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The burner phone sitting on Leonard’s desk vibrated. The new leather of his chair creaked when he leaned forward to grab it and checked the screen.

“Fuck.” He sighed, then accepted the call. “What can I do for you, Pennington?”

“I’m contacting you once again for an update on the Cavanaugh woman.” Ambrose Pennington had quickly become a major pain in his ass.

“I have nothing new to report since your two earlier calls.” Leonard’s voice held none of the contempt he felt for the man.

Pennington’s voice, however, reeked with disdain and disapproval. “What the hell is going on, Everett? You assured us that your man could handle this … um … matter.”

The way the man stumbled over what to call their situation was comical. He refused to face the very real fact that the enterprise they were involved in was highly illegal and hit a go-straight-to-hell-upon-death level of immorality.

Good thing Leonard was right with the man upstairs.

“Vincent Kimball is more than qualified for the job.” He didn’t appreciate the haughty tone Pennington used whenever he spoke to him. Like Leonard and Vinny were beneath him. “I strongly suggest you never question his abilities again. If you do, I can guarantee things will not go well for you.”

“Well, I … I certainly meant no offense,” he huffed.

Of course, he did. Stuck-up asshole.

Ambrose Pennington came from old money. We’re talkin’ came-across-on-the-Mayflower kind of old money. He was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and had grown up in a big-ass house in the hills outside of Virginia with both of his parents and a fancy nanny from England.

By contrast, Leonard grew up in the projects, raised by a single mom who worked herself nearly to death. She’d held down two shitty jobs just to keep food on the table, a roof over their heads, and to buy decent clothes for Leonard to wear to school so the other kids wouldn’t make fun of him.

His father? Well, when Leonard was the ripe old age of five, dear old daddy—the guy who would drink too much and beat on his wife and kid from time to time—left to get ice cream one night and never came back.

Leonard remembers being more disappointed about not getting the ice cream than not seeing his dad again.

True story.

His mom called the cops, thinking something bad must’ve happened to him. Even after all the abuse she’d suffered at his hands, she’d paced the floor of their shitty apartment countless nights worrying about him and waiting for him to walk back through their front door.

One night, two years later, the cops showed up at their place. His mom thought Leonard was asleep, but he’d been listening from the hallway when they told her they’d found his dad in Utah, of all places. He’d moved out there with some fucking cocktail waitress that used to work at a bar down the street from their apartment.

“Guess that’s why he took the money I’d been stashing in a coffee tin in the back of the cupboard.” His mom hadn’t sounded upset or angry, just disenchanted. As if she’d held out some small hope that the man she’d once loved and had a child with couldn’t possibly do something so slimy.

One of the cops asked, “How much money are we talkin’ about?”

“One thousand six hundred and fifty-two dollars and seventy-three cents.” She knew the amount, right down to the penny. “I was savin’ up so we could move into a nicer apartment.”

Leonard hadn’t even known she was saving money.

The cops asked if she wanted to press charges, but she’d declined.

Even then, she was protecting the asshole.

Aside from a deep seething anger in his gut, the only thing Leonard’s father left him with were memories of how hard he could hit, the stink of alcohol on his breath, and how the stench of his cheap cologne had lingered in their house long after he took off. But what burned deepest was that he’d made his mother cry and put her through hell.

Nah, the only thing Leonard had in common with Pennington and his buddies was the exclusive transportation contract between Bernardi Transport and HRA.

Per the contract, he provided drivers and buses to pick up unaccompanied kids at the NGO’s facilities in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. They would then transport them to designated locations all across the country where supposed sponsors or family members would be waiting to pick them up. Or, sometimes, their instructions were to drop them off at an airport where they would board a plane. He had no idea where they ended up after that.

Each kid was given a new coat, sneakers, and backpack with a change of clothes and one of those insulated water bottles. And, because most of them spoke little to no English, the HRA people would hang a tag on their jacket with nothing but their first name and destination printed on it.

Leonard was pretty sure not all of the kids’ names and photos were put into any system. There was no formal record of where some of them were being transported to, and there sure as hell was no vetting or DNA tests being done to ensure the people they were being handed over to—their sponsors—were even legit.

Leonard only recently learned that, once they reached their destinations, they were being doled out like candy to sick fucks like Pennington and his other rich and important friends to satisfy their perverse pleasures. What happened to them after those sickos had their fun was anyone’s guess.

And Leonard never asked.

Occasionally, he’d be struck by a twinge of guilt when one of his drivers would talk about the ages and emotional states of the kids they’d just transported. But, at this point, he was in too deep, so he tried not to dwell on it.

He’d go to confession, say the required number of Hail Marys, and hope that would expunge his soul enough he could still end up in heaven.

“Everett, are you even listening to me?” Pennington’s angry voice interrupted his dark thoughts of missing and abused children.

“Sorry, you cut out for a minute there.”

“I said, you’d better hope he finds that woman before she talks. Because if we go down, you’re going down with us,” he threatened.

Guys like Pennington never took care of their own dirty work, which was why they’d signed a contract with Leonard and had agreed to his demand to hire Vinny. The guy assumed Vinny’s sole responsibility as the head of security for Human Rescue Alliance was to protect all of the people involved in their sick and twisted little venture. First and foremost, he was loyal to Leonard and was his eyes and ears into what was happening at HRA.

His old friend had unfettered access to all of the systems and every square inch of the HRA facilities. There wasn’t a boardroom or executive office that didn’t have one of Vinny’s cameras installed in a place no one would think to look. He’d also seen to it that their private vehicles were bugged. Unfortunately, they’d never given any thought to putting a camera in the Cavanaugh woman’s office or they might’ve found out about her sooner.

To ensure the computer side of things was covered, Vinny hired his sister’s kid, Samuel, to work in the IT department. He was only nineteen but had a decent grasp of computers.

Initially, the kid had been concerned about breaking the law by snooping around in HRA’s system. He’d quickly changed his mind when Leonard told him how much he’d be making.

A short time later, Leonard learned that someone had created a list of all the shit Pennington and his buddies had been doing and kept it on the HRA system. Samuel had assured him that the only reference he could find to Leonard or his company was their contract.

The kid also figured out that Charlotte Cavanaugh had accessed that very same file. He was still working on identifying the person who created the troublesome list in the first place.

Whoever it was knew way too damn much and would be dealt with after they took care of Cavanaugh.

“Don’t worry, Pennington. Vincent and his people are good at what they do. We’ll find her and make sure she doesn’t talk.” He was sick and fucking tired of this guy breathing down his neck and decided to tell him so. “In the future, when you’re making threats to me, you might want to remember that I know all of your dirty little secrets. I also know what it’s like to have nothing and how to survive in prison. Can you say the same about yourself?”