Page 126 of Fly's Path

Is that a smile on Vex’s face?

I’m going to pretend I didn’t see it like everyone else in here who wants to stay alive, though I am beginning to wonder about him.

A big black man walks in with Taylor. He doesn’t have a single weapon on him, which is odd in this bunch. He heads straight over to Max and reaches for the baby. “Let me have my great-grandson.”

Interesting.

The baby reaches for his great-grandfather with grabby little hands and a gurgling grin.

“What’s this problem you have, boy? You know your grandmother doesn’t like me leaving at night, so get to it.”

Max nods like that was all the permission he needed to start the meeting. “As you all know, we found a small cell of women being held in an office building thanks to the mole Chaos sent in.”

Everett hits a couple of keys and brings a live image up of the building as well as the hotel across the street that has way too many lights on for an out-of-operation business…Is every room filled with a woman being assaulted?

A shudder of revulsion runs through me.

“We also found it because the Adders had run into something similar recently. Because that hunch was correct, we decided to go searching to see if there might be any more cells.”

What? No.

The screens change until there are different groups showing in real time.

All the twinkling lights in the hotel rooms makes the bile rise in the back of my throat.

“With that comes a few problems. First, none of the others are in Urbium. They’re spread across the country in major cities.”

A map with markers pops up.

That’s a wide network. The level of organization needed for that…Could it be The Ghost? We thought Carves was just a little campus operation.

It seems he’s just another minion in a huge network.

“Second, if we take out one or two, it’s going to put the others on high alert….possibly even send them scrambling.”

One is a mistake. Two is a coincidence. Three…there’s no way they wouldn’t see us coming and go to ground either executing the women or taking them with them. Neither of which is a viable option. Which every man in this room knows.

“Third, if we get them all out at the same time, that’s a lot of women who will need support, protection, therapy, families found…That’s going to stretch us thin even with assistance fromThe Nest. It’s going to leave us with holes in our security, which will add visibility that we might not want.”

We all know that there’s only one choice that doesn’t involve sacrificing lives, which isn’t an option. So the question is, how do we get them out without having the currently unknown head come after Maddox or us?

“We need to leave a calling card.” I blurt out the words without thinking.

All eyes turn towards me, even the baby’s curious ones. I almost believe he understood what I just said.

“That’s the opposite of what we want to happen,” the old man chimes in. “We don’t have enough bodies to protect that many women and our own people. It would be too many moving pieces for a head-on assault.”

“We don’t need to leave our calling card. We send the person running it on a wild goose chase.” Preferably as far as possible from us. “There still might be some blowback.” I shrug; with everything there’s risk. “But if this guy’s anger is focused elsewhere…”

“We hunt the hunter.” The old man’s eyes light up. “Good idea. But who do we send him after without signing their death certificate?”

“Me. You send him after me.” Vex’s grin promises pain.

There is no way I’m sending a crazy man after the people who are currently sheltering my woman. “No.”

Vex growls at me.

“Then it makes one of us the prey.” Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.