Ian had pulled her to him for a bone-crushing hug. “Worried me sick, girlie.”
“Ditto, old man.”
“Takes more than a punch to bring this man down.”
“Thank God for that.”
James brought her a warm cup of hot chocolate, which she accepted gratefully. “Tell me what Imari found.”
James sat beside her, and she leaned into him, wanting him to feel her love even though she hadn’t said the words. “Not too much as of a few hours ago. Can you remember anything about your kidnapping?”
“I remember meeting Scorpion. He was actually pretty well spoken. I was expecting much more cussing, but he wasn’t like that. It made him seem more dangerous because he was so calculating, but I can see why they think he’s charming. He said Abbie was with her mother now, which was weird because he also said he was still looking for Beth.”
Nick shrugged. “Perhaps he meant his mother or his new old lady?”
“Maybe? He said Beth took something from him and he’d get it back.”
“Why did they keep you alive?”
Mercy glanced at James, who made a sound low in his throat at Ian’s question.
She reached for him, her touch settling them both. “He was selling me for my organs. He said a dead body would attract attention, but a missing person would eventually get forgotten.”
“Never!” James was practically vibrating with rage.
Mercy gave him a sad smile. “Maybe not with me because I have all of you but for some people, that’s the sad reality.”
“You think they’re kidnapping people they think won’t be missed and selling them for their organs?”
Mercy nodded. “Yes, they seemed to be knowledgeable about it.”
Nick was on his phone before she finished her sentence. He relayed the information to Shane, who was with Imari.
Nick looked up sharply, and her heart jumped at the look in his eyes. “I’m putting you on speaker.” Nick placed the phone on the wooden coffee table in front of them. “Imari, tell James and Mercy what you just told me.”
“Mercy, it’s great you’re okay. Right, I heard what you were saying about Rao and did some digging, and it seems he was married when he was nineteen to a woman called Jolene Jensen. Who is also Cody Hull’s half-sister through their mother.”
Mercy gasped and looked at James as the information gave them a new thread to pull another chance to find Abbie and Beth. “What happened to her?”
“She died of heart failure ten years ago.”
Chapter Nineteen
So many things made sense now, although James had trouble wrapping his brain around the new fact. How could the FBI have overlooked such a crucial piece of information? On the other hand, once inside the system, a man like Rao could play it like a violin for his malicious purposes.
Mercy leaned forward, her eyes on him but spoke to Imari through the phone. “It’s big, but it was ten years ago. The FBI may rap Rao over the knuckles for hiding the information, and will probably remove him from the Henchmen cases, but if he hasn’t done anything wrong since then and even built a case around them, it’s not enough to get him investigated.”
Nick shook his head, and James could see the look of disbelief on his face. “You can’t be serious! Don’t you remember his disdain and ego when we asked for his help? It’s clear he’s in it with Hull. And it started with the sister. We don’t know the kind of case he’s put together. It may be a big, empty folder for all we know.”
Imari groaned on the other end of the line, and Mercy lifted her hand to appease Nick so the hacker could speak. “I know, and I’ll be the first in line to wring Rao’s neck, but we need to be careful. The FBI doesn’t like to acknowledge a bad apple in their midst. That’s why I’ve started digging into Rao’s complete FBI file and Hull’s police reports, pictures, data, addresses, invoices. If we can get enough breadcrumbs or a few undeniable links between them, we may have a chance to sway Rao’s supervisor and plant a seed of doubt in his mind. And while I was digging, I found something that may be of interest, or it’s at least strange.”
Two images came side by side. They were two identical tattoos—a minimalist drawing of three small mountains in different shades of blue.
“What am I seeing?”
As James held the phone for everyone to see, Mercy and Nick came closer, with Ian taking a look too. Mercy inhaled sharply and grasped his wrist to bring it closer. “I’ve seen this before! It was in the journal Bethany left in her apartment. She’d drawn this so many times, it made me wonder what it meant.”
Imari had a smirk in her voice on the line. “On the left is one of the pictures taken of Hull’s ink last time he went in prison, the one on the right is from Rao’s FBI file.” The stunned silence was broken by Imari who continued, “You want something to shake Rao’s boss?” The images changed again, replaced by a new one, another tattoo with an identical design. “It was just a hunch, but I pulled Hull’s sister’s autopsy file, and look what I found.”
James felt joy at the noose tightening around Rao’s neck. “You’re amazing, Imari. I honestly didn’t think you’d get all this information so fast.”
The hacker snorted. “Not that fast. It took a few hours.”
“I thought you were about to say a few days.”
“Normally, I’d require an extraordinary amount of coffee and chocolate for this kind of favor. But I’m giving you a freebie because of Abbie and Bethany. Next time, it’s going to cost you a huge box of chocolates, and I mean really huge. On a more dire note, I continued searching for Bethany and Abbie, but couldn’t find anything. Rao is mostly staying in hotel rooms, and it would be impossible to hide people there. As for Hull, so far there’s nothing about Bethany. I’m focusing on finding Abbie as the man confirmed having his daughter. The trouble with MCs is that they move constantly, and they use the names of people way lower on the food chain to book in or rent accommodation. I’m still on it, but if time is of the essence, I may be too late.”
Silence descended over the room until Ian spoke for the first time. “Everything you’ve done so far is great. From the point of view of bringing Rao down, I’m incredibly impressed. I wish I had your resources when I was on the force, but there’s something that’s bugging me. It’s what Mercy said. Hull said Bethany was only breathing because she had something that belonged to him, and that she’d die either way.”
James nodded. “Yes, he’s obviously referring to the drugs she snatched. Hull wouldn’t tolerate losing a woman to begin with, but having one steal from his gang, that would’ve been unacceptable.”
Ian nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t totally on board. Mercy came closer and sat beside her former partner. “What are you thinking? What doesn’t jive for you?”
For the first time, James saw how the former rookie and the old-timer worked together. If not for what he’d built with Mercy, he might have been jealous, but instead, he saw the connection he could have with her, the partnership he’d always dreamed of, both in and outside work.