Page 43 of Old Secrets

No matter how hard the FBI worked, trafficking rings flourished, stealing babies, children, and adults alike, and subjecting them to the sort of terror I struggled to imagine. While I wouldn’t mind shoving Jake’s mother into a mud puddle and messing up her hair, my desire for payback ended there.

We had all made mistakes, and while I doubted my fox would ever accept the woman, I could, with some time and thought, understand her position.

However, the bitch would learn I would become an unclimbable mountain for Jake’s sake. It had taken some time and conversing with Mellisa to understand I’d gotten the milder dose of abuse, neglect, and mistreatment.

Jake had been pushed, bullied, and roped into being someone he could never realistically be.

He preferred to follow. I preferred to take life by the reins and forge paths. He preferred to support.

I enjoyed bashing heads together as needed.

When put together in the right circumstances, we became something more than our original pieces, although we still had a long way to go.

We would always have a long way to go, but I’d learned a hell of a lot about the nature of abuse, the long journey towards recovery, and the lasting damage family could cause.

And so I healed.

I considered Jake, who eyed Aiko’s briefcase with interest.

I smiled at the telltale signs he wanted to work. “If you have rap sheets and similar, you’ll make Jake’s day if you let him read and sink his teeth into some work. It seems he wishes to hunt.”

Aiko laughed and handed over a thick stack of papers, and Jake lit up as he always did when given an important job to do.

When I thought about it, Mellisa’s analogy of us being work dogs made a great deal of sense. If left alone with nothing to do, we tended to destroy things, too, including our furniture.

“What type of trafficking?”

“Fortunately, non-sexual,” Aiko replied, and while her expression remained unhappy, she relaxed in her seat. “They have modeled some of their behavior after familial mafia rings, bringing in victims at an early age and cultivating them to be part of this…” The woman frowned.

“Cult?” I suggested.

“Cult is as good a word as any. It seems at least some branches of Greenwich worship these foxes—and another branch of it wishes to control or destroy them and take their place. China has isolated four different branches of the group so far, with two worshipping this fox species, one seeking to eliminate it, and another pursuing other goals, mostly on the global domination front.” Aiko sorted through some of her remaining papers before handing me several sheets. “The London attack was the work of the domination group, and from what we’ve figured out, they were hoping to get information out of you regarding the kidnapping of Annabelle Greenwich. They were unaware of your identity, as this branch doesn’t follow the worshippers or their enemy branch. As such, they didn’t recognize you based on your more distinctive traits.”

“My pale skin and hair?”

“The white tips in particular,” she confirmed.

“I usually dyed or trimmed them away, but not always.” I considered my mate, who shuffled through the papers while narrowing his eyes. “Hey, Jake?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m an endangered species.”

He snorted, shook his head, and plucked out a page before handing it over to me. “Does this fellow look familiar to you?”

I eyed the rap sheet, and my eyes widened.

In the photograph, the London shooter seemed like the sort of man you’d want living next door, clean cut in a suit and as unoffensive as possible. “That’s the bastard who made me think you were dead.” My memories remained hazy, but when I thought about it, he hadn’t been among those I’d slaughtered for taking Jake away from me. “Good eye, Jake.”

After taking a moment to read over the sheet, which informed me that Mr. Maven couldn’t have been more white bread American if he tried, had remained in the United States for most of his life before smuggling firearms overseas in a personal yacht, docking at a private property before heading to London to participate in the shooting. I handed the sheet back to Aiko. “I want him, and when I’m done with him, you’ll be using a shovel to pick up his remains.”

The woman smiled, accepted the page, and reviewed it before pulling out her phone, taking a photo, and sending a text. “Excellent. We were hoping for a confirmation. The Inquisition managed to get video surveillance from contacts in London, and they located where the group had gathered before making the hit, allowing us to identify the members. I suspect you’ll have to identify most of these, Karma-sama, as you did not leave sufficient intact to identify by visual appearance. Some we had DNA for, but not as many as we would like.”

I waggled my fingers at my mate until he gave me the pile. With a little help from my fox, I identified the bastards who had been involved. “I guess I did do a lot of damage to their faces.” Once certain I had the whole lot of them, I gave Aiko the sheets. “That should be all of them.”

Aiko counted the pages, and she nodded. “Excellent memory, Karma-sama. This matches the skull count we got from the site.”

When in doubt, counting skulls was a good way to identify the number of corpses present, and in retrospect, I realized I’d been rather thorough in dispatching my prey. “Jake, I think I need to have more therapy about the London shooting.”