WHEN DESS and I had finished explaining what we’d seen in the theater to Blaze and Garrison while Talon sat in quiet grimness, the following silence reverberated with fury. I couldn’t tell whether it was coming from all of us or just me, my own rage was so vast.
I wanted to go back inside and kill every single person in that audience. I wanted to burn down the theatre for ever allowing such a showing to take place.
When I blinked, I saw my sister’s fifteen-year-old face, streaked with tears when she’d told me how her teacher had been abusing her. The way she’d flinched when I’d reached to hug her, as if she’d thought I meant to punish her for what’d been done to her instead of offer whatever comfort I could.
I still wished I could tell her what I’d done to the man who’d violated her. How much he’d suffered before I’d let him meet his end.
And then there was Steffie. My first memories of our long-time housekeeper and general assistant had risen up in my mind as well.
When Talon and I had stormed into the gang den where she’d been working, we’d found her scrubbing the bathroom floor in a maid uniform that barely covered anything, bruised and battered by the men who pushed her around as much as exploited her sexually now that she’d gotten older. Her whole life for decades had been acting as a punching bag and sex doll for men she’d then had to clean up after.
The girls and women we’d seen in the auction videos would meet a similar fate. I’d have wondered if Steffie’s buyers had purchased her from the Blood Hunter if I hadn’t known she didn’t have his tattoo on her. It wasn’t as if he was the only crime lord out there in the business of human trafficking. But that didn’t make what we’d seen any less nauseating.
The Blood Hunter had no doubt put hundreds of women through the same sort of horrors my sister and Steffie had experienced. He was about to send several more to the same fate. Unless we stopped him.
But how the fuck did we do that?
We’d driven half an hour from the theater before parking to have this discussion. Every particle of my body clanged to grab the wheel and tear right back to the building, to paint the faded walls with the blood of the men who’d bid on those women.
I knew what I’d said to Dess was right, though. Slaughtering those perverted assholes wouldn’t help anything in the long run. It’d only serve as a warning to the Blood Hunter. When we came for him, we needed the element of surprise. He’d gotten the upper hand on us too many times already.
I had to admit that fact added an almost frantic edge to my anger, an off-balance sensation I’d rarely experienced before. For most of the Chaos Crew’s existence, I’d handled every problem thrown at us with careful planning and meticulous strategy. But this man had blown through all my attempts at regaining control of the situation. He was in control here, staying multiple steps ahead of us at every turn, taking us by surprise, luring us into traps.
When had I ever felt this over my head before? Not since that day when insurgents had torn up the village I was meant to be protecting during my time in special ops. And then, I’d had a commanding officer who was partly to blame.
I was the commanding officer here. If the crew fell, it’d be on me. And I didn’t have a clue how I was going to ensure their safety, let alone save all those women we’d seen tonight.
“Human trafficking must be a significant part of the Blood Hunter’s business dealings,” Garrison said, finally breaking the silence. “If he’s holding these auctions every month and selling several girls at a time.”
Dess rubbed her arms. “And that’s just what he’s doing near DC. He told me that he has influence all around the world. He could have an auction going someplace or another every day for all we know.”
My hands clenched in my lap at the thought. “He uses them for himself too,” I said, my voice rougher than I liked. “We saw at least a few women with his mark at the night club during his party. He could have dozens of them just on his own staff—if you can call it that when they’re essentially slaves.”
Dess’s hand leapt to the back of her neck, and my heart wrenched. She’d almost been one of those girls. If the Blood Hunter hadn’t wanted her for his revenge, if he hadn’t decided to mold her into a killer rather than a sex toy, the woman I knew—and adored—today would never have existed. And he’d stolen so much from her even so.
Another surge of anger made my teeth grit.
“Any idea where they were from?” Blaze asked, his eyes glued to his laptop.
I shook my head. “The backgrounds in the videos gave no indication of their location, and their clothes had obviously been picked for show, not what they’d typically have worn. They were a mix of ethnicities: half of the ones we saw were white, a couple Asian, one who looked Latina.”
He hummed to himself and tapped away on his keyboard.
“So we have no idea of where they’re being kept either?” Garrison asked. “Are they even in the area yet?”
“No way of knowing,” Dess said. “The auctioneer said something about the buyers collecting their purchases tomorrow night, so they weren’t right there, but otherwise…”
“Okay. If we don’t know where they are, is there any way to know where they’re going? Could we track any of the buyers?”
“They were very careful entering and leaving the building,” Blaze said without looking up. “I wasn’t able to find any identifying information via the street cams. I’m still working on the bits and pieces of data transfer I was able to pick up in the area.”
Talon shifted in his seat and glanced at me, his expression solemn but otherwise unreadable. “Our main goal was to ensure the Blood Hunter doesn’t compromise us or hurt Dess any more than he already has. Is this the best area of focus for that?”
He didn’t sound as if he were saying it wasn’t, only that he wanted me to clarify my position. Which made sense, since I was still the crew’s leader, as much as I felt like going batshit crazy in a lone wolf sort of way right now.
Those emotions gave me my answer, even though I still felt unsteady. I was sure of this one thing.
“This isn’t just about protecting the crew anymore,” I said. “We want to do that, yes, but at this point, I think we need to consider this a job we’re hiring ourselves for. It doesn’t matter if no one is paying us to destroy this asshole. We’re among the few who know what he’s doing. We have a responsibility to take him down. And that’ll solve our problems with him too.”
To my relief, the rest of my crew nodded in agreement. “I’m all for crushing him into a pulp,” Dess said tightly. “But where do we start?”
“We have an entry point now.” I motioned in the direction of the town we’d just left. “We might not be in a position to outright crush him yet, so we’ll interfere with his business interests as much as possible. We need to identify key associates we can eliminate, ways we can intercept the delivery of these girls, anything that’ll threaten his reputation and his support network.”
Garrison clapped his hands together. “Sounds good to me. But we still need a name or a place if we’re going to do that.”
“I’m working on it,” Blaze mumbled, typing even faster. Then he let out a little whoop. “And I’ve got it! Thank fuck.” He shot a triumphant look at Garrison. “Oh ye of little faith.”
As Garrison snorted, I snapped my fingers to bring their attention back to the matter at hand. “What have you got, Blaze? What do we have to work with?”
His gaze shifted to me, a grin stretching across his face. “I can’t help you with the names of the people—everything’s encoded with aliases, just like we work. But I can give you a place. I caught a transmission that includes the address of a private airfield not too far from here with instructions for a ‘pick-up’ tomorrow night.”
Dess inhaled sharply. “That’s where they’re handing off the girls.”
Blaze nodded. “I think so, probably after bringing them in on a private cargo flight. I haven’t been able to find an exact time or flight number, but knowing the airfield is enough for me to narrow it down. I’ll keep monitoring activity there, and we can get in place tomorrow night to be ready to dive in and raise hell as soon as they arrive.”
“It doesn’t seem likely that the Blood Hunter himself would show up for the hand-off, does it?” Dess said.
Garrison shook his head. “No, he’s trying not to get too mired in his own shit. But we can take down a few of his trusted associates and draw police attention to his trafficking operations. It’ll definitely be a blow.”
“It will,” I said, but my heart still felt heavy. It was a start, and it was the first concrete trail we’d found that could lead us to striking down the Blood Hunter in the end. But with the images of the women he’d sold lingering in the back of my mind and the four people who meant more than anything to me around me, I couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t even close to good enough.
