THE PICTURES ARE spread out on the table. Celia stands across from D’Angelo, studying them. A podlike intercom sits beside them. Every now and then they hear Fitzpatrick drinking his coffee on the other end of the line. Celia’s never met him in person, but she imagines him as a little older than her, with fiery red hair and a freckled Irish complexion.
This is the first time she’s seen the photos of Connor. Fitzpatrick sent the copies from New York. There’s a close-up of his tattoo, an image of a curled-up snake, with the code JSU02649 beneath it.
“The hunter who did this,” Celia says, pointing to the picture of the bullet wound. “They knew the exact angle. The bullet went through the neck and into the brain—he died immediately. It was so precise.”
“We’re calling them hunters now?” Fitzpatrick’s voice asks from the intercom.
D’Angelo shakes her head. She has short, wavy, black hair she pins back with bobby pins, and eyes the color of espresso beans. “What else do you need to be convinced?” she asks. “I found a girl in Seattle with her throat slit with a hunter’s knife—same tattoo. When are you going to come to our side?”
“There’s no sides,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m just saying . . . a ring of people who hunt humans? It sounds a little sci-fi Tom Cruise–movie bullshit, huh?”
“It doesn’t when you have targets—kids—who are willing to testify about what happened,” D’Angelo says. “We’re close. There’s a case here.”
Celia isn’t interested in convincing Fitzpatrick. Now that they have the photos it’s already moving forward. She pulls out the other picture of the girl found under the bridge in Seattle, still unidentified, with the defense wounds on her right hand. She was trying to block them as they came at her. Her tattoo was slashed, but it’s there. The same one.
“We don’t have a single name, though. Who are these people? You’re talking about a missing doctor and a guy who died in jail. No one’s going to believe they organized a national hunting league that starts on some tropical island.” Fitzpatrick’s voice fills the room. “You get me a—”
“Hold on, Ed,” Celia says as her cell starts to ring. Blocked number. It could be her.
Celia hits a few buttons and adds her to the line. “Lena?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“You’re on speaker. I’m here with an agent from Seattle—Agent D’Angelo. We have Fitzpatrick, an agent from New York, on the line, too. He was on the scene after they found Connor’s body.”
“We found him—we found Cal,” Lena says. “His real name is Theodore Cross.”
Celia sucks in a breath. “Where?”
“I have his address for you. Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Theodore Cross, Ninety-Eight Vestry Street, New York, New York. We found a ledger in his apartment. It has all the hunters’ names, addresses. Who they killed. Everything.”
“You were in his apartment?” Celia tries not to sound angry, but it’s embarrassing. No matter how desperate Lena is, she was supposed to wait for information from her, not the other way around. How are they supposed to use evidence she got by breaking into someone’s house?
“Don’t do anything else,” D’Angelo says. “We have to see what we can find on him. Something that doesn’t involve you stealing things from his apartment. That already discredits our case.”
“I’ll read you the names. Follow any of them, anywhere—they’re killing targets right now, in every city. In New York.”
Celia flips over one of the photos as Lena starts reciting the names. She scribbles them as fast as she can, sometimes double-checking the spelling of addresses and names. It takes her almost ten minutes to get all of them down.
“Give us a few days,” Celia says when they’re done.
“We don’t have time for that.”
“I know.”
“There’s something else—we have his daughter. She was at his apartment when we went there and we took her with us.”
Fitzpatrick explodes on the other end of the line. “You kidnapped her? What the hell were you thinking?”
“We didn’t want him to run,” Lena says.
Celia rubs a hand over her face. “You’re handing them reasons to throw out the case. They’ll arrest you, and we both know AAE has resources inside.”
D’Angelo starts pacing the length of the conference room. She unbuttons the top of her dress shirt and airs it out.
“Rafe didn’t want to wait,” Lena explains.
Who the hell is Rafe? Celia tries to keep her breaths even. “Don’t do anything. I’m coming to New York. Fitzpatrick and I will arrange for you to get her back to the family, maybe set up some sort of meeting where he has to show. Give us twenty-four hours to see if we can find one of these hunters, get something concrete. We just need to catch them doing something illegal. We can arrest them and see if they’ll turn over Cross.”
“Fine, twenty-four hours,” Lena says.
“I can be there by tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully by then I’ll have something and I can arrest him on the spot.”
“Hopefully.”
“Don’t do anything to her.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Do you have a phone now? I’ll text you a plan tomorrow. Promise you’ll wait to hear from me.”
“Promise.”
Celia takes down the number. She can hear a siren wail in the background of whatever street Lena’s on. “Tomorrow,” Celia repeats. “Don’t hurt her.”
“Stop, please. I won’t.” Then Lena hangs up.
D’Angelo is still pacing. “This doesn’t bode well for us,” she says. “I thought you said she was under control. That she was going to wait to hear from you.”
“This is bad, Alvarez,” Fitzpatrick says. “You’re asking me to have my men follow twenty different people? For who, this one girl? When she just kidnapped someone’s daughter?”
Celia feels her chest tighten. She should at least pretend to be angry, but she can’t. She looks up at D’Angelo, meeting her gaze. “All of them are after her. All of them want her dead—she doesn’t have much time. She’s desperate.”
“Damn right she is,” Fitzpatrick says.
Celia adjusts her uniform as she stands. “You’ll put some guys on it?”
Fitzpatrick lets out a long, heavy breath. “Yeah, I mean, we have names now. I’ll look into it.”
“Great,” Celia says. “We’ll get on the first plane.”
Fitzpatrick says something about logistics, complains for another two minutes, then hangs up. D’Angelo has already collected the photos and put them back in the folder. She presses her lips together in a thin line—it’s not a smile, but close. “I guess this is it,” she says. “I guess we’re going to New York.”