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There had to be something somewhere that we were missing. There’s no way the man we’d known had been so completely blindsided. He had to have known if not all, then some of it.
Ty came up to find me and he too looked a little uncomfortable being in here. “Find anything?”
“Nope, but I’ve been thinking, there has got to be something here. No way he didn’t leave us something, some crumb to follow. You really believe they got the drop on him like that?”
“Nah, I don’t think any of us do, but we’ve looked and so far haven’t really found anything that would shed any light, except for that cryptic shit about the kids maybe being his.”
“That’s just it Ty, we keep slipping. What was it he always said before we went on an Op?”
“Which one, that he can only give us the training but it was up to us how to use the tools? I don’t see the correlation bro.”
“Think about it. The old man never just told us shit he made us work for it. Everything was like a puzzle with him. Remember he said it was to keep our minds and skills sharp, so that we didn’t get too dependent on anyone else but ourselves when we were out in the dark.”
“So you think he knew but he didn’t just leave it out in the open for us to find? I just don’t see him dropping us in the middle of this hell without even a warning.”
“He didn’t but he would’ve known that they had eyes and ears on him and he wouldn’t leave it for just anyone to find either. He’d know that we’d figure it out eventually.”
That shit made sense, a lot of things were starting to make sense. “Get the others up here, it’s time we go through all this shit.” He went out on the landing and whistled for the others to come up.
Lo was the first one up the stairs. “Found something?” He did a double take at the portrait on the wall and brushed it off. It was good to see that I wasn’t the only one who found that shit odd, but we had more important shit to deal with now.
“Not yet, but we all know something’s got to be here and since this is the one place we haven’t really been through I suggest we start here.” He looked around the room with a nod. “Sounds good, maybe we should bring some equipment up here?” He was talking about shit that would see through walls and floors; find hidden rooms and shit.
“We might have to if it comes to that, but for now I say we just look in all the places we would’ve hidden some shit if it were us.” Of course that wouldn’t be any of the obvious places, like under the bed. But what if he thought no one would look there because it was the last place they’d expect him to?
We split the rooms and walked around every inch checking casements and panels. The old man was a neat freak so everything was pretty much in its place. I ran my hand under night tables and lamps; tested the floor for loose boards, nothing.
In the closet we tried pockets and pants linings and it was there we got lucky. “I knew it.” I wasn’t sure of what I’d found when I felt the passport sized booklet but it was sewn into the lining of his dress uniform.
“What you find?” Connor was the first one over. I opened the little book and my heart skipped a beat. “Codes.” We all walked back to the bedroom where the lighting was better.
“He left this for us, he knew.” We all took a moment to let that settle in. I don’t know which was sadder. That he knew his life might end? Or that he knew we might not be here to save him? There were pages and pages of codes, codes that only the seven men in this room would understand.
“Let’s go see what he was trying to tell us.” Logan sounded about how I felt, like I’d been kicked in the gut. Quinn just took the book and headed for the computer without saying a word as the rest of us followed.
The first page was about Stockton and his little operation. It was the first tip the old man had that something was fishy in his backyard. It seems we were right in the beginning, he had been smuggling drugs, but it was just a side benefit to something bigger.
He mentioned the human trafficking and hinted that there was a pattern starting to form that was starting to worry him. His exact words ‘I don’t like where this is going. It’s been years, I thought that whole thing was over with’.
We all looked at each other at a lost. We knew to a man that the old man had never been dirty a day in his life. But why wouldn’t he have told us about something like this if he’d suspected for so long?
There were lists of names. Men who had served with or under the old man and a list of female names that went with each. The same names that had been in that damn book!
It was almost as if we could hear his voice telling us step by step what he’d uncovered as we deciphered the pages. No one spoke as the words scrolled across the screen as Quinn translated. He even knew about Dani’s ex and his involvement with Stockton and the money-laundering scheme.
“This goes back years. Some of these men worked with him a long time ago. What can they possibly have to do with this? It’s still not here.” Tyler was the first one to break the silence.
“Keep going Quinn.” I leaned over his shoulder focused on the screen. He had dates and times of his surveillance. It was the cryptic note at the end that made us look around at each other.
‘I think they’re onto me. I may have stumbled onto something here but I have to do some more digging before I know. If I’m right, if this is about what I think it is then he won’t stop, I have to protect her. Time to call in my boys.” And it ended there.
“Who the fuck is ‘he and she’?”
“The Fox is my guess and I haven’t the slightest clue who the ‘she’ might be. Go back from the beginning, I need to look at everyone he has on that list.” Logan came to look over his other shoulder while Con went to the other secure comp.
Most of the names were top secret or had had high level clearance at one time or another, so there was no way to get anything on them, not through usual channels anyway, so that was a bust.
“Nothing here, which tells us a lot.”
