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“He said it was White House big.”
White House big. My mind spins. The only name not blurred is Oliver Jensen. You gotta love Ivy and her weird-ass hunches.
“What the fuck would someone that high up want with my girl?” I shout, punting the now-quarter-filled jug at the wall, the hollow pop and exploding roar echoing around us.
They don’t know. I see it as clear as day.
What the hell does Oliver Jensen want with Celeste? Or is it just any fucking Carver?
A vortex of the baffling connections swarm around me in a flurry—Easton and Pruitt Lancaster, Johnny Balzano, the Skulls. How the fuck does it all intersect with Frank’s company, Carver Homes? What the hell do they want?
“Graves,” Gage barks. “Keep going. They’re losing steam.”
They don’t know much more regarding Filmore. That much is apparent, but maybe there’s clarity to be found in the basics.
I’ve got one more line of questioning. “What were your orders that night?”
Mischka’s head is drooped, barely hanging on, so Grischka spits it out. “Typical pickup, drop-off. Filmore was supposed to entertain her for an hour, which was when she needed to let her security guards know everything was good—”
“How the fuck did you know that?” I snipe. Whoever’s behind this has been watching her or detailing Frank’s communication with her security team. Long enough to know her standard protocol.
“It was stated in the orders.” Grischka swallows thickly, his throat surely swollen and scratchy from the waterboarding. But the rage written on my face is probably the real culprit.
“Okay,” I grit out, resisting the urge to light him up with a jolt that will render him permanently immobile, “the hour passes, and then what?”
“He drugs her. We create a diversion, take her, and deliver.”
My fists clench with an untamable fury, the one gripped around the cattle prod blanching as I clang it against the cement.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
Fucking hell. I shouldn’t have left her there. Images of what they would have done to her assault my thoughts. But she defeated them. My fierce, wild-eyed girl was the bludgeoning they never saw coming. She beat them, and I’ll make every last one of them pay.
Moving on, I keep questioning while they’re still conscious. “Where were you expected to deliver her to?”
Grischka’s eyes are losing focus, but he answers, “The Lulu Truck Stop off Route 90.”
“That’s a seedy fucking place,” I say, realizing I skipped over one very important detail mentioned earlier—they sometimes deliver guns. And I know who the biggest underground arms dealer is. “Do you deliver there a lot?”
Mischka finally lifts his head, determination burning in his diabolical eyes. Ready to end this. “Only for our highest bidder.”
“You were taking her to the goddamn Skulls?” I bellow. “What do they want with her?”
Crickets from both. That’s all they’ve got. Fuck. It’s not enough. My gaze sails over to Gage, who confirms what I already know. They’re all dried up. We both whip out our pistols and shoot the drooling bastards in their pathetic faces.
As I’m clipping my gun back in my jeans, I try to work through it. “With all these politicians involved, maybe it stems from Celeste’s grandfather rather than Frank’s company.”
“Not sure how the Skulls would come into play, but Occam’s razor,” he says, unhooking Mischka so that he folds into a heap on the floor.
Occam’s razor is another way of saying keep it simple, stupid—the simplest explanation is usually the right one. No fucking idea how that applies here.
I loosen the restraints around Grischka, and we prepare for disposal. “Give me more than that, Big Guy. ’Cause I’m way past simple.”
He snags a tarp from the supply chest, rolling it out on the concrete floor so we can cart the bodies to our incinerator. “Doesn’t really matter what they’re all looking for or whether it stems from Granddaddy Carver or Daddy Carver. Pruitt ran into her here. Filmore was hired to take her.”
“She was connected to Easton,” I supply, wondering if Ben’s crash is somehow tied to this, tied to whatever they want with her now. “She’s the link to anything Carver-related.”
He taps his nose, like an asshole, insinuating that I’m finally catching on. “She sure as fuck is. You called it early on. She’s the Carver princess, and if you want to take down the kingdom—”
