Chapter 12

Sebastian

"Sebastian, what are you doing?"

I looked up from my precarious position to see Damien standing in the doorway with a disappointed scowl on his face.

The whole world was upside down from my view on the floor. I'd decided to try working out. My leg and my ribs were still injured, but my arms were fine. Surely a few bench presses wouldn't hurt. Lying on the bench had proven difficult when I couldn't bend my leg to touch the ground, so I'd constructed a makeshift hammock out of a towel and several ropes to support my cast.

It had worked better than I hoped, but I unfortunately forgot about the hammock when I stood up. The resulting disaster left me splayed over the floor with ropes tangled around my leg.

This was, of course, the exact moment Damien walked in the door.

Sighing deeply, he helped me disentangle myself and sat me down on the couch.

"Sebastian, you can't be doing these things. Especially not when you're alone. Where's Newt?"

I leaned back and draped one arm over my eyes to hide my embarrassment.

"He's having lunch with his sister. Just because I'm on house arrest doesn't mean he should be."

Damien sighed again, and I listened to his footsteps on the floorboards as he moved closer.

"This isn't a punishment, Bas." The cushions dipped as he sat next to me and pressed my crutch into my hand. "You're healing. Severe injuries like yours take time and you need to..." He trailed off, and the atmosphere around us grew tense.

Too late, I remembered the laptop I'd left open on the arm of the couch. Lunging across Damien, I tried to grab the device, but he held it out of my reach.

"Sebastian, what is this?"

"It's nothing." I tried to grab it again, but he held me back with a single hand on my chest. Normally, I could have put up more of a fight, the two of us were equal in strength, but my ribs still ached, and my muscles felt weak after three weeks of sitting around.

He barely had to glance at the info on my laptop to know exactly what I'd been up to.

"You're still searching for Clay Dahler?"

I gave up fighting and sat up straight. My crutch slid from its position leaning against the couch seat and banged against my good leg. Glaring at it, I balanced the metal stick against the arm of the couch instead.

"Yeah. Figured I could make myself useful somehow. But it's useless. I've exhausted every lead I can think of and found nothing. The man may as well not exist."

"He's been missing for almost ten years. We both knew finding him after so much time would be a long shot."

The crutch fell again, this time nearly knocking into my injured leg. I caught it just in time, but the feel of the cool metal under my hand enraged me. This thing was supposed to help me.

Couldn't it do at least one thing right, like staying where I put it?

Shouting in frustration, I threw the crutch away. It hit the floor and skidded a few feet before bouncing off the wall where it left a dent in the plaster.

"I just... fuck. I should at least be able to do this much. Even if I can't get out there and look for myself, finding some information for you to follow shouldn't be so hard."

Damien said nothing about my outburst as he set my laptop aside. "So, when your investigation turned up empty, you decided to try exercising?"

I nodded and hunched forward so my face landed in my hands.

Damien inhaled deeply through his nose, then held his breath for a moment. When he finally exhaled, the air came out in one decisive snort, like a bull getting ready to charge.

"All right. I wasn't going to get you involved, but at this point if I leave you alone, you're just going to hurt yourself even more. I'm meeting some members of the FPA in our office soon. If you'd like, you can join me."

I immediately rose from my slump. My ribs protested the quick movement, but I didn't care. "Mason wouldn't be meeting with you unless it was important. What happened?"

"While looking into the child disappearances, I've been focusing on the adoption agencies the women claimed to have given their children to."

"Yeah, I looked at those as well." In fact, I'd spent so long looking into the adoption agencies that the information was practically branded on my eyeballs. "They all seem to be legit organizations."

Damien nodded. "They are. A false adoption agency would eventually draw attention, so I figured whoever is taking these children must be using real adoption agencies as a cover. So, I looked at the employee records, and I found one man who volunteers at two of the agencies where children went missing."

"What? No. I've combed through those records so carefully. I wouldn't have missed something so obvious." I shook my head, my shoulders drooping. I couldn't believe I hadn't found that. Normally, I'd never miss something so potentially important.

What was wrong with me?

Ugh. Fuck.

"The man's name is Smith Harper. I almost missed the connection as well, because of the way the two organizations file their employee info. One lists the names with first name followed by surname, while the other agency lists the names with the surname first. Different formatting like this usually isn't a problem, but with Smith Harper, where both names could be either first name or surname, it's easy to overlook."

It couldn't be that simple.

I'd been spinning my wheels on this case for months, all because of paperwork formatting?

Goddamn it!

I wanted to shout and cry at the same time, maybe punch a wall for good measure, but there was nothing left to throw, and I couldn't afford any more injuries. In the end, all I could do was clench my fists until my nails bit crescents into my palms.

"So, we've got a name. Great. What do we know about this Smith Harper, other than the fact that the name is probably an alias?"

"I don't know. Once I found a connection between two of the adoption agencies, I turned the information over to the FPA."

I started to argue, but Damien was already raising his hand to silence me.

"Don't even start. I know you want to handle this case, but the FPA has a lot more resources than us. They can get answers faster, and in the end that's all that matters. Right? The point is to protect the children, not stroke our own egos, and the best way to protect the children is to stop the bad guys as soon as possible."

I still wanted to argue but could think of nothing else to say. All I could do was wave an accusatory finger in his face. "I hate when you use logic against me. It's not fair."

Finally, for the first time since Damien stepped into the room, he smiled. "No, it's entirely fair. That's why you're so mad. Now, come on. We're meeting with Mason's guys soon, and it's going to take us all day just to get you down the stairs." He fetched my crutches from the other side of the room.

My hand wrapped around the familiar handle, and I hoisted myself onto my feet. I already dreaded the short but difficult journey ahead of me.

When Damien said he had a meeting with members of the FPA "soon", it apparently meant "right now".

We made our way down to our office on the lower floor, taking several minutes to navigate my crutches on the stairs, only to find a pair of agents already waiting for us.

One of them I recognized.

Gabe Long.

The man was a FBI agent on loan to the FPA but he still worked out of his old FBI office on cases too. I still didn't truly trust anyone from the FBI after the debacle with our WitSec marshal and the resulting attempts on our lives over the years, but because we'd met him though Mason first, I was more tolerant of his FBI associations.

Gabe had worked on a few FPA cases with Damien and I in the past but I hadn't directly interacted with him much since I usually let Damien play nice with the Feds. From what little I'd seen of him he seemed like a competent investigator. Though not exactly the warmest personality.

He reminded me of a strict schoolteacher I had as a kid. Frosty and sharp, like he could cut you just by looking at you while simultaneously critiquing every mistake you'd ever made. Except, unlike the teacher of my past, Agent Long obviously hit the gym a lot more. His chestnut brown hair was slicked back, and a pair of sharp glasses sat on his nose with such symmetrical balance I wondered if he glued them there.

The man sat at the chair near my desk, fingers steepled in front of him like he was waiting for me to turn in a late homework assignment.

"Damien, I wasn't expecting your brother to join us."

Damien guided me over to my desk, making sure my crutch didn't knock against any stray chair legs, before claiming his own seat behind his desk.

"This involves him as well as me. More so, since he was the one attacked. He should hear whatever you have to report."

Agent Long frowned, but before he could say anything, he was interrupted by the second agent sitting in the last chair positioned in front of Damien's desk.

"Makes sense to me. We need all the mind power we can get on this case, and I've seen some of the cases you and your brother have helped us with before. I'm sure you'll be an invaluable asset."

I shifted in my seat, hiding my grimace as I struggled to find a comfortable position for my leg.

The man was a stranger to me, and even Damien didn't seem to recognize him since he didn't address the man by name.

Such quick praise from someone unfamiliar made me uncomfortable, but I bit my tongue before I said something regrettable. I'd always been a suspicious person. It was how Damien and I stayed alive so long. However, there was a difference between healthy caution and inventing enemies out of thin air.

Rather than confront the stranger, I kept my tone as neutral as possible.

"Sorry, I don't think we've met. What's your name?"

Luckily the man didn't seem insulted by my question. He merely laughed in a way that was clearly directed at himself.

"Right. Sorry. We haven't actually met. You and your brother have been mentioned so many times around the office, I feel like I already know you. I'm Blake Adder. I'm in charge of the CAP case."

Only a few inches of space divided Damien's desk from my own, so I didn't have to lean far in order to speak directly to him. "CAP case?"

"Remember that case I told you about before, where someone's been going around castrating pedophiles? The FBI has determined that it's definitely the work of an organized group and have started calling them the Castration Anti-Pedophiles group. CAP."

Agent Adder's laughter rang out again. "Yeah, I definitely drew the short straw when it came to assignments. Most people in the agency don't want me to succeed, not even me. I mean, who would want to stop people that are punishing pedophiles? Anyway, my whole assignment is basically just for show, so that we can legally say we're doing our job."

The sound of a throat clearing cut off Agent Adder's raucous laughter.

Agent Long never actually looked at his companion. All of his focus remained fixed on adjusting his lambskin gloves, but his attention was clearly pointed in Agent Adder's direction. "Enough. Get on with it. We don't have all day to sit around."

I shifted again, tipping my leg to a new angle. My tumble off the weight bench earlier was catching up with me, and a new ache had started in my knee. "Since you're here, I'm guessing that the missing children I was looking for are somehow related to your CAP group?"

"Well, sort of."

Agent Adder pulled out a thin laptop from his briefcase and placed it on Damien's desk, though he angled it so I could see the screen as well. He looked at Agent Long and gestured at the laptop.

"Do you want to..."

Agent Long stared at him and said nothing.

"Right, I'll just..." He turned on the screen to show pictures of a kitchen that looked like it hadn't been remodeled since the sixties with an alarming amount of blood staining the floor.

"Agent Long has been looking into Smith Harper, the man who worked for two of the adoption agencies in question. It actually wasn't that hard to track him down, however, when we sent agents to his address, we found him passed out on the floor. Castrated. He's the CAP group's latest victim. So far as we know the group hasn't killed anyone, but apparently something went wrong and they came close this time. In the process of removing... certain parts of Mr. Harper's anatomy, the attackers also cauterized the wound with some form of crude heat or something, so that wasn't what put him at risk, really. Anyway, before authorities could arrive, Harper must have tried to get to his feet and dispose of evidence on his computer. We found the smashed computer pieces—ironically the fool missed the hard drive entirely so we found a bunch of incriminating evidence anyway, plus there was a zip drive filled with information on this guy's activities just sitting there on a side table—but anyway, in the process of trying to get loose from where he'd been handcuffed to a table, Harper busted up one of the table legs and somehow managed to fall and impale himself on it. If our agents hadn't arrived when they did, he probably would have bleed out and died."

I sucked in air through my teeth as my leg gave a painful twinge. Both the agents and my brother looked at me, and I schooled my face into a thoughtful expression. "So, we were right. The missing kids were taken to supply some sort of pedophile ring."

"Hold on," Damien cut me off, though he gave me a soft look that said he wasn't trying to argue. "How do we know for certain that this was the work of your CAP group? Just being castrated isn't enough to make that assumption. There are certainly other instances of castration that aren't related to them. A jealous lover. An act of revenge. Or even..." Damien's eyes flickered to me. "Or even a mafia hit could all account for this kind of attack."

I could tell just from Damien's expression that the same memories played behind both our eyes. It was a familiar and well-traveled path of thought. Even after so many years, it was still hard to ignore the memories of our parents, but I pushed their image out of my mind to focus on the current dilemma.

"It would be an odd coincidence. A suspect in a case involving a pedophile ring, getting attacked in the same way as a vigilante group that targets pedophiles."

"True," Damien agreed. "But we've chased that rabbit down a tunnel of assumptions before, and it doesn't lead anywhere good."

"Well, in this case," Agent Adder said as he opened a different file on his computer. "The CAP group always leaves behind some obvious evidence of their victim's crimes. In this case, we've got a terabyte's worth of child pornography that Smith Harper was distributing."

"So if—" I leaned a little too far sideways and my leg bumped the desk. The grunt of pain that wanted to leave my lips stayed locked behind my teeth, but I couldn't stop myself from visibly flinching.

Agent Long grumbled as he abruptly stood from his chair. "Oh, for the love of..."

Storming over to me, he grabbed my chair and forcibly spun me around. I was by no means a small person, so the sudden manhandling caught me off guard. I didn't even protest as he repositioned me to sit parallel to my desk, then dragged his own chair over and used it to prop up my injured leg.

"You're going to end up back in the hospital if you keep neglecting yourself like that."

I stared up at him, speechless, with my eyes nearly popping out of my head.

He merely raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow. "What? I was a medic in the army. I know what a person looks like when they're hiding pain. You seem like the kind of patient I would have hated to have back then. Ignoring advice. Pushing yourself too fast. Ridiculous. Now, sit still and behave so we can get on with the case."

Since his chair was now being used, Agent Long chose to stand off to the side of the room with his arms crossed.

I couldn't help the grin that spread over my face. Maybe this man wasn't as boring as he seemed.

"I was right. You do remind me of my old schoolteacher."

"You mean Mr. Shaw?" Damien asked, though he was already giving Agent Long a considering gaze. "I had that guy for eighth-grade algebra. At least half of the students broke down crying during his class that year. Now that you mention it, I do see the resemblance."

Agent Long sniffed and adjusted his already straight glasses. "Ridiculousness runs in your family, I see. Don't know why I bothered. Let this idiot lose his leg for all I care. Adder, hurry up and show them the video so we can get out of here."

"Video?" I perked up in my chair but made sure to keep my leg stationary when Agent Long scowled at me again.

Agent Adder pulled up a video on his laptop that seemed to be a black and white recording from a security camera.

"Right before he was attacked, Smith Harper visited another hospital. We acquired the security footage from the hospital to see if he met with anyone or did anything suspicious. So far, we haven't found anything. All he did was pick up a few brochures for volunteer opportunities and then leave. We were hoping you might notice something that we didn't, since you have the most experience with this case."

The video played, showing a view of the front doors of a hospital where dozens of people were constantly going in and out. The agents had to point out which man was Smith Harper. I'd never seen him before, and even Damien only knew the man by name, not by face. He was entirely unremarkable. The kind of man no one would like at twice if they passed him on the street. Even knowing who I was looking for, he was still hard to keep track of among the hospital rush. Each time the video switched to the view from a new camera, we had to stop a moment and find our target again.

It was like a real-life version of "Where's Waldo" but much less interesting and with much higher stakes.

Just as the agents had described, Smith Harper did nothing suspicious. He barely spent more than a few minutes in the hospital. He loitered in the lobby as he browsed the rack of brochures for volunteer opportunities, then stepped over to the front desk and spoke with the receptionist. From the way he gestured at a few of the brochures in his hand, he seemed to be asking questions about the volunteer work, which the receptionist was happy to talk about.

Then he left. The entire video was less than ten minutes long, and entirely useless for our investigation.

Agent Adder switched off the screen. "This was the last sighting of Mr. Harper before he was attacked. Only about two hours passed between the time of this video and when our agents arrived at his house to find him bleeding out on the floor, so he must have been attacked during that window. Though, as usual, the CAP group was careful not to leave any evidence of their break in."

The agent started to close the laptop, but Damien stopped him. My brother and I shared a look, nodding at each other, before I leaned back in my chair to let him explain.

"This video has been edited," Damien said as he hit the play button.

We all watched as the security cameras once again showed Smith Harper stepping through the front doors into the hospital lobby.

Agent Long stepped closer so he loomed over both desks. His shadow cast a dark pall over the video.

"Nothing's been altered. I handled this recording myself, and I would never allow a piece of evidence to be tampered with."

I snorted.

Damien cut me a quick look, begging me to stay silent.

"No one is saying that it's been tampered with. But the video has been edited to start at the moment Smith Harper shows up at the hospital. Where's the rest? Has anyone checked the cameras during the time before his arrival?"

One would think we had asked the FBI to hand over nuclear launch codes. Neither of the agents had the uncut footage with them, and when they called their agency they were put through an ungodly game of phone tag as they tried to find the right person who could authorize their request.

Not for the first time, I was glad Damien and I had decided to become private investigators, rather than pursuing jobs with official law enforcement. There was far too much red tape for my liking. The paperwork alone would drive me insane.

Half an hour later, the agents finally managed to procure the original footage. It took a few minutes of searching to find the right time frame, but eventually we were looking at the hospital's front lobby minutes before Smith Harper's arrival.

Damien pointed at the screen. "Can you zoom in on the brochure display? That's where Harper went first. It may be important."

Agent Adder did as Damien asked, though the footage became more grainy the more he zoomed in. Even hospitals weren't able to afford high quality cameras, it seemed.

Damien and I saw what we were looking for at the same time and ordered Agent Adder to stop the video.

"Right there." Damien tapped the screen with the tip of a pen. "Most people who visit the brochure display only look for a moment before moving on, but this man stayed there for a few minutes." Hitting the video controls, he rewound the video back a few seconds. "And right here. He pulls out several brochures only to immediately return them. However, with this one, it looks like he puts back two pieces of paper instead of just one. I'm almost positive that's the same brochure Harper takes with him a few minutes later."

Agent Long braced his hands on the desk to lean closer to the screen and readjusted his glasses for a better view. "So, it was a hand off. This man leaves something behind, and Mr. Harper picks it up without anyone realizing what's happened. Information. Payment. It could be anything. Is there a better angle where we can see this man's face?"

The mysterious man on the video must have been aware of the hospital's security, for he either kept his back to the camera or made sure to walk on the other side of someone.

He was careful, but not careful enough. We had to switch to a recording from a different camera, but just outside the doors we managed to finally get a brief look at the man's face.

Damien immediately slammed the laptop shut, as though afraid the man would somehow see us through the recording.

I said nothing, but reached out and grabbed my brother's arm as my heart raced inside my chest.

Agent Adder rescued his laptop from Damien's desk and looked like he was about to protest the mistreatment of his equipment when Agent Long cut him off.

"What's wrong? Do you two recognize him?"

I couldn't speak. The man's voice was screaming in my ears, followed by the sound of a gunshot and visions of my parents on the floor, blood surrounding them.

Thankfully, Damien had my back. He looked just as disturbed as I felt, but he at least managed to find his voice.

"That's Lorenz Mariano."

"The brother-in-law of David Russo, the New Jersey Mafia Boss? Are you sure?" Agent Adder arched an eyebrow.

My fist hit my desk so hard it rattled the wood and popped open one of the drawers. "We saw Russo kill our parents, and he wasn't alone. His brother-in-law was there too. We've spent years hiding from David Russo and the rest of the Mariano family after your agency failed to protect us. Yes, we're damn sure."

"All right." Agent Long held up his hands in an uncharacteristic show of surrender. "We have to be sure. Our agency will confirm the identification, but I believe you. It looks like this case just got a lot more complicated."

From the moment we saw Lorenz Mariano on the video, Damien had sat practically motionless in his chair. Even when he spoke, he barely seemed to breathe. Yet, all at once his paralysis disappeared. He sprang to his feet so violently that his chair fell to the floor with a crash of wood and metal.

"Is that why they tried to kill Sebastian? If the Russo has found us again, then we need to run. Another state. Another country. Anywhere else."

He was already halfway out the office, probably to start packing our essentials right at that moment, when Agent Long grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"Hold on. Listen. We don't know what's going on for certain, or how it involves Russo and the Mariano family. Right now, you need to stay put so we can protect you. This building has decent security, so you both need to stay inside behind locked doors until we figure out what's going on."

Everyone else was standing. Even Agent Adder had risen to his feet, though he stayed out of the argument. I hated the feeling of being loomed over, and reached for my crutch so I could stand as well.

"You're going to protect us? Just like your agency did last time Russo and his goons were after us? We trusted your so-called witness protection and one of your own people sold us out. We only survived because we went into hiding on our own. So, we're sorry if we're not jumping at the chance to trust you this time."

It was a four-way standoff. Two brothers versus two agents. There was no telling how long the silent stare down would have lasted, had the door not suddenly burst open. Like a synchronized unit, all four of us turned to face the interruption.

Newt stood on the threshold with his hair all askew and sweat dripping down his forehead as he gasped for a breath. An angry crimson scrape cut a jagged line along his cheekbone.

"I think someone just tried to kill me."