Chapter 3 - HUNTING THE PREDATORS
By 3:00 AM, an abandoned auto-repair shop on the outskirts of the city had been transformed into a dark, high-tech tactical operations centre.
Monitors glowed blue across improvised folding tables. Weapon crates rested against the walls, packed with suppressed sidearms, body armor, and thermal surveillance gear.
Bull tossed a thick dossier onto the center table in front of me.
"You were right, Thomas," Bull said, pulling up a traffic-cam recording on the central screen. "At 3:35 p.m., a black Mercedes SUV pulled onto your street. Registration traces back to a shell company owned by Victor Vance-Drake."
"Who was inside?" I asked, leaning over the screen.
Dax, our unit's signals specialist, zoomed in on the driver and passenger seats. The images were enhanced through facial-recognition algorithms.
"Two guys," Dax pointed out. "The driver is Julian Cole—ex-mercenary, dishonorably discharged five years ago. Now works as Victor’s private 'fixer.' The passenger is a local enforcer named Marcus Graves."
"They went to the house to retrieve the original physical trust deeds," Dax continued. "With those deeds and a forged power-of-attorney document on her sixteenth birthday, Victor could transfer forty million dollars out of the offshore trust into his private accounts before anyone noticed Violet was missing."
"They didn't expect Violet to be home early from school," I said, my voice dropping an octave into pure malice. "She caught them in the house. So they tried to murder a child to cover their tracks."
"Victor is currently at his high-rise penthouse downtown," Bull said, chambering a round into his sidearm. "He’s throwing an exclusive pre-celebration party for his offshore investors. What's the play, Boss?"
May you like
I looked at the weapons table, picking up my customized suppressed pistol and checking the magazine tension.
"We don't go to the police," I said smoothly. "The police follow rules. We follow results. Tonight, we take down the entire food chain."
