Page 29 of Silver Sinner

"Shit, more than you and I could count."

"Alright. Can you get me eyes?"

"On every shady chop shop in the city? Are you insane?"

"Adrian, I can't explain to you how important this is to me, but that car got taken and there's a little girl in the back. Can you help me or not?"

Adrian sighs deeply. "Give me a narrower search grid, and I can help you."

I hang up. My next call is to one of my contacts in the police.

As always, he's not happy to hear from me, but after giving him the description of the car and expressing my urgency in the matter, he comes through.

Tracking the vehicle through CCTV this late at night is a piece of cake, and he earns the fat stack I'll send his way.

With an address secure, I send it to Adrian.

Twenty minutes later, we pull up outside a rundown convenience store.

"This is the place?" Adrian, my younger brother, is already here with a rifle in hand and several of our men milling about the parking lot. "Doesn't look like a chop shop."

"This is the only place the car could have gone. They turned up at the junction back there and never reappeared at the end. This is the only building, so it's either here or they dumped the car off-road somewhere," I explain, unholstering my gun.

"Who is this kid?" Adrian asks. "What shit are we getting into?"

"No shit. Just a case of mistaken identity."

Adrian raises one brow and glances around. "Do you know who runs this area?"

I pause the checking of my weapon and glance up. "Whose territory are we on?"

Adrian shrugs. "No one that I know, that's why I'm asking."

If Moses were here, he'd already know every detail about the area, but with Maddie's life on the line, there's no time to wait. "It doesn't fucking matter. I don't care who you are, you don't snatch a kid. No one we know would pull shit like this."

"So we're weapons-free?" A flash of Adrian's military past flashes through in his greedy smile, and I nod.

"All I care about is the kid."

Adrian bounces onto the balls of his feet like a kid given permission to get a candy bar, then he leads the way across the road with our men closing in around him.

The convenience store itself looks abandoned and dead to the world, with the door boarded up and graffiti-covered metal shutters drawn down over all the windows.

I brace myself for the tell-tale stink of old food and ancient cleaning products when one of my men pries open the door, but the scent that drifts up isn't like that at all. Engine oil and heat in the air point toward a chop shop, and I'm almost impressed by the setup.

The entire inside of the convenience store has been hollowed out. Fridges and shelves have been replaced with machinery typically seen in garages, with metal beams across the ceiling, hooks and pulleys, and several barrels filled with grease and oil. My stomach turns slightly as the scent and we remain low and quiet as we walk inside.

Adrian leads but he pauses quickly and loops back to my side. “Look." He points to one wall next to a doorway flooded with light. "Pink skulls and green crosses."

"Who are they?"

"No one. Just some shitty street gang. They steal cars and sell the parts to local dealers. Feed the cycle of broken cars that filter into garages that make the money and toss a cut back at the seller."

"How do you know this?" I ask with a narrow glance.

"You pay me to know this shit," Adrian replies. "Come on." As he's tilting his head for me to follow, a man in low-slung cargo pants and a dirtied white tank top strolls through the illuminated door, sniffing as he goes. Grease and oil streak up his arms, and he drags one hand over his close-shaven head. Then, he freezes.

A beat of silence passes between us as he locks eyes with one of my men, then a warning scream erupts from his throat as he snatches his gun from his waistband.