Page 112 of Caught in the Crossfire

“Is this the only box?” I asked.

Max shook his head. “Dozens.”

I looked back at Ciel, and both of our eyes were wide. “Data.”

Ciel grinned. “Data, baby girl. We’ve got it. It’s paper, which is honestly gross, but every piece counts.”

I let out a chuckle while I thumbed through the files. “What kinds of records are there, Max?”

“Transportation records.” Max dug inside the file and pulled out a chunk of papers before handing them to me. “He kept records of transactions and delivery locations. He took notes of all of their movements throughout the Five Families territories. He detailed how the Vokshi stayed under the radar from the other Families and from law enforcement.”

My head snapped up. “So he knew how they were transporting their victims? He knew how they were moving through the city?”

Max nodded. “Old subway tunnels, cut off and no longer in operation.”

“Holy shit.” I looked at Wynn. His surprised look was also layered with hope.

My mind raced, making sense of all this. If they were moving through the tunnels, we could watch the entrance and exit points. We could station our men there, lay traps, and combine our forces to go on the offensive.

This was everything we needed.

These were the same boxes that Max had left for me to find when my entire worldview was blown up after learning what my father had been doing. We’d dealt with a few of his issues—the stolen drugs, the Alacrán cartel. The other outstanding, looming, giant fucking question mark was what my father had been doing with the CIA and the guns he sold to them. I wanted to ask Max about it, but now didn’t quite feel like the right time.

“If you knew about all this, what have you been doing against them?” Cas asked.

Max braced his hands on the table. “Ihadthem under controluntil you all decided to intervene. Since then, we’ve been a little distracted fighting everyone else in this goddamn city and haven’t had the manpower to go after them.”

Thus the truce.

He couldn’t deal with all of this if his men were tied up with us and the Russians. For a moment, I felt a little guilty.

“What about the tunnels?” Ciel asked. “Do we know which ones they’re using? Or how they’re getting to them?”

Max shook his head. “That’s another problem. I’ve looked into a few of the places Luciano mentioned, but the Vokshi switch things up very often. I haven’t been able to catch them, and I don’t have the resources to stick men around the city and just have them sit and wait.”

“We can put up more cameras,” Ciel said. “The corner where Lucchese dropped Vokshi was dead, and then he disappeared. I wonder if he went into a tunnel there.”

Wynn let out a breath. “I was going to ask you to look at some other dark spots around the city and see if we can make connections between the two. Maybe the tunnels are the answer.”

“Good idea,” Ciel said. He pulled out his phone and began typing away. “I’ll get it going.”

“They also ditch their cars all the time,” Max added. “They get their victims from the ships, they put them into commuter cars and vans, and they take them to the tunnels. After there, I lose them.”

“Commuter cars,” I murmured. “That’s why they were at that auto-shop. That’s where they get the cars.”

Max nodded. “Their numbers and the way they blend in make it impossible to wipe them all out.”

“Not for us,” Ryuji said sharply. “We’ll kill them all.”

Obi’s hand brushed against my waist, lingering there, almost possessively. “What about buyers? Did Luciano have any information about that?”

Max crossed his arms over his chest. “No. The best I have to go on is the w?—”

“My father didn’t keep track?” I interrupted him. He locked eyes with me while my lips pressed together. His gaze dropped to the way my hands clenched on the papers.

Pictures. Hands on my skin. Max watching behind bars while tears rolled down my cheeks.

The cage rattled, and it took all my effort to keep my body still, my breaths even.