Page 14 of Raven

“You have a name?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said easily. “Connor. Connor Slate.”

Slate.

That was a name I’d heard before.

Gideon once mentioned it during a debrief in Prague—a mercenary who ran logistics for covert operation teams that didn’t officially exist. Slate worked for whoever paid the most—cartels, smugglers, and occasionally governments looking to keep their hands clean.

The fact that he was here, watching a building tied to Beatrice’s call, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“You got a card?” I asked.

“Nope.”

I nodded, then turned and walked away.

But I wasn’t done.

* * *

The momentI arrived back at my place, I fired up the secure laptop.

Sean had upgraded our team server with a facial recognition tool tied to global databases—not exactly legal, but then again, neither were half the people we tracked.

I uploaded a snap of Slate’s face from the street cam and waited.

A few seconds later, the result flashed across my screen:

Conner Slate.Known aliases: Slate, Sawyer King

Affiliated groups: Wolfthorn Syndicate, Vanguard Global (defunct), Mercury Assets

Last seen: Paraguay, Ukraine, Libya

Status:Wanted for questioning—Interpol

The image pulled up beside another.

A compound in Guatemala.

Burned down.

Bodies unrecovered.

But right there, in the corner of the image—barely visible—was the symbol.

A jagged triangle with a slash.

I wondered if that was the same as what Beatrice saw.

So this is bigger than a fire.

This was a warning.

A hunter letting his prey know:I found you. Who was his prey? It had to be Beatrice.

* * *

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