In the silence of the room, Edwards clicked a few keys, and the sound of a ringing phone filled the small space. No one spoke, or even dared to breathe, as we waited to see if the call connected. It rang 5 times before a male voice on the other end finally broke in.
“Hello, who is this?”
“It’s me, you need to listen, I don’t have much time.”
“Drew? Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to meet me days ago, I was getting worried. What is going…”
“Look, I don’t have much time, so just shut up and listen,” Cramer interrupted. “They got me, and it is only a matter of time until they get you, too. You need to get rid of the women and get out of town. Fast. Understand?”
“What? Got you? Who ‘got’ you?”
“The Organization.”
“You aren’t making sense, Drew. There is no Organization. Not anymore.”
“Look, whatever they are calling themselves now, it doesn’t matter. Same shit, different name. The point is, they are holding me, trying to get information out of me. Don’t worry, I haven’t told them anything. But I need you to reach out to your people and have get me out of here.”
“My people?”
“The Domini! What else could I possibly mean?” Cramer snapped.
“No, you misunderstand,” the other voice replied. “I wasn’t confused about who you meant; I was confused about why you thought they would care what happens to you?”
“Look, I am taking a risk making this call, to save your skin. I need you to return the favor. Make them care, or maybe I won’t be so tight-lipped.”
“So what? You don’t know anything, anyway. Besides, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t help you. The Domini have a policy, if you are stupid enough to get caught, then you are where you belong. No exceptions,” the man sounded almost gleeful. Clearly, he hadn’t liked Cramer much, either. “No one will be coming for you, Drew. So, you’d better get comfortable.”
“I’ll tell them about you. I will tell them everything!”
“I suspect you would have done that anyway, the moment you thought it would benefit you. Honestly, Drew, you earned this. Don’t call me again.”
The call terminated, leaving Cramer staring at the phone in silent bewilderment.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly how I expected that to go,” I looked over at Tom.
“No,” Tom agreed. “They didn’t sound much like co-conspirators, did they? Let alone friends. If Cramer hadn’t said ‘get rid of the women’ I would have assumed he had called someone unrelated. But it’s clear this is who he was trading women with. I just don’t know why. It clearly had nothing to do with their mutual respect and regard for each other.”
“Perhaps that is the point,” I suggested. “Cramer could have been trying to curry favor with someone connected with the remnants of the Domini. Perhaps he wanted in and was hoping this guy would vouch for him, if he gave him something valuable, something he wanted.”
“Trading human beings for favors, like they were baseball cards,” Tom’s lip curled in disgust. “It doesn’t really matter why they were doing it, though, does it? Our course of action is the same. We go pick the guy up, free his captives, and then we can interrogate him about his Domini connections. Maybe this will even lead us to a major Domini cell, a nice bonus. Good work.”
Tom clapped me on the shoulder.
“Edwards, you have a name for us?” I asked.
The technician nodded,
“The number belongs to a Shawn Britton. I’ve sent his address to your phone, Agent Harris.”
Tom nodded,
“Thanks, Ed. I’ve got it.”
“Good,” I smiled, it was time to make our next move. “Wait 2 minutes, then have someone go in and bring Cramer back to his cell. Make sure they make a lot of noise and take their time unlocking the door. We want him to have time to put the phone back, so he thinks that he got away with this, that no one is the wiser. Don’t call attention to the phone, ignore it entirely, in fact. Just say something came up and we won’t be able to continue the interrogation at this time. If you know of someone who can make it sound like they are just transparently making excuses for us, that would be great. If we do this right, we might be able to get more out of him, later.”
“Understood. I’ll take care of it.”
“Fantastic. We’d better get going, then. We probably don’t have much time. I’ll get in touch when we get back.”
I turned quickly and headed out of the room. Tom trotted behind me.
“Where are we going?”
“To pick up Shawn Britton, where else?” I didn’t break stride.
“Hey, now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all your help, Ray, but I can’t take you out in the field. Wallace would kill me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If you weren’t willing to take me, why did you agree to this plan? Surely you realize that, however he felt about Cramer, now that Britton has been warned, he will move quickly to dispose of his prisoners and disappear, right? If we don’t move now, we could lose all of them, so there is no time for hesitation or second-guessing.”
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“If you knew that was the obvious outcome, why did we push this? We would have tracked down which of Cramer’s contacts it was, eventually. Wouldn’t that have been safer?”
“Yeah, ‘eventually’ is the key word there, Tom,” I rolled my eyes. “Cramer was… pretty gregarious. He had hundreds of contacts, and it would have taken forever to sort through them. Not only is that more time innocent people would be held captive, but additionally, Cramer had already been missing from his own life for some time. How long before someone realized what must have happened to him? If Shawn Britton isn’t a complete idiot, he would have been in the wind before we ever confirmed him as a suspect. And odds are he would have disposed of his captives before he ran. After all, they would be a liability, at that point. That is the whole reason we did this. We needed Cramer to finger his accomplice, so we could get to them today. Immediately. If you are going to delay things, all we have done here is made things much worse.”
Admittedly, I hadn’t made that clear before we started, hoping to force his hand exactly this way, but if he had thought about it, Tom could have figured it out for himself.
“Well, I will have to get one of the others to go with me, then.”
“They are nowhere near ready for this kind of thing, and you know it. You take one of them, and someone is getting killed. Come on, Tom, we can take care of this together, screw what Wallace thinks. You are capable of making decisions like this without his approval, right? You don’t need him to hold your hand, do you?”
“I mean, I suppose…” he wavered.
“Besides, even if you doubt my judgement, you will be there with me, what could happen? Come on, it will be like old times.”
Tom hesitated for just a moment.
“Well… I suppose that, as long as we are successful, Wallace won’t really be able to complain, will he? We just need to make sure we get results. If we miss our target, this will be both of our heads.”
“Then we had better hurry,” I replied.
“Alright, follow me, we’ll go to the garage and take my car.”
I smiled,
“Sounds good.”
We pulled out of the underground parking lot, and I saw the sun for the first time in weeks. For a moment, I closed my eyes and just let the light warm my face. Then, I quickly took in my surroundings. We were on the edge of the city, near to the suburbs to the east, in a nondescript, concrete building that looked like a manufacturing facility or maybe some kind of storage building. It wasn’t an area I was very familiar with, I didn’t typically visit the prison facilities, but we were still in the Organizations usual territory. I noted the nearest intersection and filed that information away for future use. Wallace hadn’t wanted me to know the location of his facility, having me drugged for transport and kept securely indoors. Tom wasn’t as careful. Probably because he trusted me. Maybe I should feel guilty about that, but I didn’t have that luxury at the moment. When this was all over, though… I shook my head. There were other things to worry about. I held out my hand,
“Give me your phone.”
“What? Why?” Tom asked.
“So, I can check the address Edwards sent you, and figure out where we are going.”
“Oh, right,” Tom fished his phone from his pocket and passed it over, keeping his eyes on the road.
I opened the address and directed him onto the highway, heading back towards downtown. As he drove, I started browsing social media, searching for information on Shawn Britton. Eventually, I found what I was most interested in, a photo. Britton cut a striking figure; tall, with red-blond hair and bright blue eyes, he would certainly stand out in any crowd. Which was convenient for us, at least. As we neared our destination, I directed Tom to pull up out front of an apartment building. He parked at a meter and turned to me.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“I figure we wait out here for a bit, see if we catch him coming or going. Ideally, the call from Cramer will trigger some movement, on his part. If nothing happens, we’ll go in and knock on the door, maybe talk to some of the neighbours and…” I trailed off as a car pulled out of the parking lot and passed us on the street. “Change of plans, follow that car.”
“What?”
“That’s our guy,” I pointed through the windshield.
“How do you know?”
I spun his phone around and showed him the screen. His eyes widened and he nodded, pulling back out into traffic behind the silver, four-door sedan.
“I guess we got here just in time.”
“With any luck, that call has prompted him to go and deal with his captives. But that only helps us if we don’t lose him. Speed up and get into the left lane, this isn’t a leisure tour.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Tom griped, but he followed my instructions anyway.
“Good. Because several lives depend on us getting this right, partner.”
His hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles turned white, and I saw him chewing on the inside of his cheek. He was nervous. Good. He wanted to do field work, and this was what it entailed. About time he learned that. We tracked Britton through the city streets until we arrived at a small apartment building about 15 minutes’ drive away. It wasn’t as luxurious as the condo where he lived, but it seemed to be a neat, pleasant sort of building. The sort of place where students or people just entering the workforce might live with a few roommates, to save on rent. Britton parked and got out of his car, glancing around himself anxiously before he slipped into the building.
“What do we do now?” Tom asked, pulling into the parking lot.
I looked up at the apartments, counting windows. It looked like there were about 4 units, and there was no sign of a buzzer. Britton hadn’t used a key, or waited at the door, so it probably wasn’t locked.
“I’ll follow him in and knock on doors until I find the right place. You wait here and watch his car, that way he can’t get away.”
“You want to split up?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course, why not?”
“Isn’t that a bit… risky?”
“Not really. This isn’t a horror movie. We are hunting him, remember? Not the other way around. It is much riskier to have no one watching the car in case he makes a run for it, don’t you think?”
“Maybe I should go in…” he hesitated.
“Look, we don’t have time for this. You can go in and I will wait here, if you prefer, but I find a lone woman knocking on strangers’ doors gets a different response than a lone man. Not necessarily fair, but it is what it is. Either way, your call, boss.”
Tom frowned, but eventually he gave in,
“Alright, you go. But I will be waiting right here. Shout as soon as you find him, and I will come in and join you. And if you aren’t back in 10 minutes, I am coming in, regardless.”
“Sounds good,” I turned to head into the building, but felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait,” Tom leaned down and pulled a gun from his ankle holster. “Take this. Just, don’t tell Wallace I gave it to you.”
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to leave you without…”
Tom patted a spot under his right arm,
“Don’t worry about it. That’s my backup.”
I chuckled. I should have known. Tom always loved his weapons.
“I won’t argue, then.”
I turned and trotted towards the building. Ideally, I would like a reason to be knocking on doors, but I didn’t exactly have much time to plan. I glanced around, searching for a reasonable cover, and as I neared the building, I spotted a bag of takeout food that had been left on the porch of the building next door. Detouring briefly to grab it, I headed into the building as a lost delivery driver, trying to get this delicious bag of Thai food to its rightful owner. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I could do on short notice. I needed to hurry, because there was a decent chance that Britton was already taking care of his loose ends.