Page 8 of Hard Game

I rub the pencil between my forefinger and thumb and consider his question.

What do traffickers need to be successful?

Access to vulnerable people, places to hide them, money?—

“They ran out of cash?”

Elijah hums. “Unlikely. These rings are funded by people we don’t want to think about.”

“Yes,” I say somewhat impatiently. “But you know the saying—when the heat comes knocking, you have to be able to walk away within seconds. No looking back. So what if…”

“They backed away? The sponsors?” Elijah nods his agreement. “To keep a low profile.”

“Yes.”

“And they didn’t have any money of their own…”

“So they stopped,” I finish for him. “But it seems unlikely that a ring of that size would run out of money.”

It doesn’t make sense.

“Unless they lost it somehow.”

I snap my head in Elijah’s direction, pleased to see him leaning forward and widening his eyes with excitement.

“What if…”

“Yes?” I encourage him, leaning forward and spinning my pencil in my fingers rapidly.

“What if they had an internal conflict?”

I suck in a breath and consider his words. “An internal conflict?”

Elijah nods. “Yeah. So maybe one of them got scared and took the money, leaving them in the shit.”

This could make sense. But…

“Why? Why would they double-cross them like that? Anyone that works with traffickers is fucking unsavory, right?”

“Right,” Elijah says. “But it’s an option.”

“Well,” I say with a huff. “They’re just as bad, in my opinion. Taking the profits from trafficking people makes me sick.”

“But consider it. If they have no money, they can’t do shit.”

“They’d have to go back to the drawing board,” I agreed. “You think that’s what happened here?”

Elijah shrugs. “It’s an option. Can you think of anything else?”

I stare down at his loopy handwriting and sigh. “No.”

“So they’re back,” Elijah says, tapping the paper with his pen. “They’ve killed a girl because she spoke to someone about something. They wanted this to be a message—they left her out in the open to be found.”

“Except Carmen was tipped off before,” I remind him. “Someone knew they were dumping that girl there.”

“So our victim spoke to someone and died because of it, and someone knew she’d been killed and told us where to find her.”

“But not in time to find them.”

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