I turned to face him, anger sparking hot. “What do you suggest? Sit on my hands while families are being ripped apart? Pretend I don’t see it?”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. “I’m saying you shouldn’t walk into this alone.”
The way he said it—low, rough, almost pleading—made something in me stutter. I hated that it did.
Before I could answer, a cough rasped behind us. An old man leaned against the wall, his face gray, his eyes hollow.
“They’re taking them,” he said hoarsely.
Both Adam and I turned.
His hands shook as he lifted them, palms scarred with rope burns. “They came at night. Said they were moving us to higher ground. Loaded folks into trucks. But they never came back. I jumped before they could throw me in.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Adam stepped closer, steady as stone. “Who took them?”
The man’s eyes darted toward the exit, fear etched deep into every line of his face. “Not FEMA. Not police. Men with masks. Vans with no markings.” He swallowed hard. “And they didn’t care who watched.”
Cold settled in my gut, heavier than any floodwater.
Because in that moment, I knew the truth.
This wasn’t a natural disaster, taking people.
It was a cover for something far worse.
13
Adam
The old man’s words burned in my head:Men with masks. Vans with no markings.
It fit. Too perfectly. Too damn clean.
I shoved out of the shelter into the night air, the damp heat pressing down like a fist. My team was already waiting outside—Russ steady, Boone restless, Hawk edgy, Blade silent as a shadow. Raine followed close, her braid still dripping, eyes flashing like lightning.
“They’re not lost in the flood,” I said. “They’re being taken.”
Boone’s grin faded. “Taken where?”
“Doesn’t matter where,” Hawk snapped, pacing. “What matters is who—and why.”
“Organs,” Blade said quietly, almost like he’d been expecting it. The others froze, staring at him. He didn’t look up from the knife he was running over his whetstone. “Black market’s alive and well. Flood’s just noise to hide the screams.”
Russ exhaled slowly. “Christ.”
Raine stepped forward, her voice hard. “We have names. People confirmed alive, now vanished. Trucks moving them under the cover of evacuation.”
“Then we track the trucks,” I said. “Russ, pull traffic cam feeds. I know it will be hard with all the flooding. Boone, shake our contacts with local PD—see what’s being buried. Hawk, I want eyes along the river road. Blade…” I paused, meeting his calm, unnerving stare. “You stick with me.”
Raine crossed her arms, chin tilting stubbornly. “And me?”
My gut clenched. Every instinct screamed to keep her far away from this. But I’d seen the look in her eyes back in the shelter. There was no stopping her.
“You stay close,” I said finally, low enough that only she could hear. “And you don’t run off half-cocked again.”
Her lips curved—not a smile, not even close. More like a challenge. “Try to keep up.”
