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CHAPTER ELEVEN
“We need to find Wolford,” said Abe. “I agree with Nate. We eliminate him, and then we’ve only got Quetz and Garvin to deal with.”
“Only?” smirked Hex. “Quetz is one of the most revered and feared criminals in the world. Garvin is wiggling his way to the White House. Dealing with them isn’t like dealing with your average piece of shit.”
“I know that,” said Abe, “but we have to protect Lyra and help Nate. I won’t leave him out there to do this on his own.”
“If he’s out there, I have to believe Mike is out there too,” said Nathan. “They’ve been working together as a team for a while now.”
“Pigsty? Can you give us any insights into what Lyra has on the drives?” asked Hex.
“It’s a lot. She really risked her life to get this shit. He definitely only kept paper records, and she took photos of everything she could. Shipping manifests, dozens of pages of notes in a notebook where he kept a journal of who owed him what. She wasn’t kidding. Very old school.”
“There’s genius in that,” said Miller. “He could easily just toss it all into a fire, and everything would disappear. He knows enough to recognize that anyone could come in and hack a computer. He probably never expected that his niece would take photos with her phone.”
“He must have suspected that,” said Cam. “Lyra said the sight of her phone made him nervous. I’m going to bet he was worried that she was recording, taking videos or photos all the time. Did you check the phone? Make sure it was wiped?”
“She did well,” said Pigsty. “She wiped the phone clean every single time, literally taking it back to factory settings. It was a pain in the ass for her because she would have had to reset her contacts every time.”
“Do we know where Wolford is now?” asked Abe.
“He’s not hiding. That’s for damn sure. He attended a Chamber of Commerce dinner last night outside Norfolk. His mansion sits up on a hill overlooking Elizabeth River and the Naval base.”
Groans and moans echoed in the room, along with a few ‘fuuuucks’ and other choice words.
“Yep. I got a drone up as soon as I found the place. He’s got tight security, gated, that kind of shit, but there are no cameras. Lyra was right. He’s tech-phobic. We also did some initial research into her parents. The father, Jethro Wolford, was definitely involved in the family business. It appeared that he was fine with money laundering and trafficking drugs, but he didn’t want any part of the women or betraying his country.”
“Great, a criminal with a conscience,” said Abe.
“Careful, brother. That’s your girl’s father, and she doesn’t know all of that,” said Luke. Abe nodded, realizing that Luke was right.
“Anyway,” continued Pigsty. “When her father said he didn’t want any part of the rest of the business, Jessup panicked and asked him to make a choice. Loyalty to family or death. Jethro attempted to take his wife and young daughter away, securing transportation for them to Europe. When they returned to pick up Lyra, they were killed before they ever got out of the car. It was driven to a deserted road and left with the dead bodies inside.
“Kind Uncle Jessup swooped in to care for his only niece. From all accounts, she had a good, normal childhood. Probably blissfully unaware of what her uncle was capable of. She attended good schools, but when she tried to go to school far away from home, he forced her to come back so he would have access to her.”
“Access?” growled Abe. “Was he planning to…”
“No. No, no, sorry if I misled you. It doesn’t appear that he wanted to touch or use her in that way. But he definitely wanted to use her.”
“How can you be sure, Pigsty?” asked Luke. He slid the sheet of paper beneath the camera, projecting the image on the screen.
“Because of this.”
“I’m really nervous,” said Lyra. Tanner and Code smiled at her.
“Don’t be nervous, honey. We just want to walk through all this information and make sure we understand what we’re looking at. Did you review it all after you took it?” asked Code.
“I did. I know that was probably stupid of me, but I just thought I needed to know what I was dealing with. I mean, if it was just a grocery list, I was going to look pretty stupid to Fontenot and Carr.”
“Did you see this drawing?” asked Hiro, showing her the same drawing the others were looking at.
“I did,” she said, nodding as she swallowed back the bile. “It was as if that were the beacon for me. The thing telling me that I was at the center of everything. If I didn’t already know it, that definitely told me he was planning on using me.”
“Does this woman look familiar to you?” asked Sly. Lyra gasped, leaning back in the chair.
“That was the woman. The one at the dinner that forced my uncle to tell me that he’d killed my parents. I don’t know her name.”
“Her name was Madeline Saint. She was a chief justice on the Supreme Court.” Lyra stared at the photo, then back up at the man beside her.
