Page 57 of Devil Inside: Green

“You know I am—what’s going on? You know I’m searching for Danni.”

“Just show me the view.”

He stands from his chair with the phone, walking over to a window, where he pulls back the billowy, white curtain to show a sandy beach and light-blue waves with white caps lapping the shore. He’s definitely at the beach.

“Now, tell me what the fuck is going on,” Carter demands.

“I had to make sure it wasn’t you.”

“Me what?”

“The one who has Danni.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I need you to do a quick trace if possible. I need to know if women turned up dead in the other countries—in the regions of those countries where Jack was on assignment.”

“Jack? Now you’re pointing fingers at Jack?”

“He pointed fingers at you first.”

“The fuck?”

Carter leans his phone against one of the CPUs to start speed typing on the keyboard in front of him. “Why would he point a finger at me?”

“I had to tell them about the courthouse footage and he got visibly upset. He made a comment about the enemy you don’t see and pointed a finger at Waite, but when Vlad shut that down, he said you fit the description for the man we saw in the footage.”

“He’s not wrong—I do. But…Dammit. You know who else fits the description of the man in the footage?”

“Jack,” we both say at the same time.

After a few minutes of agonizing wait, Carter gets back to me. “Okay, his last assignment was in Vancouver, British Colombia and it looks like in the two months he was there, four women were found butchered on the sides of roads. Two were prostitutes. One was a known drug user and the last was seeking treatment for a gambling addiction.”

“Shit. Before that?”

“Before that, he was in Sao Paulo. A lot of women turn up dead there. It’s a huge city. But ones where they were stabbed or cut up—it looks like there were seven. All listed as prostitutes.”

Goddammit.“Any luck with the cell tower pings?” I ask, losing all sense of patience or friendliness.

“Coming at you right now.”

My phone beeps with an email notification. “I’m following this lead now. Call Vlad and share what we’ve learned here. We need him to call Jack and tell him to meet at the clubhouse. There have been developments and they think they might be onto something.”

“On it,” Carter says before hanging up and I load the location he sent me into my phone then speed off like a bat out of hell with Reaper hot on my tail.

It’s dark by the time we get close to the triangulated location, but I’d know this property anywhere. “Fuck me,” I whisper.

“Fuck me,” Reap repeats my sentiment.

This is the same property where we found Rae and Dela. The exact same goddamn property. What were the chances that he’d circle back here when we already knew about this place? That’s not how he operates. Taking four different women from the same area isn’t how he operates either. I press my hands to my forehead. When he got Danni, I should have thought to come here right away.

My body begins to shake as I fight back the rage building up inside me.

“Brother,” Reaper says.

I pull the .38 from the holster and look directly in Reaper’s eyes. “If she’s not alive when we get to her, you got to let me do what I got to do. Don’t try to stop me. You got a wife who needs you, man. Don’t fucking try to stop me.”

He nods but I can see he doesn’t mean it. I fucking mean it. We speed up the drive because if he’s there, where’s he going to escape now hauling Danni with him?

---