Page 93 of Carter
I glanced down at the pages—rows of numbers and coded entries—and forced my mind to focus. Carter stayed close, his presence a steady hum beside me.
Gideon rapped his knuckles against the table, his voice gravelly but sharp. “Here’s the truth. Redwood was just a cog. A mean, vicious one, but still just a cog. His files confirm it—he was moving people, money, weapons for a bigger network. That network doesn’t fold just because we’ve got him in chains.”
River leaned forward, stabbing a finger at the map. “These sites… they’re still active. Drop points, safehouses, staging grounds. If half of this is real, we’ve got weeks, maybe months of operations to run down.”
Faron whistled low. “So we cut off one head, and a whole damn hydra’s waiting.”
The words made my stomach tighten. Redwood had been terrifying, but at least he was a face, a name. What waited behind him felt bigger, faceless, harder to fight.
I pulled one of the files closer, flipping to the back. A photograph slid free—grainy, taken from a distance. A man in a dark coat stepping out of a sleek car, his face half-shadowed, his posture radiating command. Not Redwood. Someone else.
“Who’s this?” I asked, sliding the photo to the center.
The room stilled. Gideon picked it up, frowning. “That’s not in the briefings we’ve seen.”
Cyclone muttered, “Because Redwood wasn’t the top. This guy… this is who we’re dealing with next.”
A shiver ran down my spine. Whoever he was, the photo alone made my skin crawl. Redwood’s smugness, his cruelty—this man looked worse. Controlled. Cold. Patient.
Carter’s jaw tightened beside me. He leaned over the photo, his voice low and certain. “Then he’s ours.”
The team exchanged glances, the unspoken vow settling heavy in the room.
We’d won one war. But a bigger one was already on the horizon.
Cyclone flipped the photo over, scanning the scrawled notes on the back. “There’s a name here. Not Redwood’s handwriting. Looks like…Luthor.”
The word landed heavy in the room.
River leaned forward, reading it again. “Luthor.”
Gideon’s expression darkened. “I’ve heard whispers. Arms broker. Slippery as hell. Deals in everything fromstolen intel to human lives. Nobody’s ever pinned him down long enough to prove it.”
A chill slid through me. I stared at the grainy photo—at the man stepping out of his car like he owned the world—and felt something cold coil in my stomach. Redwood had been cruel, arrogant, reckless. But this man looked deliberate. Calculated.
Carter’s jaw flexed, his voice low. “If Redwood answered to him, then Luthor is the one pulling the strings. And if he thinks we’ll stop here…” He shook his head, eyes burning. “He’s wrong.”
Silence settled across the table, heavier than gunfire. No one needed to say it out loud—we all knew this fight wasn’t over. Redwood was a victory. But Luthor… Luthor was war.
I drew in a shaky breath, sliding the photo closer, committing every shadowed line of his face to memory. “Then Luthor is next.”
146
Harper
The safehouse was quieter that afternoon, sunlight angling through the blinds in slanted stripes across the table where I sat. The files were still spread around me, but for once, I wasn’t combing through them.
Instead, I had a blank notebook in front of me. A pen hovered over the page, my hand trembling not from fear this time, but from the weight of what I needed to say.
For so long, Redwood’s voice had drowned mine out. His lies. His cruelty. His control. But last night, looking at those faces on the monitors, I realized something: if I stayed silent, he’d still be winning. Even in chains.
So I wrote.
Not to him. Not to the feds. To them. To the girls still waiting in the dark, to the families who hadn’t stopped searching, to the people who needed proof they weren’t forgotten.
You are not ghosts. You are not what he made you. You are not broken beyond repair. You are seen. You are worth fighting for. And we won’t stop—not until every one of you is free.
The words poured out, shaky and uneven, but real. By thetime I set the pen down, tears blurred the ink. But they weren’t tears of weakness. They were release.
