My phone buzzes. Alexei.
"What do you have?" I answer.
"Two updates. First—Sergei Morozov left Los Angeles this morning."
I straighten in my chair. "Destination?"
"Las Vegas, initially. He's meeting with someone—we're still working on identifying who. From there, our sources say he's heading to Seattle."
Seattle. The Belov family operates out of Seattle—smaller than the Morozovs, but vicious. If Sergei is meeting with them, he's building a coalition.
"He's not coming directly," I say, thinking out loud.
"No. He's gathering allies first. Making sure that when he moves, he moves with enough force that you can't push back."
It's what I would do in his position. Smart. Patient. Dangerous.
"Keep tracking him. I want to know every meeting he takes, every hand he shakes, every meal he eats. If he books a flight to San Francisco, I want to know before he reaches the airport."
"Understood." Alexei pauses. "There's something else."
"The woman. Mirella."
"Yes. I found her."
I lean back in my chair, waiting.
"She was sold to a man named Howard Crane. He owns a ranch outside Reno—cattle operation, officially. Unofficially, he's connected to several trafficking networks up and down the West Coast. Uses the ranch as a... holding facility."
The words settle into my stomach like stones.
"What's her condition?"
"Alive, as far as we can tell. But Crane has a reputation. The women who go to his ranch don't usually leave." Another pause. "What do you want me to do with this information?"
I stare at the security footage, at Bianca emerging from the greenhouse with dirt on her hands. She asked about the other women. Asked if there was anything she could do.
This isn't our business. We don't rescue trafficking victims. We're not heroes.
But Bianca asked.
"Keep digging," I say. "I want to know everything about Crane's operation. Security, staffing, routines. How many women he has, where he keeps them, what the extraction options look like."
Silence on the line. I can feel Alexei's surprise.
"You're thinking about going in?"
"I'm thinking about options. Just get me the intelligence."
"Understood."
I end the call and sit with the weight of what I've just set in motion. An extraction operation in Nevada would be complicated, risky, potentially costly. It could draw attention we don't need, resources we can't spare. All for women I've never met, who mean nothing to me or my family.
But Bianca's face when she asked about them—the way she pushed past her own terror to think about someone else's suffering. That meant something.
I don't examine what.
***
