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Danvers shrugged. “He’s happier that the kid is gone—don’t think he and the mom wanted the boy anyway.” My heart hurt for Ben—at least he had Josh… and me. “Spinning some crap about the kid being home-schooled and vacations. Fuck knows, but I’m not stepping in to help if they want to get their rocks off shooting you.”
“Fuck you, Danvers.”
“Whatever. They need you, so shut the hell up, and watch my six.” Danvers tugged at the collar of his shirt, readjusted his tie, smoothed his hair, then climbed out of the car. All of his tells were there, clenching his fist, the frown—he was in a situation he couldn’t control, that much was obvious, and it made me twitchy.
I fell in behind him as he walked around the T-Bird and headed for some steps at the back of the barn, finally reaching a secure door. He glanced up at the camera, there was a beep and the door opened to reveal a large room behind, with desks, and a few staff, and a huge sign on the wall proclaiming this was the home of Rouxier Inc—the import company Lewis Rouxier had built in the fifties, passed to his son, and then onto Charles, the asshole we were dealing with now. No one appeared bothered we were here, no one had a gun pointing at us, in fact this was nothing more than an office complete with coffee machine, motivational posters, and the low hum of chat. We walked the entire length, got a few nods from people as if they were used to Danvers visiting, and reached the far end. This time there was a camera plus a code that Danvers input before the next door opened, but there was no way I could hope to see the code before we were inside. We took a few more steps to another door, and I made a mental note all the security systems that were in place before we’d reached our final destination.
Two men were staring at a map on the wall, and both glanced at us as we entered. One was short, scrappy, a gun in a holster and ice in his gaze. I didn’t recognizehim, but I did recognize the other man from surveillance my team had undertaken way back before the skin job in the hotel with Josh.
Charles Rouxier.
Rouxier was a large man, tall and broad, white hair, tanned, in an immaculate suit, and right now he was pissed.
“Where is the boy?” he snapped at me, and I assumed he meant Ben.
“I don’t know, and I stopped caring when the money hit my account, Do we have a problem?” I waited for the short guy to pull out his gun, not completely sure of the dynamic here, but already assessing how best to take him down.
Rouxier’s pissed expression dissolved into a grin as he let out a belly laugh, then shook my hand, clapped me on the shoulder.
“Damn kid was an extra I could have used in my election campaign, but he was a nuisance I didn’t need. Good on you, and welcome to the team, Ethan Myers,” he announced jovially. “Glad to have you on board.” He spoke as if I wanted to be here and hadn’t been forced to fake-kill one of my best friends to get an audience. He must think I was a murderer, someone who could be manipulated, someone who had no soul, who’d stolen a child, and that was the role I needed to play.
“This is Mitchell, my right-hand man,” Rouxier introduced the other man who rolled his eyes at that explanation.
I got the impression Mitchell didn’t thinkhewas subservient to Rouxier. Something to take note of.
“He’s the master of the wizardry that is making money!” Rouxier added jazz hands to underscore said wizardry.
I didn’t have any idea what Josh’s ex-wife saw in the slimy, smooth operator. Well, apart from money of course. Could she have knowledge of what Rouxier was doing up here? Did she even know this place existed behind the front of the classic car office? Was she a victim in all of this? I noticed the laptop on the table trained on the SUV we’d left to swap to the Mazda—Rouxier was collecting shit against Danvers for sure, and now me.
“Two deliveries,” Mitchell said as he turned back to the map. “One shipment going to waystation three, the other splitting off to seven. We require federal and local law enforcement eyes away from both places, plus one of ours to control each site.”
“Hence me bringing in Ethan,” Danvers explained with what sounded like pride.
“A shipment of what?” I asked.
“You don’t need to know,” Rouxier began, but Mitchell held up a hand, and stared at me with an intense focus.
“Children,” he said.
Such a simple word.Children. Human trafficking.
I fought to keep the horror in place, and nodded. “Okay.”
All I needed was to tie one shipment to Rouxier, and that would take himandDanvers down. But the way Mitchell stared at me, calculating, his expression unfathomable, ice in his veins as he spoke about shipments of kids, meant that I was adding him to my list of people to destroy.
“I’ll take waystation seven,” Danvers said. “Ethan will take three. One-fifty per location as usual.”
Horror churned in my stomach and made my chest tight. One hundred and fifty thousand for ashipment of children? How many kids was that?
And how could I stop this?
ChapterTwenty-Five
Ethan
Waystation three turnedout to be an abandoned no-tell motel outside the city on the edge of nothing. Isolated, it was one of those places that had once been on a busy through road but was now cut off by a freeway extension and left to rot. The single thing that gave it away as being something more than an abandoned motel was that it was closed off with fencing, and a phalanx of security cameras, and posted guards. I didn’t know if waystation seven, where Danvers was heading, was yet another old, abandoned building, but I had to trust that Sanctuary was working all the angles on him, and were still tracking me.
There were four guards at the main entrance. I rolled down my window, noting weapons and the way they stood. Not one of them acknowledged me. They opened the gates, allowing me to park inside. The glare of headlights from my car illuminated an empty snack dispenser, and a couple of smashed windows as I reversed into a space and killed the engine.
