Shuffling. A pause. The creak of someone approaching the door and stopping on the other side of it.
"Jack Morrow. Shifter enforcement. Open the door."
A longer pause. Then the deadbolt turned and the door opened six inches, held by a chain, and a face appeared in the gap that looked like it hadn't slept in days. Heavy-lidded eyes, sallow skin, the grayish pallor that sharks got when they'd been out of the water too long and their bodies were starting to protest. He was younger than Nero expected. The file said twenty-six but the face said twelve, if twelve came with dark circles and the haunted expression of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I don't know anything," Jack said.
"You called the tip line from the Palermo casino at approximately eleven forty-two AM to report the kidnapping of Amani, Lady Leo's son, by members of your own shark group." Nero said it calmly, factually, without accusation. He watched Jack's face go through four distinct stages of panic in under two seconds. "The line is anonymous. I didn't trace the call. I'm a ferret, Jack. I have very good ears. The pool at the Palermo has a distinctive echo off the gaming floor, and you used the word 'chum,' which narrowed things down. Can I come in?"
The chain came off. The door opened. Nero stepped into an apartment that was small, clean, and smelled overwhelmingly of salt water and anxiety. Jack backed up until he was against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed over his chest in the universal posture of someone who wanted to be smaller than they were.
"They'll kill me," Jack said. "If they find out I called, they'll kill me."
"They won't find out from me. Sit down."
Jack sat. Nero didn't. He stood in the middle of the small living room and let the silence work for him, a technique he'd learned early in his career. Guilty people couldn't stand silence. It pressed on them like water. Eventually they had to come up for air.
It took Jack about forty seconds.
"I didn't want to do it," he said. His voice cracked on the word "do." "They said it was just a job. Pick up a guy, drive him out to the desert, get paid. They said the buyer was some old man who wanted company. They made it sound like nothing."
"Who's 'they'?"
"Dale. Dale Reeves. He set it up. He's the one who got the job from the crane. Him and two others, Mako and Paulie. I was the fourth." Jack's hands were shaking. "I helped carry him to the van. I was there when they drugged him. I was there for all of it."
Nero let him talk. He didn't interrupt a confession. He let it unspool at its own pace because the pace told him things, which parts came easy because the person had been rehearsing them, and which parts came hard because the person hadn't been able to look at them yet.
The easy parts: the logistics. The van, the route, the timing. Dale had scoped the walk for two weeks. He knew Amani left at four, walked alone, and lived four blocks from the club. The plan was simple: three from the alley, one in the van, grab him, drug him, collar him, drive.
The hard parts: the delivery. Jack's voice dropped when he got to the ranch. "The old man was waiting for us. He'd paid in advance; the money was already in Dale's account. Fifty grand, split four ways. He just came out and looked at Amani like he was something he'd ordered from a catalog. Called him 'little cub.' Made us untie him." Jack pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "He was so scared. Amani. He was trying not to show it but I could smell it on him. Everyone could. And the old man just smiled at him. Like everything was fine. Like this was normal."
"The buyer's name," Nero said.
"Grainger. Mr. Grainger. I don't know his first name. Dale handled the details. He's a crane, lives on some ranch out past Pahrump, middle of nowhere. I can—" Jack got up, went to the kitchen counter, and pulled a crumpled receipt from a drawer. On the back, written in pencil, was a set of directions. "Dale gave us all copies in case anyone got separated on the drive. It's about three and a half hours from Vegas."
Nero took the receipt. Directions, not an address. Turn-by-turn from the highway to an unnamed road to a property that probably didn't show up on any map. Desert properties were like that. Miles of nothing, then a gate, then a driveway, thensomeone's entire world hidden behind a ridge line where nobody would ever accidentally find it.
"What do you know about Grainger?"
"Old. Rich. Lonely, I think." Jack's voice had gone flat, the way voices go when the adrenaline of confession burns off and the reality of what you've done settles in. "Dale said he'd lost his mate years ago and wanted a new one. He was specific about what he wanted, young, male, submissive training. He'd been looking for a while. Dale found him through contacts in the shark network, guys who arrange things for people with money."
"Does Grainger have security? Other people on the property?"
Jack shook his head. "Just him. The ranch is huge but there was nobody else there. No guards, no staff. Just the old man and all that desert."
Nero studied the directions on the receipt. Three and a half hours. If he moved now, assembled a team, requisitioned vehicles, drove through the evening, he could be on site by nightfall. If he waited until morning for proper authorization and a full tactical briefing, he'd lose twelve hours that Amani might not have.
He thought about the photo. Amber eyes, sharp grin, cocktail umbrella. A kid who walked home barefoot at four in the morning because he was a lion and lions weren't afraid of anything.
He thought about what Jack had said:the old man smiled at him like everything was fine.
"Jack. I need you to testify."
The shark's face went gray. "They'll—"
"I know. And I can't promise you safety, because I'd be lying. What I can promise is that cooperating fully, right now, today, is the only thing between you and a cell next to Dale and Mako and Paulie. Because I will find all three of them, Jack. That's nota threat; it's a regular day for me. The question is which side of this you want to be on when it's done."
Jack looked at him for a long moment. His eyes were wet and his jaw was working and he looked, in that moment, exactly like what he was: a twenty-six-year-old who had done something terrible and was only just beginning to understand that the rest of his life would be shaped by what he did next.
