Page 25 of Red Hunt

“How big is this house?” Peaches asked right behind me.

“It’s built into the hillside. At least the basement is. I haven’t explored all of it, but there seems to be a system of tunnels. Don’t know who owned the house, or what they were doing up here, but this was a surprise.” One I hadn’t yet had time to explore fully.

I led them along another corridor to another door. From there, it was a tunnel roughly hewn into the stone. It was old, led slightly upward, and opened into a cave.

Goofy whistled. “I need to do some research about what was up here previously. This looks like some serious operation. Maybe Grandpa knows who or what was up here.”

I forgot Goofy was from around here—not Moon Lake exactly, but he’d grown up one town over in Three Oaks. Though in this rural area, I guessed everyone was in on everything. Even if it concerned the town over.

We reached the exit of the cave right above the parking space. Trees masked it, so it wasn’t easily discoverable.

“This is seriously cool,” Peaches said when we climbed down and loaded up on equipment and brought it back inside.

Once they’d finished setting up their computers, we sat around the one desk that functioned as a conference table.

“I’m out of the loop—read me in,” I said.

I didn’t have to ask twice. This was Peaches’ domain. The rest of us may have gotten sufficiently good over the last few years, but Peaches lived and breathed the brainy/techy/hacky part of our job.

“We installed a Trojan malware when we got our hands on Edith’s phone after the fire.”

Edith was the woman we’d encountered on our last mission. We still didn’t know if it was pure coincidence or not—highly unlikely if anyone would’ve asked me. But Carter had developed a thing for the woman, so our job now was to make sure he didn’t get caught in some kind of trap while exorcising that obsession.

“From there, we sent a message with a link to the guy, Donovan Peterson, who was at the hotel, as well.”

Goofy chuckled. “Sure enough, the sucker clicked on it, and now we’re monitoring his device and Edith’s.”

“Does Carter know?” Hacking someone else’s phone was one thing. But from what I’d heard from the guys these last few days, Carter was acting highly protective of Edith.

“He knows,” Goofy answered. “He doesn’t like it, but we still don’t know her involvement, so he knows.”

I nodded. “Okay, Peaches, get me up to speed. What are we working on?”

Peaches turned to his computer. “We’ve been diving into one of the newly formed forums. We created a couple of handles, posing as Johns. There’s talk about some kind of auction taking place.”

I inched closer. “An auction of what?”

Goofy sat down at the other side of Peaches, looking at the screen, as well. “We have no clue. But my guess with these sick bastards? Anything from humans to NFTs is possible. But it’s taking place in Whitebrook.”

“Are you serious?”

“Not 100 percent. But we’re pretty sure.”

I leaned back in my chair. “How did we find that forum?”

Max leaned back, as well, so we could talk behind Peaches’ back. “We got it from Peterson’s phone.”

“Ah.” I didn’t like that one bit. Sure, it was the reason for us to be here. But I didn’t like it one bit how the cartel had moved their operations here, and I liked it even less since I’d gotten to know the people at the hospital…and now Milli.

“I’m about to set a honeypot. Get to know the players a bit better, find out what it is they’re auctioning off. Time and location would be good to know, as well.”

With that, we dove in. I shadowed Peaches while Max moved to another desk and did his own thing.

I blocked out everything else and immersed myself for the next couple of hours. But even though I was there physically, somehow, half my brain had decided not to work today. It was mind-blowing since sessions like today’s, with all of us together in one room, operating together, egging each other on, rarely felt like work.

Today, it did. And today, I was not functioning on half the level I usually operated. Lack of sleep? Yeah, no. I’d operated on no sleep at all, and my thoughts weren’t half as scattered. And if I was completely honest with myself, I knew exactly why. And it was the same reason I constantly checked my watch, acutely aware of the minutes and hours ticking by.

Leaving her yesterday had been the right decision. She’d been taken care of. Her sister had been there. It would have been inappropriate for me to hang around much longer.

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