Grant was down for it, on one condition, well, two really, he still needed the money that came from working for the JTT, and… “Hey, if we’re gonna be superheroes, can I be Batman?” He pointed at the faded bat signal stretched across his chest. “Billionaire playboy by day. Badass caped crusader by night.”
From over by the whiteboards, Cody snorted. “You’re an idiot, Kincaid. Batman’s a pussy. Everyone knows Captain America—”
“Has no game,” Zander said, rolling his chair to the printer with a two-handed shove against the table. How the casters didn’t snap off under his bulk, Grant had no clue. “Got another one,” he said as he stood and snatched a small stack of papers from the machine. “Juliana Castilleja. Age twenty-seven. Single mother of two. Emergency room nurse went missing after working her shift at the California Hospital Medical Center.”
Zander reached across the table to hand the top sheet to Cody who taped what appeared to be a copy of Juliana’s work badge to the victim’s section of the evidence board.
“Son of a bitch,” Doc said, pinning the location of the hospital to the digital map up on the big screen. “That’s three from Downtown LA.”
“Motherfucker has a hunting ground,” Jay said, taking a break from hacking into databases they had no business hacking into and swiveling his chair to stare at the victims along with the rest of them.
Underneath the pictures of Yolande and Carlos, and in the order Eve had recited them to Adam, five sets of initials inked in red stretched across the top of the board.
KA, DE, WM, JC, MH.
They had since identified three of the five.
Dolores Erwin, a twenty-two-year-old Trade Tech college student, reported missing by her parents five years earlier. A waitress at Nova, a restaurant located nine blocks east of Skid Row, the young woman disappeared after working a late shift at the upscale bar and grill.
Two and a half years later, Mary Hoffman had been reported missing by her wife. The bipolar mental health advocate had disappeared after a day spent volunteering at a mission located in the same vicinity of Downtown LA.
Grant didn’t believe in coincidence, and even if he did, the pieces of this puzzle were coming together too easy to be anything but factual. Dolores Erwin, Mary Hoffman, and Juliana Castilleja had spent time in the cell beneath the Matthews’ garage. They had carved their initials into the bed frame. And they were never heard from again.
The women were dead.
He wished like fuck he was wrong. Wished they all were. But wishes ranked lower than coincidence in terms of shit he believed in.
“Thoughts?” Adam asked everyone in the quiet room.
“Eve’s right,” Jay said, leaning back in his chair and running his hands through black curls that looked like he’d brushed them with a fish. “The judge has a serial killer on the payroll.”
“Yeah, she nailed it.” Cody said, twirling the dry-erase marker he held to make notes on the whiteboard. “Someone connected with law enforcement makes perfect sense.”
“We’ve got LAPD Headquarters here.” Doc added a yellow star to the map. “And Central Station here.” A second star appeared a block and a half from the Midnight Mission where Mary Hoffman had volunteered.
“It adds up,” Zander said nodding his head. “How many bad coppers do you think the judge had in his courtroom over the years?”
Adam nodded sharply—once. “Let’s find out. Doc, you’re with Jay, follow up on the LAPD theory. I want a list of top ten possible suspects by twenty-three hundred. Cody, Z, you’re on victims. We have three of twelve. Expand the search for KA and WM to out of state and put together a list of other potentials. Let’s identify as many possible victims as we can before we roll. Kincaid, focus on the investigation into the murders of Yolande and Carlos. Somebody somewhere knows something. Also, need you to connect with their families. I want to know what the plans are for their remains. Repatriation, funerals, doesn’t matter—I’m paying for all of it. They saved Eve’s life, I owe them that much and more. Any questions?”
Around the room heads shook. These guys understood the chain of command. Even more important, they recognized a true leader when they saw one. Purpose rode the energy pulsing among them. They had their orders, and after sitting idle for too long, they were frothing at the mouth to get back to the kind of work that aligned with the fundamentals of their core values.
This wasn’t a mission sanctioned by the government who molded, trained, and ultimately betrayed them. This was more. This was who they were on a cellular level. As individuals, they were some of the toughest men Grant had ever worked with. As an elite unit, they were the culmination of everything that had brought them to this time and this place.
Protect and defend or die trying.
Yeah, these assholes were Grant’s kind of people. “What about Chase?” he asked. “You want him brought up to speed?”
“No.” Adam shook his head. “He has enough to worry about with getting Gray in and out of Florida undetected. We’ll loop him in when they get back on Saturday. Any other questions?” He waited a heartbeat, checked his watch, and then continued. “Okay, unless something major comes up, we reconvene in three hours for a situational briefing. Jay—before you get started—need you to set up a secure call.”
“Diane Heughan?” Jay asked, one eyebrow cocked halfway to his frazzled hairline.
Adam nodded, the sour expression on his face clearly indicating he’d rather pluck out his own eyeballs and peel them like grapes rather than speak to the woman who had been after him for weeks.
Inside the garage,Roland pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed the button to answer.
“Has she been in contact?” Detective Vonn asked before Roland could say hello.
Theshein question being Eve, Vonn had kept his inquiry vague on purpose. Smart. Even though they were using burner phones, and the background road noise garbled his voice, the man had just committed a double homicide.
