and adding to Deathwing’s evidence board. By the end of the day, we’dfinished going through everything and I didn’t feel any closer to knowing where Emerysn could be.
“This is the problem with trying to find an individual,” Deathwing said. “They don’t use names, usually just numbers or maybe nicknames. It looks like over the past year, they’ve sold girls off to Palmero, Mahoney and a long list of middlemen—not very helpful when we don’t know her number or nickname.”
I stood in front of the evidence board, looking over it thoughtfully. My gaze hovered on the names under Palmero’s photo and then at the ones under Mahoney.
“Does Mahoney ever frequent any of Palmero’s businesses?” I asked.
“Yes, we have reason to believe they are partners in a lot of their ventures,” Rune said.
“What are you thinking?” Deathwing asked, coming up to stand beside me. I pointed out a few names on the board.
“I’m not going to find her knocking down doors of grooming houses or middlemen. There’s too many. I need to learn more about the key players.”
Deathwing nodded. “We haven’t attempted going undercover with this ring yet. Both men are extremely wary of strangers and tight with their inner circles. The Red Auction is invite only and a lot of Palmero’s establishments are too.”
“Do you have information on each of these?” I asked, pointing to the lists of businesses.
