Page 108 of Fly's Path

Vandal smiles in relief for the first time tonight as he walks towards the DJ.

“Are we going to pick up Carves?” Rogue asks. “Or are we going to let him walk, hoping to catch the bigger fish?”

“He walks.” Maddox pulls out his gun and checks it. “But those girls are free tonight. My team is ready to take them out as soon as they pull out of the parking garage. Or if you kill the cameras, they’ll do it there.”

Max shakes his head. “There are too many entrances and too many people parked there. We don’t want any witnesses. Wait for them to leave.”

“Or wait for them to head to their home base.” Everett pulls our attention away from the current plans. “I think I found their home base.” An old office building on the edge of town comes up on the screen. “A check of phone logs shows two dozen phones operating in the last week at that location.”

Two dozen. That means…

“There are more children,” Maddox says the words I was thinking. “Scan the area. Look for an empty hotel nearby.”

Everett swings around. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. We cleared out a nest that worked the same way a while back. Except the man we tied it to died.”

Which means…“You cut off a leg and two more grew back.”

“We aren’t prepared for an operation of this size. Not now,” Havoc says the words none of us want to.

“Those children aren’t going back into that pit. We can’t let them suffer more. How do we take them out without making the whole cell suspicious until we can come up with a plan to clean it out?”

“Like Pit would say, there's nothing there a few hand grenades wouldn’t fix,” Maddox mutters under his breath.

And that’s why everyone is afraid of the Adders. They’re nuts.

“Anyone got any bright ideas? Speak now. They’re starting out of the parking garage. It’s a twenty-five-minute drive back to their base.” Everett puts several maps up with possible routes they might take.

How do we make it not look suspicious? “Everyone gets into a car accident.”

All eyes turn to me.

“We’re going to stage a car accident.”

“Those girls don’t have seatbelts on.” Maddox shakes his head. “They could get hurt. That’s not an option. Try again.”

“I didn’t say they’re going to get in an accident. I said we’re going to stage one. Find me a spot on their path that doesn’t have any cameras. Also, when your team takes them, I’ll need blood from each man. Not a huge amount, maybe half a liter total, but it needs to look fresh.”

Leech steps up from the background. “I’ve got what we need to make that happen.”

“Then we'd better get to work. Everett, text me the location you find and keep that dot moving even when it stops. Maddox,you have ten minutes to take that minivan and get me the blood. I’m going to go get dressed.”

He nods. “I’ll only need five.”

The space goes from pent-up rage to focused determination in the blink of an eye.

***

Jumping out of a moving van isn’t as easy as they show in the movies.

Rogue pulls up next to me. “You’re going to feel that in the morning.”

I shrug. “It could have been worse.”

“It’s going to be for the handlers. Maddox is bringing them down to the catacombs. Wanna come see them squirm?”

Do I? “Not really. Who’s planning the larger rescue?” I hop—well, more like carefully climb—into the car.