I look at Recon. He looks at me.
"They have a line into the DMV," I say.
"Faye."
"Or above Faye. Either way, they know we ran the plate. They know we found the truck."
Recon's eyes go to the tree line of the salvage yard. The F-250 is already gone. Sal made a call or received one, and the truck that connected him to the bayou operation is no longer sitting in plain sight.
"Goddamn it, he slipped past us,” I mutter. “This is what we get for letting a phone call distract us from the mission.”
“He's running scared," Recon says.
"Which means he's talking to someone. Telling them the Saints are looking at him." I'm already texting Templar. "A scared man with something to hide makes mistakes. The people above him don't want mistakes."
We drive back to the compound.
Templar calls a church meeting, full table of all patched members plus Grudge. Grudge is at the table because Templarmade an exception. The weight of that sits on me the entire meeting.
I lay it out: the plate, Sal Morata, the phone call, the truck disappearing inside minutes. The room is quiet.
"They think the warning is enough," Pawn finally says. "One call, we back off, it's handled."
"That's what they want to think." I look around the table. "But Sal is scared now. He knows his truck was made. He's going to keep talking to whoever is above him in the chain, keep reporting that the Saints are sniffing around him. That makes him a liability."
"And liabilities get managed," Templar says.
"Yes. The question is whether they manage Sal or manage us." I look at Templar. "If they decide the Saints are too close to Sal to risk leaving us alone, they don't make another phone call."
The room understands what that means.
"Lockdown," Templar says. "Full perimeter. Nobody moves without a partner, nobody goes outside without clearing it first." His eyes move to Grudge. "That includes you."
Grudge's jaw is tight. He nods once.
Church ends, and I go find Jesslyn.
She's in the common room when I get there.
Her laptop is open at the far end of the table, and she’s working on the bayou frames. She looks up when I come in and reads something in my face before I say a word.
"Tell me," she says.
I sit down across from her and I do. The plate, Sal Morata, the phone call, the truck gone before the dust settled. She processes it the same way she processes everything: completely, without rushing, building the picture before she speaks.
"Sal is scared and talking," she says. "Which means the operation knows someone is looking at him."
"Yes."
"But they don't know it's connected to the bayou. They just know the Saints ran his plate."
"That's what I think."
"So they don't know about me. Or the photographs. That we’re here, I mean," she clarifies.
"As far as we can tell."
She looks at the laptop screen for a moment. Then back at me. "So I keep working."
