Page 70 of Fractured Future

“Seconded,” Tom agrees.

“How did you find him?” I ask curiously.

“CCTV footage from the docks,” Warner answers. “He’s a trained professional—fast, efficient and damn near invisible. It’s pure luck that we later caught images of his team leaving.”

“But you couldn’t track us down?”

“That dock exports half a million shipping containers every year.” He massages his creased forehead. “We searched for months but couldn’t narrow it down.”

Head buzzing, I try to recall my date that night. We went to a cheap pub in Liverpool, far from the student-orientated clubs and bars.

It was nondescript, perhaps a little rough. But I didn’t care about niceties. When Charles offered a nightcap at his place, it didn’t occur to me that I was walking into a dangerous situation.

Opening up a manilla folder, Warner rifles through thick stacks of paperwork. He flourishes a glossy photograph then slides it across the table towards me.

“Does he look familiar?”

“Oh my God. Yes.”

Nausea crawls up my throat at the ghost staring back at me. It’s boring Charles but not. The tightly-buttoned, strait-laced bore I dated looks vastly different in jeans and a slouchy t-shirt.

I don’t recognise the three thugs with him. There were others that night, transporting us to the docks to be offloaded. Between the terror, drugs, and six traumatic years since then, their faces are a blur to me.

“Tanner Stillwell,” Warner reveals. “Thirty-five years old. Spent the last six years bouncing around South America, judging by his passport.”

“It’s him.”

“We partnered with international law enforcement to track him down, but the man vanished for years. This was clearly not his first rodeo. You were just the final delivery before he split.”

My hand shakes as I lift the photograph. “I knew it. He’s some kind of honeypot, isn’t he? That’s his role in this whole charade.”

“Appears so. Lucky for us, he’s a loose-lipped honeypot. It didn’t take long to get enough information to trace you to Mexico. But his intel was limited beyond the basics.”

“Loose-lipped?” I reiterate.

“They loosened with some encouragement.” Axel playfully winks at me. “That was a fun two weeks. I didn’t know that a man could shit himself in fear so many…”

“Ax,” Warner scolds.

Pouting, he resumes massaging his stress ball. “Spoilsport.”

Slapping the photograph down, I smash my clenched fist above the bastard’s face. “Gracie was taken from her family because of him. I hope you tore him apart, limb from limb.”

“I can give you the details.” Axel smirks.

“I’d appreciate a play-by-play reenactment.”

“Mmm, sadistic. My kinda woman.”

Scrolling on his phone, Tom halts our exchange with a sharp inhale. All eyes turn to him.

“I found an old news report.” He taps the screen several times. “Gracie Livingstone. Disappeared shortly before Ember, from Bolton. Presumed dead.”

When he passes me his phone, a hot burst of sickness rises in my oesophagus. The report features a school portrait with a smiling, uninjured version of the young girl I tried to protect.

If Stillwell were here, I wouldn’t need Axel’s description of his agony. I’d fucking inflict it myself. That evil piece of shit fed Gracie into a system of exploitation and abuse. One she’s still lost in.

“Where is he?”