“Last minute,” Ignacio whispered. “Always. They changed all the time. Pickups changed. Drop points changed. Nothing stayed the same.”
“Why?” Voodoo asked.
“Competition? Malice? Stupidity?” Ignacio let out a choked laugh—half misery, half hysteria. “Because they didn’t trust us. Because we weren’t important. We were just… hands. Labor. Disposable.”
His eyes darted to me once more and I refused to look away.
“Define your role,” Voodoo said.
Ignacio swallowed hard. “The pickup. The allocation. Then prepping the cargo for transport.”
Cargo.
Preppingthe cargo. They were raping those women, brutalizing them, and they were justprepping the cargo for transport.
Sickness surged again. I kept my breathing even by sheer force. A hand settled against my lower back, the touch almost ghost light, yet the warmth of Bones’ contact seared me through my shirt.
“After that?” Voodoo asked.
Ignacio’s voice cracked. “I got paid. In cash. Always cash.Alwayson delivery. No delivery, no payment. No transfers. No names. Then I waited for the next order.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Ignacio whispered. “I didn’t have any control. None. You have to believe me.”
Silence rippled through the basement, tight and sharp.
Voodoo looked at him for a long moment, then angled his head slightly, eyes flicking to Sinclair’s unconscious body.
“All right,” Voodoo said, tone shifting—not more aggressive, but more precise. Surgical.
“One last question.”
Ignacio froze.
“What is the connection,” Voodoo asked, “between all of this… and Sinclair?”
Every cell in Ignacio’s body seemed to seize with terror.
And the look on his face told me he knew. He absolutely knew. Even if he didn’t want to say it.
Realization hit me with sickening clarity. “He was the middleman.”
All eyes snapped to me.
“It wasn’t the port manager who paid you the cash,” I clarified. “It was Sinclair—maybe not always him, but you knew him enough to know he was the one who paid you.”
Ignacio’s flinch was answer enough. He didn’t speak. Didn’t deny it. His breath hitched and his shoulders shook.
I took a step forward, then another. Voodoo and Legend both shifted, letting me narrow the gap without moving out from between me and the man shaking in the chair. Keeping my arms folded, I studied Ignacio.
“What happened when you lost your delivery?” Because they had, hadn’t they? When the warehouse we’d been in had been attacked? He’d run.
A shake of his head, a violent refusal, but Ignacio kept his lips pressed tight.
“You lost us,” I said, reminding him. “That day is sketchy, but you dragged me up from the foot of the bed, you had my chain.”
It was weird how those memory flashes cut in and out, so close I could feel the way his fingers had bitten into my skin and how clammy I’d been. Yet distant enough that it didn’t suffocate me.
