My fingers moved before I could think, commands firing, two more screens flaring to life as I pulled threads together. He let me work, handing me more coffee and cookies.
“Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand over my mouth; eyes locked on the data. “That’s not… no.” Quieter now. I leaned in, reran the query, cross-checked, and forced the system to prove me wrong.
It didn’t.
I sat back an inch, as if distance might make it less real. Then I dragged files across, opened more windows, stacked everything into place, building the picture faster than most people could follow.
“What’s wrong?” Novak pushed.
I didn’t answer straight away. My jaw tightened as I scanned, sorted, and cataloged. He shifted closer to see what I was looking at. Columns. Filenames. Structure. Certainly not sermons or donations.
“The cult is a cover for a trafficking pipeline.”
I opened a directory, and a grid filled the screen—IDs, ages, coded tags. My gaze caught on one column.
“Compliance collars,” I said, the words sitting wrong in my mouth. “Inventory tracking. Behavior flags… Jesus.”
Another window. Medical files. Notes. Scores.
“They’re conditioning the victims,” I went on, my voice flattening into something colder. “Breaking them down. Grading them. Matching them to buyers.”
I opened another file—and stilled when I found Ezra and Seth’s sister.
“Eden.” Barely a whisper. “Fourteen. Four months pregnant. ‘Mother and baby healthy’—that’s how they log it.”
Images loaded. Side profile. Her stomach rounded. Same hollowed-out expression as the boys.
“There’s a listing,” I said. “Starting bid: four hundred thousand. Male fetus noted.” I swallowed, forced the rest out. “They’re selling her child.”
Novak was silent, and I stared at him for a beat too long, then forced myself to click into the next layer. A third screen populated—routes, timestamps, handoffs.
“Transport runs through multiple jurisdictions,” I said. “Shell charities. Church vehicles. It disappears in the paperwork.” I went very still as something else surfaced. “They’ve got law enforcement backing them up.” I tilted the screen so Novak could see. “Look at this—local liaison.”
I tapped the line, jaw tight. “Code name only. ‘Sgt D.’ No surname. And this—” I pointed lower, my voice dropping, “—confirmed escort at five percent fee.’ This Sgt D is assisting in moving victims and getting paid for it.”
I scanned further, faster now, anger sharpening into precision. “He’s not the only one. Intake logs. Conditioning stages. Transport routes. Victims cataloged, collared, scored, then pushed through shell systems so they vanish.” I exhaled slowly. “This isn’t a handful of zealots in the middle of nowhere.”
No. It was built. Structured. Scaled.
“A pipeline.” I pushed back from the desk, not far, just enough to breathe, but my eyes never left the screens. “Built to move victims like product.”
“What now?”
He stared at the screen. “I’ll dig deeper. Get Lyric on this. I need time.”
TWENTY
Novak
Caleb disappearedinto the screens the way he always did, fingers moving in a blur, code and data rolling past faster than most people could read, and I let him, because this was his domain and my role in it was simple: keep him safe, keep him functioning, keep everything around him contained.
I walked the perimeter twice. Checked exits again, although I already knew them. Found a set of bolt cutters in the outbuilding and added them to my pack, checked my ammo, and stripped and cleaned my gun. Twice.
Every so often, I stepped back inside to check on him, not because he needed it, but becauseIdid, because knowing exactly where he was and that he was still breathing mattered more than anything else in the room.
At one point, he glanced up when I came in, eyes unfocused from whatever system he was buried in, and he smiled at me—easy, distracted and something dropped in my chest that I couldn’t understand. I tried to return it, adjusting muscles I don’t use. I’m sure it didn’t land right because he raised an eyebrow before he went back to work. I filed my smile awayas something to correct later, something to learn how to do properly, because if I freaked him out, then it mattered.
I made coffee. Fresh every time it cooled. Set it within reach without interrupting his flow. Fed him sandwiches, chips, reheated chili, and the rest of the cookies.
