Page 83 of Tyler's Rule
Lovelyn’s connection with the police went deeper than just her father being top brass. She’d also dated the detective in charge of the investigation into Marchant Haulage, but Lyle Francis turned into a stalker. Which meant she now had leverage over him.
I shook my head at Kane. “Too scared to face ye.”
He shrugged one hefty shoulder. “Either that or he wanted plausible deniability for how they came into police custody. Saved his face from my fist. Generous of me.”
Heretic watched on, one boot planted against the wall and his arms folded. “Before we handed them over, I completed the cloning of their phones. With that, we can lay a trap for their son. See if we can get the little shit to deliver himself to us.”
I tipped up my chin. “Keep me in the loop, as well as Cassie. She’ll have ideas, and I want to be there when we bring him in.”
The skeleton girls were better placed to know what levers to pull with Presley and what to do with him after.
I hesitated, comparing that one last name with the empty slot on Dixie’s list. The man who’d attacked and left her for dead was still nameless, but my gut feel was that it had to be related to her family. I’d looked up the timing, and the grandfather was alive but presumably on his way out when her throat attack happened.
If we brought Presley Marchant-Smythe in, we might finally understand what linked them all.
“I have further work for ye.” I allocated one of the captures to the two men, then got into the bare bones of work I carried out. The monitoring of contacts and access channels where I heard about trafficking into the region. I couldn’t afford to look away for long.
“For several years, I’ve intercepted a steady flow of young women and girls into Deadwater. Sometimes boys, too.” I hid a sudden tightening of my voice. “I’ve been able to safeguard a number of victims and take out the traffickers each time. But they don’t talk, and more immediately spring up, which tells me the demand doesn’t go away.”
“Any clues on the consumers?” Heretic said the last word with distaste.
The men who bought the victims. The rapist pieces of scum who enabled the trade in the first place.
“I’m working on that. To this point, I’ve had no contacts in big business, which is where I believe this is happening.”
Heretic raised his dark eyebrows. “Follow the money, right?”
Rich men funded it. Always the way, along with most other evils in the world.
But no trafficker had ever given up the name of a buyer, and with my predisposition to talk with deadly force, I hadn’t advanced that cause. It had been something I’d discussed withCassie. With the Marchant trafficking case underway, there was opportunity to go deeper.
By getting involved, we’d also inadvertently caused a pause point.
As Kane and Heretic got to grips with my system, I explained why things were quiet. “Mila gave us a man named Salter. He and another individual, Rhys Jacobs, ran flesh auctions, some women volunteered in, others trafficked. We know that businessmen used them. Without that mechanism in place, the system has broken down, and there’s infighting amongst the low-level underlings who were left. I don’t doubt it’s still happening, but to a much lesser extent. Salter was the type to defend his territory.”
“He’s dead?” Heretic asked.
“Not yet. We’ve kept him on ice for a while, but no one has got a name out of him.”
With everything else that had gone on, Salter had been lower down the list of priorities.
Heretic watched me. Something old and hungry flickered in his eyes. “Can I try?”
This was why I’d hired him. That darkness I saw when Heretic was activated. It spoke to the same inside me. “I’ll find a time to take ye to him.”
Kane tapped the monitor, open on a page where I tracked various pieces of data. “What’s this alert that just came up? A car.” He rattled off a code I’d used.
I squinted to check the traffic camera report, clicking into the overhead picture that clearly showed the driver. The thin, stressed face Mila had shown me a long time ago. I released a hard laugh. “You’re kidding me. Rhys Jacobs. Flesh auctioneer, on the run for months, now slinking back into Deadwater. Brave. Or stupid.”
Kane’s grin was predatorial. “Perhaps that pause point in the trade had felt like too good an opportunity. How about we welcome him home?”
I gladly let him take the lead in that task.
With my day job handled, I released the men and returned to the corridor.
Arran waited in the open doorway to his office. I hadn’t forgotten his request to find him after.
He tipped his head. “Take a walk with me.”
