Page 16 of Hunted in the Silence

“Send it.”

Her unbothered answer slid right through him, sharper than it had any right to be, highlighting just how much of an idiot he’d been acting. He sent the photo and waited.

“That’s him,” she said after a beat. “Absolutely certain. He’s probably about five years older than my original intake descriptions described, but the build and the facial structure are consistent and the eyes are identical. My sources described his eyes specifically. Light colored, close-set.” Another pause, shorter this time. “Where did you find him?”

“Database match from the camera footage last night. He’s got a record, which means he’s either become complacent or Devlin has been using him long enough that Teller thinks the insulation is solid.”

“Devlin rewards loyalty with access,” Brynn said. “If Teller has been with him long enough, he gets more responsibility. To make him feel important. It also makes him a better tool,” she said flatly, and Cole got the sense she was speaking from experience. “He won’t think he’s exposed because Devlin has always managed exposure on his behalf. That’s how Devlin keeps people.”

“By making them feel protected.”

“By making them feel like the protection is conditional. They stay loyal because they’re afraid of what happens if they’re not.” She grew quiet for a second. “Teller will be harder to flip than you’d think. Even if you get him, he’ll believe Devlin can reach him. He’s seen it happen.”

Cole wrote that down. “I need to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“How much do you know about how Devlin handles people who become liabilities? Specifically, what does he do when someone in his network gets close to law enforcement?”

The pause this time stretched longer. He didn’t fill it. He’d learned that when she went quiet like that, she was reaching for something deeper — something she didn’t keep anywhere near the surface.

“He doesn’t handle them,” she said finally. “He delegates it and distances himself from the outcome. There’s always someone below him willing to solve a problem in exchange for protection or advancement.” Another pause followed, and when she spoke next, she was quieter. “I saw it happen once. To a girl I knew. She’d been talking to a social worker who turned out to have connections to an investigation. She disappeared within a week. They said she ran. She didn’t run.”

Cole was still. The pen had stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said, measuring his tone. The words were inadequate and he knew it, but he meant them fully.

“Her name was Dana.” Brynn’s voice was steady, deliberate. “I want that in the record. Her name was Dana Pryce and she was fifteen and she was funny. She used to do impressions of the women who ran the house and they were accurate enough that even the other girls who were terrified of those women couldn’t help but laugh.” She took an audible breath. “I want her name in the record, Cole.”

“It’s in the record,” he promised. “I’m writing it right now.”

He wrote it on his legal pad. Dana Pryce. Fifteen. Not a runaway.

They were quiet for a moment, the two of them on the phone in separate buildings in the same small town, and the silence felt like something they were holding together.

“The Chicago connection,” Brynn said, returning to business. “How are you approaching it?”

“Carefully. The Chicago field office has a separate investigation running on Vance. We’re coordinating, but it means we can’t move on him independently without risking their case.”

“Which means you need something that ties Devlin to the pipeline directly enough that you can justify the resources to pursue both.”

“Yes.” He nodded, though she couldn’t see him.

“The ledger,” she said. “The one I haven’t built yet.”

He frowned. “What ledger?”

“Devlin always kept records. He’s meticulous about tracking his assets and his expenditures, and he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it, because the records are leverage as much as they’re accounting. If we find his personal ledger, we find everything. Names, locations, transactions, the whole structure.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was lower, meant for his ears only. “He keeps it close. He’d never let it leave his immediate control. Which means if we find where Devlin is, we find the ledger.”

“And if we find the ledger, we don’t need the financial forensics to untangle the shell companies.”

“Exactly.”

Cole looked at the whiteboard. At the web of lines and names and the empty space at the center where Devlin’s location should have been. “Then we need to find him.”

“Yes,” Brynn agreed, “we do.”

He heard something in her voice on that last sentence. Not fear. Something older, shaped by years of knowing exactly who Devlin was, and by the quiet acceptance of what finding him would require.