Page 23 of Twisted Empire

“And they’ve gotten away with it for all this time,” Logan muttered. “For fuck’s sake.”

Beckett’s voice lowered. “You don’t get this high up in the criminal world without being very good at covering your tracks. We’re incredibly lucky to even come across that one obvious slip in forty or more years of records.”

It all made sense, in the most sickening sort of way. I gazed out the van window with a growing sense of melancholy, watching the buildings whip by.

Beckett turned the vehicle into another parking lot outside a big brick building. “Here’s St. Joseph’s.” He turned in his seat to check with Logan. “Are you good to get started?”

Logan flexed his fingers. “I’m ready. Let’s see what we can dig up here.”

As he resumed his urgent typing, Slade grabbed my hand and tugged me back to the other bench. “He’s not great company while he’s at work, Piccolina,” he said with a wink. “And you’ve already figured out the key the rest of us couldn’t.”

I didn’t feel all that victorious, though. My stomach churned as Logan dug into the hospital’s network and siphoned out copies of their files.

“Transplants, transplants,” he muttered to himself, and then to Dexter, “Sending more over.” He wasn’t even waiting to finish the download before passing some on now.

Dexter’s fingers flicked across his tablet’s screen. “Here’s one. Two of the figures I’ve seen repeated.” He paused, his eyes darting from side to side as he scanned the screen. “Another—this one has the same dosage of that medication as the Baldwin file.”

I slumped back against the wall of the van. The participants in the awful scheme were everywhere. How many lives had Doom’s Seed ruined or outright ended to get all those organs?

“How can we prove what’s going on, even with these records?” I asked. “There’s nothing clear enough in the files to get the cops to take notice, is there? They’d brush it off as coincidences or data error.”

Slade’s jaw clenched. “Then we find people with medical knowledge who’ll understand it the same way you and your dad did.”

“But I already had all this other evidence to convince me there was a problem, and my dad pieced it together on his own. Any doctor or researcher we try to tell is going to dismiss us as crazy before we even get far enough for them to pay attention to the data.”

“Once we have enough pieces, they’ll have to listen,” Logan insisted, but I could tell from the grimness of his expression that he didn’t totally believe that either.

We had a whole lot of records that claimed those operations had happened legitimately and only the smallest of signs that it was a lie. Doom’s Seed obviously had actual doctors under his sway, because someone had performed those operations. I could already imagine that if we tracked down the facilities where the records said the transplants had taken place, he’d have all the proof in place to make it look legit, and the only people who’d know it wasn’t true on his payroll.

We still needed something concrete and unarguable to tie our case together, and I had no idea where we were going to find that.

CHAPTERTEN

Logan

“Hey,” Beckett called from across the room. “I figured I’d grab takeout for dinner. Does Mexican sound okay to you?”

I glanced up from the screen I’d been peering at, taking a second to reorient myself to the room around me—the opulent sitting room of what Beckett called his “apartment” in his family’s mansion. It was safe to say I’d never lived anyplace that looked remotely like this. I’d never even had a vacation this fancy.

Not that our stay here was any kind of leisure situation.

“Sure,” I said. “I think we all like that.”

“I’ll get a bunch of different things so there’s lots of variety and people can choose what they like. If Slade and Dexter come back before I do, let them know I won’t be long.” He tipped his head to me and headed out.

My friends had gone out to take a stroll around the grounds after Slade had suggested they needed fresh air and exercise to clear their heads. Maddie had vanished into her guest bedroom to catch up on schoolwork—as well as she could with everything that was going on.

But I’d had a different kind of work to occupy me, one I’d been able to tell couldn’t wait any longer after what we’d seen at the hospitals.

I picked up Mom’s phone again, the one we’d found in the purse Maddie had stolen, and flicked to the next number in her Contacts list. When I ran a search on it on my laptop, it brought up the same name as it showed in her Contacts list: Celena’s Nail Salon.

The website for the salon looked legit. I dug a little farther to see if I could find any connections to Doom’s Seed’s holdings, but it appeared the woman who owned the business was leasing the space from a perfectly above-board retail rental company.

Mom simply went there to get her nails done, presumably.

I sighed and slumped deeper into the leather couch cushions. That was basically all I’d turned up so far: Mom’s personal service people. She had a hairdresser and a personal shopper and a stylist within easy dialing, and various shops and eateries. It was almost as if she had no social life at all, at least not with anyone she didn’t pay.

Well, no social life outside Doom’s Seed himself. I’d found a text thread going back years with an unlisted number that had to be him, given the explicit nature of some of the conversations it contained. Just remembering some of their exchanges made my stomach lurch.

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