Page 52 of Hawkeye

Stryker kissed Jacqueline’s hair and headed for the door. Calder’s thumb brushed the ring, then my jaw. “Wait up.”

“I will.”

He walked out with his president, and I didn’t worry about what would happen next. Not when he’d just made my every dream come true.

23

HAWKEYE

The secured property sat far enough into the backcountry that nobody would hear what happened inside, and the first thin edge of dawn had not reached the ridges when Stryker and I walked through the reinforced door. Tippon occupied the main room with his wrists fastened behind a steel chair, while the surviving senior burglar and the courier from Wynnock waited in separate spaces down the hall. Unlike the other two, these rooms had been purposely left unsoundproofed.

We had no interest in reconstructing years of stolen furniture or tracking down every collector who had purchased something with questionable paperwork. The men in front of us knew where the newest property had gone, which fences were still active, whether any crew members remained nearby, and whether another grieving family’s home had already been marked. Once we had those answers, their usefulness ended.

I stopped in front of Tippon and rested both hands on the back of the empty chair across from him. Dried blood marked his collar from the auction-house takedown, but his expression still carried the offended superiority of a man who believed wearing an expensive suit had made him less of a thief. Stryker leaned against the wall near the door while Smoke watched Tippon’s restrained hands.

“We’re not discussing your entire business. I want what moved after we took the yard, the people still working for you, and every target that hasn’t been hit yet. Start with the last locked cases you carried out.”

“I don’t know where they went,” Tippon answered, lifting his chin. “Someone else handled the storage locations.”

His eyes moved toward the hallway before the sentence ended. The glance was quick, but it told me the answer existed in the next room, and Tippon expected the senior burglar to protect it. I caught his index finger, bent it back until the joint broke with a sharp pop, and held it there while his scream scraped through the room.

“That was ten seconds you wasted,” I explained, watching sweat break across his forehead. “The next lie costs more.”

Tippon panted through clenched teeth while Smoke unlocked him from the floor anchor and dragged the chair toward the wall. I moved into the next room, where the senior burglar sat with one eye swollen shut and his ankles secured to the chair legs. He had already heard Tippon scream, and the tight movement in his jaw confirmed he understood that separation had not protected either of them.

“Vista or San Marcos?” I asked, placing a photo from the garage on the table in front of him.

His gaze dropped to Vista for a fraction too long. “San Marcos.”

I caught his injured hand and drove it flat against the tabletop before he could pull away. “You looked at Vista and answered San Marcos. I’m going to ask once more, and then Trigger starts removing the fingers your crew used to break into veterans’ homes.”

“Vista,” he gasped, his face twisting when I increased the pressure. “Commercial lockup behind an auto-glass place. Unit eighteen. The fence goes by Denison.”

“What did you send him?”

“A medal group, engraved watch, letters, and two small cases from the last jobs.” His words rushed together now that the first answer had broken loose. “Tippon handled the paperwork, but the courier made the delivery.”

Trigger was already moving before I reached the hall. Wraith followed him out with the address and unit number to pass along to Nomad, Bishop, and Skyfall so they could speed up their search of the commercial lockup place in Vista. Cipher began matching the location against recent phone pings and vehicle cameras. The courier waited in the final room with the bruises I had put on him at Wynnock fading beneath one eye, but his attention fixed immediately on my hands when I entered.

I pulled another chair close enough that our knees nearly touched. “Tell me what you delivered and who was there.”

He swallowed. “One man. Older, gray beard. I left the cases and took cash back to Tippon.”

“What else did the lockup hold?”

“Two plastic bins, a sword case, some frames, and a cardboard box full of papers.” His breathing quickened as I watched him. “That’s all I saw.”

“You saw another storage unit across the aisle open while you were unloading.” I held his gaze until his pupils widened. “You’ve been avoiding it since I walked into the room. What was inside?”

The courier’s mouth opened and closed once. I planted one hand around his throat and tightened enough to make the answer urgent without cutting off his air completely. “There were tools, fake forms, and pictures of houses,” he rasped. “No property. I swear.”

“Any date circled on those photographs?”

“No. Nothing active. After the Webber job failed, the boss told everybody to disappear.”

I released him and returned to Tippon. He tried to blame the burglary leader for every target, then claimed he did not know which low-level men were still at large. I let him talk until he repeated himself, then returned to the gap he kept stepping around.

“Three men fled after the estate yard fell,” I reminded him. “One abandoned his vehicle outside Temecula, and two dumped their phones near the border. What did they take with them?”