“He does, and he will when the timing is right. It serves us to keep him alive. Carter has pinned Clint’s murder on him, but Carter was the one in the driver’s seat. I don’t need Walter to convince me of that. I want to find the real proof and use that as one of our reasons for deposing Carter.”
“I still don’t understand why we need a reason? The man is a monster,” Bree says. “And our word is law. We just take him out after we get Lili, and we can manufacture evidence if we need to explain it.”
“You would stoop to his level?” Eric asks her. “I thought my daughter was more principled.”
“You can’t fight someone like Carter with principles,” Baz says. “You have to beat him at his own game.”
“If we want to effect change, we need to hold ourselves to the highest accountability. We don’t need to manufacture evidence against Carter when he has broken so many rules. We need to find irrefutable proof of his crimes, and we present that in an honest light, and no one can argue against it. If we don’t do that, if we are seen to treat him unfairly, his supporters will move against us. We need to present enough evidence to make them stop and think.”
“We don’t have the luxury of time,” I say. “He’s going after world domination.”
“And he plans to elevate a master's family to Luminary status,” Ares says. “I’m thinking that’s his next priority.”
“Do you know who it is?” Eric asks.
“We were hoping you would have ideas.” Jase rubs the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t. That is his most closely guarded secret.”
“I need to see Ruben now,” Ares says to Baz. “Can you move that meeting forward?”
“You don’t need to see Ruben,” Eric says, draining the last of his drink. “He can’t tell you anything I don’t already know.”
Stunned silence greets his statement until Ares finds his voice. “Then tell us. I know The Bulls were heavily involved in sex trafficking, and they started selling kids around the same time my sister went missing. I know in my gut they were involved in it.”
“I suspect they were,” Eric says. “Like I suspect the intel on Baldwin’s drive will prove it once we have accessed it. But Ruben couldn’t tell you that. He was smart enough to outsource the operational side of their new business to someone else, so if shit went down, his fingerprints weren’t on it. Ruben is a shrewd player.”
“Not shrewd enough to avoid getting arrested and thrown in jail,” Ares says in a snippy tone.
“The Sainthood set them up with a little help from VERO. Whether Ruben was smart or as dumb as a bag of rocks didn’t matter. He was still going down because he was a scapegoat.”
“For the sex trafficking?” I ask, starting to lose the train of this conversation.
Eric shakes his head. “That was a drugs sting, but it was to get The Bulls out of the way while VERO went after The Sainthood.”
“Who is VERO, and what does this have to do with my sister?” Ares asks, sounding as confused as I feel.
“VERO is a secret organization that takes on high-level projects for the government and private clients,” Baz explains. “They are government funded, but if you investigated them, it would look like they are privately funded.”
“It’s all a smoke screen,” Eric says. “They have a number of Luminary investors on their board, and VERO does a lot of the dirty work for The Luminaries.”
Lo’s friend D pops into my head, and I wonder if this is the organization he works for. My eyes meet Chad’s, and I can see he has the same thought. It’s not that far of a stretch. Not when VERO and The Sainthood have just been mentioned in the same breath.
“If Ruben wasn’t the guy on the ground, who was? And can you get me a meeting with him?”
“The guy running the operation for The Bulls was a man named Luke McKenzie.”
“Was?” I ask.
“He’s dead. Gunned down outside a burned-out meth house last year.”
Ares curses and buries his head in his hands.
Eric stares at me strangely for a minute. “I thought your friend Harlow Westbrook might have mentioned him to you.”
“Why would Lo mention some dead trafficker to me?” I frown. Am I missing something here?
“Because Harlow Westbrook is the person who took McKenzie down.”
