Boone finally looked up, his face serious but his eyes carrying the faintest flicker of humor. “Trust me. I get it. Cold storage full of organs. Bad guys with deep pockets. Mass cover-up. Got the picture without the smell-o-vision, thanks.”
The absurdity of it cracked through my fear, and a laugh escaped before I could stop it. It sounded a little wild, a little too sharp, but it was real.
Boone’s mouth twitched like he wanted to grin but wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. He turned back to the laptop. “Now, let me find the trail before this turns into story time with trauma.”
Adam’s arm slid around my shoulders, pulling me close. His chest was solid against my back, steady where I wasn’t. I leaned into him, still shaken but lighter somehow, the edge of panic dulled by Boone’s dry humor.
For the first time since the ridge, I felt like maybe we weren’t just reacting anymore.
71
Adam
The laughter didn’t last. Boone’s fingers kept moving over the keyboard, the blue light flickering across his face, but the weight in the room came crashing back. The organ trade wasn’t a rumor anymore. It was real, organized, and close.
I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on the table. “Alright. Jokes aside. What’ve you got, Boone?”
He cracked his neck, eyes still glued to the screen. “A trail. Not much, but enough. The clinic invoices weren’t unique. Same orders have been filed in three other ‘facilities’—one in Dallas, one near San Antonio, and another tied to a private hospital in Houston. All disguised as routine medical research labs.”
Russ frowned. “Shells.”
“Shells,” Boone confirmed. He tapped the screen, bringing up a flowchart of shell companies spider-webbed across states and offshore accounts. “Money moves in circles so tight it’d make your head spin. Nonprofits, university research grants, pharmaceutical fronts. But they all loop back to the same parent trust. And guess where it’s registered?”
Blade’s voice cut in, flat. “Offshore.”
Boone gave a humorless smile. “Bingo.”
My jaw tightened. Offshore meant power. Offshore meant protection. But it also meant someone thought they were untouchable.
“Then we make them touchable,” I said.
Logan crossed his arms, his jaw ticking. “You don’t just hit a trust fund in Zurich with a rifle, Stoker. We need names. Chains of command. People on the ground.”
He wasn’t wrong, and that grated.
Hawk leaned back in his chair, smirking like a wolf. “Names we can find. Chains we can cut. You point us at the head, Stoker, and we’ll bring it back on a plate.”
I let the silence stretch, looking around the room. My team. My family. Battered, bruised, scarred, but unbroken. And now Boone, dragged back in whether he liked it or not. Even Logan, glowering in the corner, was part of this now.
“We start with Dallas,” I said finally. “That shipment in twelve hours is our best shot. If we intercept it, we get hard evidence. Routes. Contacts. Maybe even a name we can use to unravel the chain.”
Russ closed his notebook, calm but firm. “And if we miss it?”
I met his eyes. “We won’t.”
The room fell quiet again, the decision settled like iron.
Raine’s hand brushed mine under the table, grounding me in the middle of the storm. I squeezed back once before letting go, my gaze locked on Boone’s screen.
They thought they could scrub ridges clean, erase bodies, and watch us like puppets on a string.
They were wrong.
This wasn’t just about saving lives anymore.
It was about tearing down the machine.
72
