I don’t say anything. I don’t have anything to say that won’t make this worse or better, and I’m not sure which outcome I’m more afraid of.
“I’m not calling to apologize,” he says. “And I’m not calling because I think you owe me anything. I’m calling because I found the evidence, and I need someone to know. Someone who’ll do something about it.”
“What evidence?”
“The ledger. Payment records going back ten years. Communication logs. Enough to prove the Forresters were a paid feeder operation for a Syndicate network.” A pause. “And enough to start tracing the financial connections to whoever’s running the facilities.”
The intelligence operative in me locks on. Financial records tracing back to the facility network. That’s the kind of evidence the Aurora Collective could use to crack the entire operation. Not just the compound we’re targeting, but the wider system.
“Send it to me,” I say.
“It’s not digital. It’s a handwritten ledger and paper files. I’d have to bring it.”
“No.”
“Willow—”
“I’m not telling you where we are. Photograph the pages and send the images to this number.”
A long pause. “All right. I’ll send what I have.” Then, quieter: “For what it’s worth… the things you said about your cousin. About the children. I believe you. I didn’t want to. But I do.”
The call ends. I set the phone on the bed.
The room is very quiet. Briar, Nadia, and Jericho are all silent. Nobody speaks. Nadia is looking at her laptop screen with the studied concentration of a woman giving me privacy by pretending she can’t hear. Jericho hasn’t moved.
Briar has been watching me the entire time. She doesn’t ask what was said; as usual, she read enough from my side.
“He found financial records,” I say. My voice sounds distant. Professional. The operative, not the woman who just had herchest opened by a phone call. “Payments from the Syndicate to the Forresters. Per-head compensation for every wolf they relocated. He’s sending images.”
“Can Jericho use them?” Briar asks.
Jericho answers before I can. “If they include routing information for the payments, we can trace the financial network back to the facility’s operational funding. That gives us the entire pipeline structure.”
“He’s sending them now.”
Briar nods. Then, after a moment: “He said he didn’t know?”
“He said a lot of things.”
“Maybe.” Her expression darkens. Her pencil pierces the map she’s tracing. “But the other one knew.”
“The other one?” I frown at her.
“The brother. Garrett. He definitely knew.” There’s an edge to her voice. It’s not the level tone she uses for everything else. Something harder. More personal. As if Garrett Forrester occupies a sharpened place in Briar’s mind that’s different from the space she gives to any other target.
I notice. I don’t have the capacity to examine it right now. But I take note of it: the way she says his name, the way her hand tightens on the pencil when she traces the route his pack’s wolves took our families down. It’s too personal for Briar. And Briar doesn’t do personal.
My phone buzzes. Images arriving. One after another… photographs of ledger pages, handwritten entries, dates, dollar amounts. I forward them to Jericho without reading them.
Another buzz. Brenna.
“The Bern misinformation hit its mark. The fabricated safe house location was passed to a contact connected to the facility’s security network within eighteen hours. Bern’s reach extends to the facility directly.”
“Which means if Bern knows about our operation—”
“He doesn’t. The misinformation was isolated. But it confirms the scope. When this is over, we deal with him.” A pause. “Is the team in position?”
“Nadia and Jericho are here. Briar’s got the approaches. We’re ready for the main force.”