Page 41 of Hunted in the Silence

“I know,” Cole said.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

He thought about it honestly. “No. If there’s something she tells him that changes things, he’ll tell us. And if there’s something she needed to say to someone like him instead of us, that’s why we’re doing this.”

Olivia looked at him as if deciding whether to respond. Whatever had been on the tip of her tongue, she didn’t voice it. She got back to work instead.

They worked for the next hour, while Cole remained acutely away of Brynn and Silas at the table in the interview room. He wasn’t watching, exactly, but he was aware, just like everything that involved Brynn.

She was talking, her hands pressed flat on the table, as if whatever she was telling Silas was straining and she needed the contact to stay grounded. Silas was leaning forward the same way he’d done with Cole, forearms on his knees, his expression steady, calm, and his eyes intense. Cole knew that look. He wasn’t just listening. He was building the case in his head as Brynn fed him the details.

At one point, Brynn met Cole’s eyes across the room through the glass partition. He hadn’t been looking—Okay, he had been looking. She held his gaze for a moment, and whatever she was thinking, he couldn’t decipher it, and then she looked back at Silas and kept talking.

Cole looked back at his screen.

They came out forty minutes later. Silas went directly to the board and stood in front of it for a moment before turning.

“She told me a few things I didn’t know,” he said.

Cole waited.

“First. Devlin isn’t just cautious about the ledger. He’s downright superstitious, meaning he has an actual ritual. Right down to which pocket he keeps it in, when and where he records in it, and even which hand he holds it in when he does. When she was there, he always kept in in his left inside jacket pocket, and I doubt that has changed.” He paused. “Second. If he gets cornered, he doesn’t choose violence right away. He’ll talk first because he thinks the right words can get him out of anything. He’ll try negotiating, reasoning, reframing. Whatever he thinks will work in his favor. That’s the best window you’re going to get to arrest him without bringing more risk to the girls.”

Cole was writing all of this down.

“Third.” Silas paused, and Cole looked up, noticing how tight his expression was. “There’s a strong probability that he’ll have an addition body there tomorrow, aside from the usual handler. I connected a detail Brynn mentioned from Mia’s original statement to a place in the file. There’s a woman at the management level who works for Devlin, and I suspect she’s the one Brynn mentioned as the unknown woman from her intake records. The one the girls said starts out being kind to them.”

Silas held Cole’s gaze. “She’s going to be harder to identify than the handlers because she’s going to be the calmest in the room, possibly posing as another victim. But she’s not. She’s the most dangerous person in the room because she’s the who manages things, keeps the girls compliant, and she’s not going to sit back and watch the whole operation fold in around her without hitting back.”

Cole’s mind was racing as he set the pen down. “Description.”

“File says thirties, average height, dark hair, soft-spoken. The kind of person who can blend, like a chameleon. Be whoever Devlin needs her to be.”

“Brynn’s the one who identified her?”

“From three separate intake interviews over two years,” Silas said. “The same description of the same woman appears in all three. Brynn had her listed as an unknown on the board. That’s changed now.” He looked at Brynn across the room, standing like an impenetrable wall with her arms crossed over her chest and her expression blank and seemingly unaffected.

Cole knew better. His next question was for Brynn. “You knew this for two years.”

“I knew I had a description for two years,” she clarified. “I didn’t make the connection to Devlin’s network specifically until Silas cross-referenced it with Mia’s testimony just now.” She met his gaze directly. “Had I figured it out sooner, you would have been the first to know. That’s what I promised.”

He held her gaze. She was right. She’d kept the promise. He wasn’t going to make her defend it.

“All right,” he conceded, reminding himself that that twinge of jealousy was unwarranted and completely ridiculous. It wasn’t as if Silas was stepping on his toes or anything. It wasn’t as if he and Brynn were dating.

Though damn it, part of him was feeling incredibly and irrationally territorial lately.

He turned to the board and added the unknown woman to it, a new card with the description and the notation unknown female, management level, caution. “We need to update the entry team this afternoon. Everyone going in needs to know what they’re up against.”

“If I’m in the building, I’ll be able to identify her,” Brynn said.

Cole studied her for a long moment, reading the certainty in her eyes. “That’s why you’re going in.”

The room was quiet for a moment longer, the weight of what lay ahead creating a pall over them.

Silas picked up his coffee, made a face that said it was probably cold, and set it back down. “One more thing,” he said. “And this one is for you specifically.” He was looking at Cole. “Devlin knows who you are. He’ll know your name and background because he makes it his business to know. He is going to try to use Abby against you if you’re in the room with him.”

Cole went stock still, his expression flattening as his heart sank to his knees at the mention of her name.