“What am I looking at, Hunt?” Trick asked in confusion.
“Times and dates of the hotshot trucks and what they’re hauling each subsequent time,” Hunt answered.
“Okay,” I hesitated. “But what does it all mean? What’s a 2BM? What’s a 3WF?”
Hunt shook his head sadly.
“It took me a while to cross reference those terms. But the first one you read is two black males. The second one is three white females.”
My stomach fucking dropped. “You’re joking.”
“No,” Hunt said stoically. “And there are pages and pages of this in his servers. Each run they make has some sort of parts in them for a trucking company that’s stationed where they’re at and where they’re going. They actually do drive the truck parts to the company. But they’re always, according to the trucking company they deliver to, missing something. Something big to where they have to ‘run another truck’ to them. To the point that they’re actively seeking out another company to do this for them. They’ve had no luck with the past four companies, because all have been bought out by the same master company—BryHoldings, Inc.”
“Meaning, when they fuck up, they just acquire a new hotshot crew to run parts down to them, and they keep ‘accidentally’ forgetting parts to the point where they have to return. Meaning that they have room for other things in the vans/trucks since they’re carrying half empty,” Nico surmised.
“Exactly.” Hunt nodded as he poked through lists. “Last month they took eight trips. Five of those trips were return trips where there was a ‘part’ forgotten. Meaning they had a nearly empty van. Which, I assume, they used to transport their victims.”
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled. “They have this down, don’t they?”
“Is Bryan ever ‘involved’ or is he just on the outskirts?” Nico leaned back in the seat into the metal of the van at his back, looking for all the world that he was calm and collected when in fact he was pissed as hell.
I could see a vein in his neck throbbing, and his hands were clenched into tight fists that he had tucked tight across his body.
“From the public appearance, no.” Hunt scratched his head, then yanked his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “He looks squeaky clean when you look at him like this. But then you look deeper, and you find that there are certain things ‘checked’ off per se. There’re initials all over the place as quality control, and all of them are SJB. Sander James Bryan is my guess. What ‘higher-up’ would have the same initials as him? I mean, there’s the possibility, but all the company databases that I’ve checked through, there are no other employees by that name. And he has a list of employees. His brother being the ‘big boss’ that all of the transporters know. The brother that has been out a week and a half due to a broken collarbone. Weird how he got that, huh?”
“Weird,” I muttered, remembering the one good lick I’d gotten in on the old man.
He’d been driving, and with nothing else to stop him, I’d thrown an iron bar at the van.
I was happy to see that at least something had hit true.
“I threw a pipe,” I mused. “It was next to the head they nearly ran over.”
“The one you used to carry on your bike?” Sin asked curiously.
I thought about it. Thought about the familiarity when it’d fit into my hand just before I threw it.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was after they ran me off of it. That fits.”
Nico sighed. “Something more needs to be done here. We can’t just sit on our hands, and it doesn’t look like he’s getting very far, either.”
“Call the press,” Trouper snapped. “Get them out here. Leak the story to them. Get some news stirred up and get them going on this while Lynn is inside.”
“You don’t think that’ll stir up shit before we find out where their base is at? What if they’re holding kids right now? And by us sharing their story, they cut and run? Kill all the kids they have and disappear into the wind? We need to plan this out,” Zach cut in, always the voice of reason.
“Anywhere in those notes tell you where their base of operations is?” Nico asked, his hand to his head as he looked at the front door Lynn had disappeared through only an hour before.
“Two possible locations,” Hunt said. “If we split up, we can hit each one with a team.”
“Do we wait for Lynn, or just go?” Sin wondered.
I looked at the front door where Lynn had been invited in so easily.
“I’ll wait for Lynn,” I suggested. “Unless you want to, Laric?”
Laric, Lynn’s actual son, shook his head. “I want to get to these facilities and find out whatever they have hiding there. Lynn can take care of himself. Not to mention I don’t think that you will be very good to us with your broken head.”
Lynn could handle himself.