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“So you were okay with some kid getting tortured,” Mason said in a dead tone that made even Jack flinch.
“I was fed the same line of bullshit your boy here was, about domestic terrorists, and when I tried to get outside verification of that, I was shut down hard. These people may be under the radar, but they have power.”
Which did not bode well for the Elect.
“And no, I wouldn’t have left the kid there. Stine was smart enough to move him right away, and finding that location was damned hard. Whenever he gets really paranoid about being followed, Stine borrows a vehicle from someone on his staff. Unfortunately, he never uses the same one twice. Even if I could have put a tracker on everyone’s car, it wasn’t an option. He has them checked first.”
“You must have found something,” Jack said.
“He screwed up on his last visit. Forgot to disable the GPS. Given his state of mind at the time—right after the break in at Stirling—not a big surprise. He was completely unhinged that day. When the shit hit the fan the second time, I figured it was my best shot at getting the kid free. Stine pulled in all his personal security, even those on special details, that day. I have a jammer, so it was a quick in and out.”
“You knew it was Quinn Stone going in?”
His jaw clenched. “I hadn’t had the chance to check it out yet. I was hoping it was Isabella.”
It was clear that Evans would have considered anything worth the risk in that case.
“Stine must suspect you. Is that why he sent you to the house to warn us off? He figured we’d get rid of you for him?”
He snorted. “If Stine thought that, he’d try to kill me himself. I’m not sure what he was angling for.”
“Was that his only stop the day of the rescue? Any clue where he might be keeping your ex?”
“Yes and not a fucking one. Look, Stine isn’t even pretending to be sane anymore, and I think we can all agree he’s a sadist. A sadist who will be on the lookout for a new outlet.”
“You think he’ll turn to the closest powerless target he has, even if she’s human.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“You’re not giving us anything to work with, man.”
“I don’t have anything,” he snapped. Well, that was fucking disappointing.
“Two years and you have nothing useful?” Jack found that hard to believe.
“In locating Isabella? No.”
Interesting word choice.
“What do you want and what are you offering in exchange? And it better be good,” Mason snapped.
“I want you to help me find Isabella and I want you to protect her. You have a secure compound, right? She’ll be safe there.”
“I’ll need the boss’s okay for that,” Mason warned. “What do you have?”
“Stay here.”
He disappeared into the house and returned in a few moments with a thick accordion file that he handed to Mason.
“Medical files. They’re copies, of course. Every patient in the Stirling files that spent time on the seventh floor. There’s also a list of phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses of Stine’s personal security, including a few that don’t work for him anymore.”
“We already have most of this,” Mason said, flipping through papers.
That was news to Jack, but he wasn’t exactly in the inner circle.
“You only got eighty percent of the database, and those files aren’t on any of it.” Mason looked surprised and Evans laughed. “You didn’t really think you escaped detection, did you? You’re good but so am I.”
Evans tossed him a flash drive. “That’s what you didn’t get from the server.”
It took all his control not to laugh at Mason’s expression. So much for Elect superiority.
“There are notes on there about my team and some of the hospital staff, those you might find useful or helpful.” His expression turned hard and calculating. “I have one more piece of information you’ll want, but I need your agreement on Isabella first.”
If it was as valuable as Evans seemed to think it was, it had to be the main thing they’d come for. He heard Brax, who’d been listening in, give the go ahead.
“Alright,” Mason said. “We’ll do everything we can.”
Evans held his gaze for a moment before nodding and tossing over a second flash drive.
“They call their prisoners ‘guests’. With Quinn’s release, I’m pretty sure Stine doesn’t have direct access to anymore of your people, but Lingstrom does. I overheard him and Stine discussing the security of his guest after the break in and arguing about whether they should move him to Orly’s facility.”
“It isn’t part of Stirling?” Mason asked.
Evans shook his head. “They own a lab and research company in Miami. Orly runs it. It’s in the files.”
“What do you know about Lingstrom’s prisoner?”
“Just that he’s a man in his sixties. I think he’s been moved to a boat while they decide what to do with him. They aren’t sure if their other safe houses have been compromised or not. Since I’ve never been able to find any of them, I’m guessing not.”
“Do you know anything about the boat?”
“Just that it belongs to Lingstrom. It isn’t registered in his name, but it has to be in the area.”
A car pulled in to the house next door and parked. “My neighbors are out of town,” Evans said. “You should get out of here.”
Mason had already stuffed the file into the pack he’d brought along and was zipping it when a car door opened but didn’t shut. There was no light but the sound carried. Jack met Evans’s gaze.
“They’re on to you. Come with us.”
He shook his head. “Stine likes to do random check-ins,” he murmured. “It’s probably nothing. Go.”
Faine and Mason had already disappeared. Jack didn’t like it, but he did the same, angling towards the water and the opposite neighboring yard. He moved slowly, staying in the deep shadows, and watched four men approach Evans’s house, three in the front and one towards the rear. Evans entered his back door. Jack circled around the house and broke into a jog when he was out of sight. A couple of minutes later he joined Mason and Faine at their SUV, his gut a knot of nerves.
“He’s in trouble.”
“Yeah,” Mason agreed softly. Grimly. “But we can’t take the risk of interfering, and he knows it. He has a plan.”
“You read his mind?” Jack asked.
“You got a problem with that?”
He grunted. “No. I was just thinking it’d come in damned useful.”
Mason cranked the car, backed out of the slot, and had just swung onto the road when a boom and bright light filled the night sky.
“Shit,” he muttered, swinging around to look at the fire shooting into the air a couple of blocks behind him. “His plan was to blow himself up?”
“He got out, but no one else did. It’ll look like an accidental gas explosion. Stine won’t believe it of course, but he won’t be able to prove it and we have all the evidence Evans gathered. Not that anyone could find anything left in that house.”
Evans probably had arrangements in place to disappear in case he was compromised, but Jack didn’t think he’d go far. Not until his wife was found and someplace safe. For now, they were both on their own.
