Page 73 of Run

“Night,” David said.

“We can still have a meeting, right? It’s not too late, is it? No, it’s not too late. We need to have a meeting. This is important. Gather the team!” She disappeared through the door.

“Guess we’re having a team meeting,” Harvard said to Ryan, both of them looking a little stunned.

“Guess so.” And with that, they headed upstairs to round everyone up.

Leaving David alone to listen to the very loud rendition of theStar Warstheme tune coming from the bathroom.

* * *

Elle stoodat the end of Rachel’s conference table and looked out over the sea of black, gray, and olive drab that made up her team. One day, she’d invest in colorful T-shirts for everyone. Like a Benson Security uniform. Yeah, that sounded good. Although she was pretty sure Callum’s head would explode if he wasn’t wearing a gray Henley.

“Remember,” Rachel said from the other end of the table, where she sat in a larger, more ornate chair. Her throne, Elle assumed. “You aren’t at home. This isn’t your table, so no scratching your initials into it…Ryan.”

“That was an accident,” Ryan said.

“For the love of Prada, how can youaccidentallyetch your name into wood?”

Before Ryan could reply with something equally nutty, Elle interrupted: “We need to start. I have too much stuff in my head, and if I don’t get it out soon, there will be brains everywhere. All over your fancy conference table, your tasteful walls, that expensive suit you’re wearing. Everywhere.”

Rachel sighed wearily. “I honestly don’t miss working with any of you.”

“Liar,” Ryan said through a cough.

“That means I’m starting, right?” Elle bounced on the balls of her feet. “Yeah, I’m starting. Okay, here goes. Pay attention because this is going to blow you away.” She tapped her laptop, and a detailed mind map appeared beside her on the huge screen suspended from the ceiling.

David, who sat at her side, put a hand on her arm. “Take a deep breath. You’ve got plenty of time to get it all out.”

She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. “So, this is the structure of the James Syndicate.” Elle pointed at the image. “I’ve color coded it. Red is sex trade, pink drugs, et cetera. There’s a key to the color coding in the left-hand corner.” She hit the enter key, and another image appeared beside the first. “This map shows all the areas where there are James Family operations. I’ve tried to color code each one, but often they do lots of different types of business in one location. Where the color’s darker, it represents a bigger hub.”

“They’re worldwide,” Ryan said. “Didn’t realize they had that much reach. I mean, I grew up hearing whispers about the James Syndicate. Guess I always thought they were only a London gang.”

“I didn’t know either,” Elle said. “The hacking I did into their phones years ago showed me only their immediate concerns. It didn’t give me this sort of depth or an overview. I’d only scraped the surface.” She changed the slide again, this time to a map overlaid with photos—most of them mugshots. “These are the people in charge of each area. I’ve got images for most of them, plus names and contact details for everyone.” The slide changed again. “This is the command structure. Tommy at the top, and Marcus sitting underneath him as king-in-waiting. Off to the side, you find Cutter, basically in the position of a classic Mafia consigliere. Only, he isn’t there to be impartial; he’s Tommy’s man all the way.”

“Tommy always had a backup in place in case your brother didn’t work out,” Megan said. “Didn’t he?”

Elle nodded, rubbing at the ache in her chest that manifested whenever she thought of her brother. “I don’t think he ever really trusted Marcus.” She swallowed and carried on. “Anyway, as you can see, this shows the managers and captains within the organization. Most of the top-level people are based in London. Each has their own specialist area—Marcus’ was money laundering, brokering deals, and gunrunning. He was trying to shut down their sex-trade business and cut their ties with terrorist groups, but he wasn’t clean by any stretch of the imagination.” She lowered her head. “He wasn’t a good man.”

David placed his hand on her back. “He was still your brother, and it’s okay to love him for how he was with you.”

Unable to help herself, she leaned down and placed a grateful kiss on his lips.

“This never bloody happened when I was in the SAS,” Callum grumbled.

“Anyway.” Elle straightened, feeling much better. “This is the tip of the iceberg. I’ve downloaded everything I could from their servers, decrypted a huge chunk of it, and we have more than enough to sink Tommy forever. My original thought was to go all Panama Papers on this, but the only person that would benefit is me. I’d be safer, but the bad guys would disappear only to pop up again later in a different location, doing the same thing.”

“We need to take this to the authorities.Allof the authorities,” Joe said.

“That’s what I’m thinking too. Before this”—Elle pointed at the screen—“everything I’d managed to get on Tommy was local, crimes that a London police force would deal with. This, on the other hand, is global. It’s what I wished I’d found before I left. Every police force and intelligence agency on the planet will want this information.”

Callum rubbed a hand down his face. He was clearly tired, the lines on his face more prominent than usual. Maybe he should call Isobel. She made a mental note to suggest it after their meeting.

“Do we call all our contacts?” Callum said. “Then figure out a way to give each of them the information? I can see them fighting over us. Or over who’ll run the operation. Some idiot’s bound to want everything we have, and us too, all to themselves.” He was sitting in his wheelchair to give his legs a break from his prosthetics. It was something he never used to do in front of them—let them see him without his legs. But since meeting Isobel, Callum had loosened up a whole lot, to the point of trusting that his team didn’t think any less of him because of his disability.

“What about Tessa Sharp?” Dimitri leaned his elbows on the table. “She ran the Met side of the joint-forces op that took down the Abramovich organization. I mean, she plays well with others, has helped us out before, and she has experience in taking down an international crime ring. Could we get her to coordinate the other agencies and act as our point of contact on this?”

“Tessa’s pretty pissed at us right now,” Ryan said. “Not sure she’ll help.”