"I'm fine," I insisted. "Did you guys get anywhere with the phone?
"We got some pings, but none since he left the state. And we have every reason to believe he has left the state. Most likely heading back to Louisiana. But that is all anyone has gotten this far."
"I'm going," I decided on the spot, mind a little sharper thanks to food and sleep. When all this was over, I owed Malcolm some size Andre the Giant boots, one of those fancy storage things for his truck, a set of mastiff puppies I knew he wanted, or something.
"Goin where?"
"Louisiana," I told her, shrugging. "It makes the most sense. We need someone on the ground there."
"Yes, someone. But we have many someones here, Chris."
I tried not to let those words sting. I knew my mother enough to know she didn't mean to say I wasn't good enough. But thanks to some still unresolved inferiority complex issues, I couldn't help but let there be a sharp, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.
"Sure. But no one as motivated as I am," I told her. "I'm going. You can send someone if you want to, but I am going."
To that, there was a slow, pleased smile on her face. Proud. I knew that look well. Anytime I made progress--especially those first few, difficult years--she'd given me the exact same look.
"Okay. Do you want to handle all the details, or do you want me to get someone on housing while you go and pack?"
Normally, the details were important to me. I needed everything to be perfect. I had to have my hands in everything.
Now, though? All that mattered was getting there, starting to look around.
"You handle the details; I'll pack."
"I know they don't technically work for me, but I am thinking of sending Ferryn and Malcolm with you. Knowing Reign," she said, meaning Ferryn's father, the local MC president, "he will send Vance too, for good measure. I feel comfortable with the four of you as a team."
I did too, actually.
Ferryn, Malcolm, and Vance as the muscle. Me as the brains of the operation. We would work well together.
"Sounds perfect."
"You're going to need to keep me updated," she reminded me. This time, not as the leader of Hailstorm, but as a mother who was worried about her daughter.
Not five hours later, I was sitting in an airport waiting for my plane with a lumbering Malcolm beside me complaining about all the people.
What can I say? Both his parents were anti-social. And I appreciated his sometimes grumpy demeanor.
Ferryn and Vance, having nothing else going on, had also agreed, but were driving down because it was impossible these days to get weapons on an airplane. And the general consensus was that we were going to need them.
They would be a full day and a half behind us, which gave us time to set up the rental trailer my mother had managed to snag for us. Two bedrooms and a couch that pulled out. It wouldn't exactly be comfortable, but we would make do. I didn't plan to do much sleeping anyway.
--
Two Weeks Later
"My hands hurt from knocking together so many thick fucking skulls," Ferryn grumbled, cracking her knuckles.
I had to say, she'd been harnessing her internalized rage pretty effectively for the past week, hitting the ground running, chasing down local low-level criminals, Vance at her side. Malcolm was a little more subtle, making it sound like he was on the lookout for a good counterfeiter.
Me?
I took a different approach.
I took out massive amounts of money from my savings. And then went to bank after bank, asking to turn the fifties and twenties into fives and tens.
Because that was the only money Finch printed. Because it was less likely to be viewed as suspicious.
It was a long, frustrating process, taking me to every bank in every town in the entire state. Well, that was the plan anyway. Two-thousand-sixty banks in two-hundred-sixty-three cities. It wasn't like I could get it all done in one week. But I was making slow and sure progress, hoping to find a fake.
Finch's notes were good--fantastic, really--but I was hoping he would fudge something on purpose, leave a clue so that he could be found. That would be what I would do in his situation. And as much as Finch didn't think of himself as the smartest guy in every room, he was smart, and he was quick on his feet.
There was also the added benefit of Ewan not being so well-versed in counterfeiting, judging by the subpar men he'd used in the past. So Finch, if he was careful, could slip some clues past him.
That was what I was looking for.
Day in and day out.
Taking stacks of fives and tens back to trailer, using special lights, pens, counting machines, and a really good magnifier more commonly used for inspecting diamonds, then poring over them, praying to find a fake, find a message that would lead me to Finch.
"Chris, you're going to ruin your eyes," Ferryn shot at me when I put the magnifier over yet another stack of bills.
"Says the woman who is going to be arthritic before you hit thirty from all the training you do," I shot back, feeling a familiar crushing sensation inside when yet another bill proved real.
I was almost impressed, at this point, that I had yet to come across a fake bill in the several dozen banks I had been to.
"You'd think some people in his hometown would remember him," Vance added, kicking his boots up on the coffee table next to my couch bed.
"They all remembered Finch and Ryan," Ferryn said.
Of course they would remember him. He was not someone easy to forget.
"We're gonna find him," Malcolm said, and I knew it was directed at me. When it came to reassurance, Ferryn wasn't the best. And Vance usually spent some of his time reassuring her. Which was why Malc had stepped up.
I didn't need reassurances.
I needed answers.
I needed...
"Got you," I hissed, my belly dropping, my heart soaring up into my throat.
"You found a fake? "Ferryn asked, jumping up, making her way over toward me. "How do you know?"
"The ultraviolet glow. Five dollar notes glow blue. Tens glow orange. This five dollar is glowing orange," I told her, moving the magnifier over the bill slowly, looking for anything that might be a clue.
"Couldn't it just be a rookie mistake by another counterfeiter?"
"No."
"We're going to need more proof than that, Chris," she reminded me, trying to keep me grounded.
"Every counterfeiter knows about the ultraviolet glow. You can find it out on a Google search. But aside from that, this is not rookie work. See how the ink is raised? That is really hard to do. Like only a handful of counterfeiters can make that happen. Finch is one of those people. He said it is all in the paper. The watermark is right. The serial numbers are good. The red and blue threads are on-point. Literally the only thing wrong is the ultraviolet glow. It was done deliberately."
"Is there anything else?"
"I'm looking." If he put the one mistake in, he had to have tried to put something else in. Something that might lead us to an actual location. "There," I nearly shrieked, pulse tripping into overdrive.
"What is it?"
"In the eagle feathers. There are really small numbers."