Page 61 of Wild Heart
“It’s an old move, and it’s only effective for as long as he’s underground. The second he crawls from his shit hole, Midnight has eyes on him.”
Midnightwas the hacker Ben had on payroll. The kid was a near genius, and I was one of the few people who knew his actual identity.
“There are thousands of manholes across Seattle.” I pushed a hand through my hair. “We don’t have the manpower to put a guy at every single one unless we call in help.”
“That’s a waste of fucking time for someone like Delgado. We indulged his chase, but it’s over now. Midnight’s been tracking his accounts across the country.”
“You want to rob him?”
It wasn’t a bad fucking idea. Delgadolivedfor money. It was the only thing that made him feel powerful.
“Oh, I’ll rob him.” Ben stared down at the blood on his knuckles. “We didn’t have Midnight as a resource five years ago, and I intend to use every one of his skills to my advantage. He found something you’ll be interested in seeing.”
With a flick of his wrist, the folder fell open. Arms across my chest, my eyes narrowed beneath the dim light as I took in the papers it held. A list of numbers was printed across each of them, dating back nearly twenty years.
“What the fuck am I looking at?”
“Delgado has over two dozen alias’ he uses for money laundering. That money gets pushed around daily, going from bank account to bank account, making it that much harder to track. Midnight’s been following it for over a year, and every couple of months, a new offshore account pops up under a new alias.”
“Delgado’s got fucking shit for brains. No goddamn way he’s doing this on his own. He’s got to have someone under his thumb, making all the moves.”
“He does.”
Ben looked at me then, eyes bottomless and hollow. An eerie calm settled over him, and I saw his hands open and close as though he was preparing himself for violence.
My heart rate spiked against the change, nostrils flaring as the air shifted.
“I assume you know your boy has a brother?”
Something like ice clawed down my spine. “Tell me you're not involving my boy in this.”
“Delgado already did. Years ago.”
Ben flipped a page, but the numbers only blurred as I found myself sinking into a frigid silence. The frost was sharp against my skin, and I knew it came from a place much lower than Hell.
“Every single one of Delgado’s accounts are being moved around by an alias protecting a single name. Manuel Cabrera.”
Bullshit. “Manny’s dead.”
“A death certificate was never filed. Over the course of the last fifteen years, Manuel Cabrera has opened thirty-two bank accounts and applied for three dozen credit cards. Different names, but same social security number.”
“Are you suggesting that the brother my boy has spent his life grieving is alive?”
“No, Manny’s dead, but it took Midnight a while to find his name because someone took the time to bury it. The pieces didn’t fall together untilyouasked him to look into the man harassing Marcos’ father.”
My head cocked, and something in the air cracked like a whip. A blast of blackened energy fired throughout my body, and for as in control as I liked to be, I was spinning.
The Wolf.
“It’s Delgado.” I ground my teeth together, jaw kicking. “Delgado is the one who loaned Luis money.”
“Luis has been contributing to Delgado’s accounts for years, and he’s been using Manuel’s name to do it. Every fucking move can be traced back to an IP address that starts and ends at Cabrera Accounting.”
This is going to break him...
“It’s likely why Delgado hasn’t been around. He’s got someone here pulling all his goddamn strings, but if that’s the case, why the fuck did he come back?”
“Freddy said Delgado was hungry for a win. He wants to take us down because he fucked it up the last time.”
