Her eyes light up. “That makes me happy for you, Odd. Truly. We can see what projects can be done remotely if you’re interested.”
“After we get settled in, I think I might be.” Drumming my fingers on the kitchen bar, I hesitate, then go in with the question that’s been spinning through my head. “You don’t think it’s too soon? That I’m crazy for doing this?”
She taps her finger to her lip, assessing me. “Let me ask you this. If I told you that you need to let him go home and that you have to get your ass back to Wimberley, how would you feel?”
“Imagine trying to tell Anders he couldn’t murder people.”
Snickering, she raises an amused eyebrow. “So…bereft.”
“Essentially.”
“Then I think you have your answer.”
We say our goodbyes and, as she’s wishing me well, DeShaun walks in, ice creams in hand. They exchange a wave and I hang up, making grabby hands for the sweet, creamy goodness.
“Did Jake get you set up with the feed?”
I take a spoonful of my Dutch chocolate-and-coffee ice cream goodness, letting out a moan as I nod.
Tonight, the team is taking down a mega church douchebag with a penchant for small children. I want to go into Bastrop, a smaller town about half an hour southeast of Austin, with the rest of the team, but DeShaun is still not at one hundred percent, and I’m not going to leave him. Given the nightmare he had last night, we argue about whether he should even watch the feed. I’m not even sure why he’s pushing it.
“I don’t know if I can make it make sense, but I just need to see that what we’re doing matters, that even with the Gregs of the world, we still make a difference. I just need to see it. I’ll just stay up tonight.”
“Fine, then I’m staying up with you.”
We decide on a no-clothing rule once the op is over, and I’ve gotta say, I think we’re pretty good at this compromise thing.
I pull up our mark’s dossier to remind myself what a loser he is. Usually, people who run mega-churches live in mega-mansions, but he was disgraced years ago and lost everything. He’s spent millions of dollars paying off parents throughout the years. He was technically caught for his actions but then rolled over on the larger network his church was a part of. To be honest, it was deeply satisfying watching the FBI raid all of those older pastors’ homes, dragging them out in their robes and expensive house shoes, doing the perp walk. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
What’s broken is that this same asshole has a new identity, a pretty new wife, a brand-new house, and the beginnings of a whole new church…and he’sstillhurting kids. He was pretty high up on the list of known bads from Ronan’s days at the Marshals service, and we’ve been chomping at the bit to get him. We also can’t help but notice that law enforcement has developed a blind spot for his actions. Likely a heavily subsidized vision problem.
Frankly, what he gets away with would already be enough to put him in our sights. But the dark web alerts we put on him have started pinging. He’s looking for fresh meat, and that’s just not going to fucking happen. Not on our watch.
Still, this is tricky. There are no good angles for Rafi, save for the roof directly across the street, but it’s too exposed and there are too many families in this neighborhood to make that a good idea. We can’t go in on the house, so we have to get a little creative.
Ronan is working the operational logistics and pointed out that he attends a Christian men’s group every Tuesday night at the local gun range. Doesn’t seem like such a great place to go in on, but Ro reminded us that the one thing gun ranges have in abundance is security cameras and Jake could take over their feed. He’s right, plus the area is surrounded by trees and greenbelt, so the team is feeling pretty confident about this op.
Everett and Rafi go into the gun range because that’s their scene. Also, Everett’s neck tattoos make him one intimidating-looking motherfucker, especially to the Sunday crowd. I chuckle, thinking those guys’d be slightly less intimidated if they knew about his aging Pomeranian.
Abigail wanders in a few minutes later, window shopping. There’s only one employee working tonight, the shop owner’s son, and we’ll keep him as far from the action as possible. The play is to isolate our mark away from the other people in his group after their meeting. Anders is waiting for him in his car, where he’ll bring him to the surrounding woods and extract any data that he needs before prepping the body for the Berts.
I maintain that anyone who goes after kids should be fed to Dave and Millie, but once again, I’m overridden.
Abigail keeps the shop owner’s son busy with questions, flirting to distract him while Everett and Rafi recon the situation with the Christian men’s group. Parker gave us a primer on how to drop a listening device in someone’s pocket, and Everett executes the drop perfectly, just before the Jesus-and-ammo crowd goes to a private room on the other side of the shop.
Rafi and Everett post-up at the range, keeping their shooting slow and steady so they can hear the details through their comms devices. Ronan rented out the rest of the openings at the range, ensuring that we aren’t putting any civilians in harm’s way.
Things are going well, and the meeting starts off with the usual pablum, but shit goes weird, fast. DeShaun raises his brow when our mark starts talking in code that we are all too familiar with. It quickly becomes apparent that this isn’t a Christian men’s gun club. This is a Christian men’s pedophile ring.
“Jake, didn’t you run backgrounds on all of these guys?” Thane asks, his voice tense.
“Of course I did. Couple of DUIs, a ton of speeding tickets, a few child-support judgments, but nothing otherwise that would indicate that they were anything other than a Bible group.”
“What about the dark web?”
There’s a tense pause and a sound like Jake working his jaw. “Yes, I ran a cursory scan on the dark web for the others.”
“Just a cursory scan? If we have tracers on him, why don’t we have tracers on all of them?”
