Page 73 of At Your Mercy
“These are district names,” Ichabod said. “We cross-referenced addresses and shipping manifests. Fulton is a converted warehouse on the riverfront, with limited access and heavy loading docks. Belongs to a logistics shell company. Truman is a storage complex—a former industrial park, a lot of private units with one main office.”
Hayes leaned in. “What’s the inventory look like for each?”
Ichabod’s eyes flicked to the ledger thumbnails. “Fulton shows a preponderance of entries marked with ages listed as single digits, but also includes some victims as old as twelve.” He grimaced, looking sick to his stomach. “Belmont runs a wider age range—thirteen to late twenties. Truman skews older—thirties and up. That’s not a clean line, but it’s explicit enough in the manifests to tell us there’s segmentation ofstockby demographics and market.”
The room went cold. “Out of curiosity,” Greyson asked, his jaw ticking, “do we know what the stock is being used for? Once it… sells.”
Hudson replied, “It probably depends on the specific victim—their looks, strengths, health, everything. Why? Are you interested in buying yourpeta playmate?”
Greyson went still before tilting his head toward his younger brother, his eyes flashing with murderous intent. He spoke softly, calmly even, “If you so dare to joke about that again, I will takeyour ‘little pet’and put him in goddamn witness protectionaway from you.”
Hudson growled from across the table, but before he could say anything, Hayes leveled him with a stare. “You can’t joke about things like this. If Ollie heard you say that, he’d get upset. Actually… Never mind, please continue. I’ll take him on a nice, long vacation to Tokyo, just the two of us.”
I frowned at the twins, then addressed my eldest. “We have reason to believe that the younger ones are almost all sold into sexual slavery. The rest are a mix of labor and organ trafficking.”
Greyson nodded, lips thin. “You understand that this is just a small pocket of a global problem?”
“I know. It might not make the slightest difference in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t sit here knowing that,” I looked at the most recent list, “these are people in the depthsof fucking hell, and if I don’t try to help—if we don’t—there’s a significant chance that they will never be able to escape.”
Ichabod added, “If we do one location at a time, Elias will change his routing, move people fast. We hit them simultaneously, we remove his ability to react. We secure victims in place and we secure exits.”
Greyson still frowned. “But what about after that? Are we just dropping these people off at hospitals? They’ll need a lot of care. You’re talking about three warehouses of victims, many underage. This isn’t just a hit that we can walk away from.”
“Law enforcement?” Hayes asked before I could answer.
Ichabod’s expression tightened. “We could try to get a task force in—if we do that, it buys us legal cover for evidence collection and victim care, but for all we know, Elias could have cops on payroll that will tip him off. If we go in and call them after, they could get us on homicide charges for the guys working with Elias.”
“I don’t trust PD with this,” I said flatly. “But Grey’s right, the victims will need more than just being freed. The issue is that by helping them with medical costs, transport, we’d be putting a target on our backs. I have no doubt that law enforcement would love to get their fucking hands on us.”
Hudson’s jaw worked. “So then what’s the plan?”
“It’s far from perfect, but the most important thing is to get these people out of there. Each of you will take one of the facilities. From what Ich’s found so far, it appears there are typically only two to three guards at each. I want Grey to handle Fulton, Hayes with Belmont, and Hudson with Truman. You’ll each take a partner with you to ensure you’re able to dispatch the guards as quickly as possible, with minimal to no damage to the victims. It has to be an in-and-out deal. Maybe you can instruct the victims to call 911 after you leave, but we can’t get much more involved than that.”
Ichabod pulled up a grid and zoomed the Fulton building into the center of the largest screen. “Fulton has two loading bays—one main entrance and a service door on the north side. Cameras are present but go blind between 0200 and 0300. If we move at 0220, we take advantage of reduced visibility.”
“Belmont?” Hayes asked.
“Belmont is harder,” Ichabod said. “It’s urban, mixed-use. Multiple entry points to the warehouse area, crowded alleyways. They keep people below ground—basements, mezzanines. There’s also more foot traffic nearby. We’ll need diversionary distraction—something to pull attention away from our ingress points.” He changed the screen to show the Truman building.
“Truman’s biggest asset is that it’s a dead zone,” he continued. “Isolated, climate-controlled units. Once you’re in, you’re surrounded by metal doors and narrow corridors.”
I drew a breath and let the scope of it settle in.
“While the facilities are being handled, I’ll be dealing with Elias. I’ll be taking a small team of our operatives as Ro’s mentioned there’s a fairly large number of staff at the house at any given time.”
There was a long silence as everyone absorbed the logistics. It was clinical—the kind of talk that made the horror manageable because it put it into boxes you could check off.
Of course, that silence had to be broken by one of my incorrigible nephews.
“Now, who is thisRoyou keep mentioning?” Hudson asked with a shark-like smile. Before I could reiterate what I’d told them at the start of the meeting—that he was a victim on the inside, coming to us for help, he continued, “He wouldn’t happen to have white hair, would he?”
Greyson looked mildly irritated at the turn in the conversation. He pinched the bridge of his nose, mutteringsomething under his breath about the twins never takinganythingseriously.
Hudson leaned forward, smirking. “No, really. White, shoulder-length hair, pale as a ghost, kind of looks like he wandered out of a Tim Burton movie?”
Hayes’s grin matched his brother’s. “Because our husband’s best friend’s brother—” he gestured vaguely, “—saw him at a coffee shop downtown last week. Said he practically screamedpotential threat. Creepy little fox, everyone was staring at him, but he clocked Dorian immediately, smiled at him.”
I grunted, glaring at both of them. “Because smiling at someone is so very threatening.”
