Page 139 of Creed

Jones smirks at Tag. “Don’t tempt me with a good time.”

“You two fucking finished?” Len snaps at them. “We don’t have much time to get Sophie and Ryn back.”

“What does that mean?” I demand, my temporarily distracted attention with Adamus Jones is brought back on track with the critical focus here: Sophie.

“It means that they’re en route right now to deliver the girls to the death ring contact,” Len says.

“How do you know this?”Please, fuck, let her intel be wrong.

“The meet you had with the lead.” Nexin regards Len.

Len had told me she wouldn't be our meeting tonight; she must've met someone about this death ring.

She nods. “He squealed like a pig with whatever details he had. I don’t know who the death ring contacts are or where they’ll meet exactly, but I did get confirmation that this is the plan of Ortez, Salome, Perez, and Morales for what they were planning for Sophie… and now Ryn.” Len glances at Tag. “They’re already on Morales’s yacht.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?” Tag grits, fisting his hands.

Jones steps in. “Because she’s one fucking person, who was providing oversight and coordinating everything that you’d need.”

Len shoulders Jones aside with a glare. “I don’t need you to answer for or defend me.”

“Focus,” Rolf barks. “This is bad. Fucking bad. Even if we intercept them before they make the delivery, Ortez and the others could be in communication with the death ring contacts and have already identified that they have Severyn Andrews with them.”

Nexin fists his hair, glancing at me. “No offense to Sophie, but with who and what Ryn is and what we know about this ring…”

“She would be a powerful and tempting addition for the ring,” I deduce, understanding how criminal minds work when it comes to leverage. “They’d always be coming for her.”

Kotan chimes in over the comms to reassure us he blocked Ortez's communication with the death ring contacts so they don't know that they have a prized captive, but my head spinsas they debrief. I know this is a necessary part of the process, so we have all the pieces on the board to make the best plan, but my dread and anguish are pushing me toward the breaking point. I feel the same urgent obsession as Tag—him wanting, noneeding,to get to Severyn, just like Ineedto get to Sophie.

“What’s the plan?” I demand, trying to speed the process along.

“Kotan is working on hacking the boat.” Len swivels the laptop toward me and zooms in on a location on the open water that looks like an island. “He’ll tamper with the navigation system, so instead of heading toward their intended contact, they'll be redirected to this island. Kotan will stop the yacht once it's within range.”

“Then what?” Rolf leans closer to the screen, studying the island.

“We’ll be there. You guys on land, me in a quiet boat.” Len eyes each of us, ending with Tag. “Once Sophie and Ryn are off the yacht, no one else can live.”

I’m down with that.

“Dead people can’t talk.” Nexin nods, but I get a sense that ‘shoot to kill’ isn’t this team’s regular rule of engagement regardless of what happened in the warzone behind Electric.

“How does Manuel Morales factor into this?” I ask. The possibility that I had brought this risk to Sophie has caused me sleepless nights.

“Ortez connected Salome and Morales,” Len explains. “Morales is the money and had previous access to victims.”

That fucking piece of shit.

“The philanthropic efforts in Sophie’s home community…” My mind puts the puzzle pieces in place. “He was targeting the vulnerable youth he was supposedly making big donations to help.”

Len nods. “According to the guy I put down tonight,” she says without any emotion, “that well was tapped because questions were being asked. Also, there seem to be levels to this death ring—the higher up you rise, the morebenefitsyou have. Salome has been on the low rungs so far, supplying only a few victims at a time, but he’s ambitious and wants to rise.”

“Power is involved the higher in the hierarchy you rise?” Rolf guesses.

“Yes, and protection,” Len says.

This explains why the Garcia soldiers would act to grab Sophie in Lopez territory, even though it would mark them by their own organization. This death ring—which must be extremely powerful—would protect them if they delivered.

But why Sophie?

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