The Payback (Team Zulu 2)

I scrunched my nose. “I think it’s a little late for that.”

“Touché.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “All right. I could use your analytical mind going over my intel. I’ve always thought being too close to the investigation might’ve skewed my approach.” He nodded. “Thank you.”

“I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but you shouldn’t have to tackle it alone. And who knows? Maybe we’ll uncover something you haven’t found already in the research we’re doing here.” I folded one leg under me. “Can you tell me a little more? What have you uncovered that implicates the Mafia? Aside from them being a bunch of vile lowlifes?”

Brandon shrugged. “That’s the thing. I’m not certain they’re involved. It’s more of a hunch at this point. An educated hunch. Even so, I don’t have any firm evidence. Only a theory.”

I closed the magazine and tossed it onto the nightstand. “I’m listening.”

“I performed a mathematical correlation assessment of missing women across the United States and Canada. It’s probably easier if I show you.” Brandon waved me over. When I reached him, he brought up a new window with a map of North America covered in red dots. He pointed at the screen. “Each one represents a woman reported missing in the last twelve months. All two hundred fifty thousand of them.”

“Wow. So many?”

“Yeah, but you have to remember, the majority are missing by choice. Young runaways, women leaving abusive relationships. Many have good reasons for not wanting to be found.”

“So, how many are true kidnappings?”

“I focused on Pennsylvania and removed the static—those who’d been found and the ones I suspected left of their own accord—then I discovered something interesting.” He zoomed in on the red dots in our home state. “The kidnapping rate in Philly was constant until about five years ago when it suddenly tripled. It’s been high ever since. And when I ran the same analysis across the country, I noticed another trend. Fourteen other states experienced a similar jump in kidnappings. Want to know what they all have in common?”

I nodded.

“Each is home to a trucking company, which after digging deeper, I discovered was owned by a Wolf Street Mafia shell corporation.”

“A legitimate method of nationwide transportation.”

“Correct.”

“That sounds like a solid lead. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but…how haven’t you solved this? Why isn’t there any evidence?”

“It’s not as simple as you might think. Watch this.” Brandon clicked his mouse, and lines streaked across the map. So many that almost the entire country was blacked out. “These are the shipping routes for a single year. Each distribution center has dozens of trucks coming and going each day. That’s nearly one hundred fifty thousand trucks a year.”

“Oh man.”

“Yeah, and I’d guess only a few dozen have human cargo. This isn’t a high-numbers operation, and they’re flying under the radar by selecting vulnerable targets. Runaways, homeless people, undocumented immigrants.”

I held a palm up. “Either way, a lot of innocent lives have been stolen.”

“Agreed. But as you can see, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. I can’t be in fourteen cities for an entire year to catch them in the act. And I can’t break into that many trucks without eventually getting caught. That’sifI’m even on the right track. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. This is the first sniff of hope I’ve had in over two years.”

“What about security-camera footage?”

“Would you commit a crime like that with your cameras on?”

I sighed deeply. “All right, listen. We don’t have to solve this tonight. Let’s keep watching Dante and follow through with our plans. Maybe once we bring him down, we can promise him, I don’t know, two-ply toilet paper in his cell if he tells us where the women are going. Because it seems to me the Wolf Street Mafia might gather the victims, but someone’s buying them, and they’re just as guilty in all this. If we take down Dante and cut the supply of women, the buyers will still get them somewhere else.” I held his stare. “We need to stop this at the source.”