“Why’s that?” Sam asks.
“The ones who plucked Zoe off the streets are human traffickers. They hunt for the prettiest girls. They’re not even subtle about it. Zoe was snatched off a busy street filled with people. Evelyn was taken in the middle of a crowd. These men are bold. It doesn’t make sense they knew about the kidnapping insurance on Evelyn. I have a feeling they found that out later, then leveraged the information.”
“Makes sense.” Knox agrees with me.
“Good or bad blood between father and daughter,” Sam says, “Mr. Deverough certainly cared enough for his daughter to take out that policy.”
“At least, he finally got his head out of his ass and came to us.” Our services don’t come cheap, but if the father has any hope of seeing his daughter alive again, he’ll pay the price we command. “We need to piece together whether Evelyn’s capture, like Zoe’s, was one of opportunity or one of design. And we need to figure out how to either breach that facility and take her by force or infiltrate it and buy her out from under them.”
The first option is riskier with greater opportunity to lose Evelyn in the chaos. The second option is no less risky and requires a bit of preparation. Fortunately, we’re a step ahead as far as that goes.
“Right.” Sam glances at Mitzy.
“On it.” Her team will be hard at work putting together possible scenarios and connections. I don’t think Mr. Deverough understands how thorough we dive into the personal affairs of our clients.
In my experience, our clients only ever tell us what they want us to know, rather than what we need to know. It’s in the weeds of their personal lives where true motivations surface.
Those motivations always dictate our next steps.
“I’m taking point. Build me a different cover story.” I lick the seam of my lips, not a big fan of that plan.
“What’re you thinking?” Mitzy asks.
“We’re not totally blind in this. Not after Townsend. You mentioned we now have access to their server, client lists, orders, deliveries, and upcoming auctions? You said you picked that off Townsend’s phone.”
“Yes, we do—kind of.” Mitzy’s brow arches with interest. “We stopped working on that when this case came in.”
“It’s all connected.” I slap my palm down on the table. “Zoe and Eve were transported together. When Moira was taken, she was transported on the same ship. That’s no coincidence. Figure out how it’s connected.” I look at her expectantly. “I have a feeling Eve is going to lead us to the heart of their operation. I need to be there, working on the inside. Is there any mention of an upcoming auction? Someway to put me in play?”
We talked about inserting men into their operation, either as a buyer, or hired muscle, or some combination of both.
“I’ll get my team working on it,” Mitzy scratches her head.
“Three girls. One ship. Find that connection.” My gut says something’s there.
Sam shakes his head. “We don’t have time to discredit Max and turn him dirty like we planned. Make an alias. Send him in as a buyer. Townsend will crack. We’ll use him to arrange an invite for Max. Anything you can piece together about buyers or auctions, do it.”
The original plan was to turn me dirty, discredit my reputation as a Guardian, and wrack up a mountain of debt. We were going to use that to flush out Townsend, Moira’s wannabe kidnapper. We went a different direction, putting Moira, herself, directly in the line of fire. Which worked brilliantly.
Townsend is ours and, hopefully, he’s spilling all his secrets as we speak. I have no doubt in Griff’s ability to crack Townsend’s stoic exterior.
“I’m on it.” Mitzy taps the screen of her phone. “Sorry I don’t have it already. I got sidelined with Evelyn’s case. But I’ll get my team back on it.”
“If we’re scrapping the discredited Guardian scenario, we’ll need to build up my alias. We can still use the gambling angle.”
“Max,” Knox cautions, “you sure you want to open yourself up to that?”
My aversion to gambling is well known in the teams, but not for the reasons I’ve let everyone believe.
A long time ago, during my team days with the SEALs, someone suggested I didn’t gamble because I’d racked up significant debt. Which was true at the time. To shut everyone up, I let it slip it may have to do with an addiction to gambling.
Funny how people react. Suddenly, all the razing from my buddies stopped. They focused on helping me overcome my addiction. It’s how the damn buttons came into being.
The thing is, addiction has nothing to do with why I no longer gamble. My ability to read people makes me an excellent poker player. I’m not so stupid as to say I never lose, but I rarely do.
Knox has his near-perfect auditory recollection. I read people. We all have special skills.
As for the rumors, I did rack up a huge debt, but that was only to bring down a total tool from high school. He was a smart, rich prick who berated me one too many times. Like I said, I was the dumb-as-shit jock, good for only one thing. He made my life a living hell.
So, I got even.
I baited him. Plain and simple, I set him up. I wanted him to think I sucked. I purposefully lost and racked up debt, then I roped him into a game where I took him to the cleaners.
What I did was malicious, cruel, and devastating in the end. Scott Connor took his life when he couldn’t pay his gambling debt to me. That’s a black mark on my soul, and I carry it for life. I swore never to gamble again.
For Evelyn Deverough, however, I’ll break that vow if it helps to bring her home.
“I’ve got this.” I give Knox a look which says we’ll talk later. It’s about time I came clean with the team.
“You sure?” he asks.
“Yes.” I turn to Mitzy. “Do your Mitzy Magic and build me an alternate life.”
“Any specifics?”
“Rich, arrogant asshole. Should be old money. Trust fund baby. Spoiled—shit like that. Never worked a day in my life. Love the ladies, but get bored with them too. Build in domestic abuse with past girlfriends. Something that says I’m a hothead, prone to losing my temper, and not afraid to take it out on a woman. Something that shows I have no issue with hitting women and have the kind of lawyers who can get me off abuse charges. Maybe throw in a dirty judge somewhere in the mix.”
“Damn…” Knox gives me a look. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or pissed off. I kind of want to punch you in the mouth for abusing those fictitious women.”
“I feel ya. I kind of want to punch myself as well, but we need some pompous entitled prick to make this work.”
“I’m with Knox. It’s kind of scary how easily that rolled off your tongue.” Mitzy gives me a long hard look.
“Curse of the job.” The thing is, in this kind of work, we see the worst of the worst. “I know how men like that think.”
“Speaking of douchebags…” Knox clears his throat. “Let’s talk about Deverough for a second.”
“What about him?” Mitzy shifts her troubled expression from me to Knox.
“I don’t get why he didn’t report his daughter missing all those months that he’s been dolling out that insurance policy.” Knox’s not happy with that bit. “After they didn’t return her following the initial ransom demand, he should’ve called in the authorities or come to us. I don’t get why he waited.”