One by one, the guys shoved their way into the lower area of our clubhouse. Some called it a basement, but it didn’t reallyfeel like that. It was a finished space with a table and chairs big enough to fit all of us if we needed to sit for a long meeting. There was a roll-down screen and a projector that Ranger could easily hook up to if he needed to show us something. The carpet gave beneath our feet, the walls were painted a crisp white.
I put a lot of work into this downstairs area.
It was hardly a fucking basement.
“All right,” Cap said as he raised his hand and gathered our attention spans, “we’re cutting to the chase. Theories as to why the law firm we just identified as part of this ring is over here chasing a woman in a modded car. Go.”
Ranger was the first to snarl. “I want first dibs on those assholes once we catch them.”
I chuckled beneath my mask, and it turned everyone’s attention to me.
Including the territorial Ranger. “Something funny, Lieutenant?”
My face fell beneath my mask. “I’m not your fucking lieutenant.”
“Enough, you two,” Cap said before his attention locked with Brutus. “I hear those rusty wheels squeaking in your head from over here, big guy. Whatcha thinking?”
Brutus and his dark little corner.
I understood being friends with the dark.
“At first glance, without any other context involved,” the man said, “it looks like she was being chased down by guys directly involved with the ring, not the law firm.”
I pointed at him. “I’d second that notion, if nothing else, because of where I ended up before they disappeared.”
Ranger slammed his laptop down onto the table and grumbled to himself as his fingers flew across the keyboard. The projector started its descent with a soft whir, and within theblink of an eye, Ranger had the last little bit of my recording pulled up.
“There,” he said as he paused the frame and pointed. “Those are distinct tire tracks carving their way into the state park on the northwest side.”
“Where is that in relation to the two places we’ve already found?” Cap asked.
Ranger tugged the video screen off to the left and brought up a map. I saw some coordinates drop, and a soft growl rumbled behind my mask. “That’s right in the fucking middle of them.”
Ranger thumbed over his shoulder at me. “It was the first thing I did after watching the footage. The smaller place where you and Ariel were sits about twenty miles into the woods from that point to the south, and their HQ sits about thirty or so miles away from that entry point, due north.”
Cap slowly nodded. “All right. Other theories.”
Ranger balked. “Other theories? You mean, we’re really entertaining the fact that the shit we’ve already been through and the shit that just rolled up onto our doorstep aren’t connected.”
Cap pinned him with a look that was equal parts commanding and quizzical. And I couldn’t blame him.
None of us had seen Ranger like this before.
“All we have is circumstantial. A few hunches and some time to think about things. We need hard concrete proof before we go charging in to do anything. So we start from the beginning, like we always do. You got an issue with that?”
Ranger grumbled something beneath his breath as he dragged my video back to the very beginning.
He pressed the spacebar on his laptop and played the video.
We all watched through the video, but about five minutes in, Doc piped up. “You can’t catch up to them.”
I shook my head. “Even with my mods, I couldn’t catch them.”
Doc wrinkled his nose as he peered over his shoulder at me. “The fuck? That doesn’t make any sense, even for a law firm.”
“Hence, the theories,” Cap said as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“What if the logo is a decoy?” Ranger asked. “Something to keep our focus and throw us off their scent? Let me dig a little more into the law firm real quick.”
