Chapter 109 Clancy

Chapter 109 Clancy
POV: ELI
"I smell a rat," Eli said.
Roman was already thinking it. He started dialing before Eli finished the sentence.
Jimmy picked up on the second ring. "Already on it." His voice was tight. "The real Clancy Burgess died two years ago in Iraq. Someone scrubbed the record of his death and built a clean identity over the top. I only caught it when I ran facial recognition through my contact in Quantico." A pause. "There's more. He had an account in Philadelphia. Two million euros, deposited two days ago through a chain of shadow accounts bouncing from Switzerland to the Middle East. The principal account traces back to Monaco." Another pause, shorter. "Deposit was made by one C. Warlow."
Roman went still across from Eli.
Caroline Warlow.
Michael's mother. Eli had put her son in a cell so she had arranged for Brigail to go into one.
Eli looked at Roman for a long moment. Roman held the look without flinching, which took some discipline because they both knew that Roman had hired Clancy and Roman would be carrying that for a while.
The plane door made a pressurized hiss.
A man in a light blue bowling shirt and black slacks appeared in the opening with his palms raised.
Felipe De Castro.
"Tony called," Felipe said, moving toward Eli slowly. "He told me about Brigail. There's something you need to know."
POV: ELI
Eli had him by the collar before Felipe finished the sentence.
Roman and Batanya both moved. Neither of them touched Eli.
Felipe's eyes bulged. He gripped Eli's forearms and held on. Eli loosened his hold just enough to let him breathe.
"Victor told me the last time I saw him in Sabaneta," Felipe said, his voice scraped raw. "I didn't believe him. I thought it was a dying man reaching for anything." He coughed twice. "When Tony told me you had the Scarface I knew I had to find out if Victor was telling the truth. That's why I followed Russell here. I saw him, Eli. I saw Corbett Havens board a plane with Russell in Hong Kong today. They're heading to Las Vegas."
Eli let go. He sat back down.
"Why would Russell keep him alive?" Roman asked.
Felipe looked only at Eli.
"The same reason he gave him the Scarface in the first place," Felipe said. "Corbett Havens is Russell Edgington's son."
The aircraft was completely silent.
Eli stared at the middle distance. Every calculation he had run in the past week rearranged itself in his head. The Scarface passed from Russell to his own son. The name at the bottom of the genealogical tree. The reason Russell had never simply taken what he wanted by force.
You did not go to war against your own bloodline.
You waited. You maneuvered. You used what you had.
And what Russell had was a daughter who didn't know she was his granddaughter, and a man who loved her, and a platinum coin that connected all of them.
Check.
POV: ELI
His feet felt wrong on the tarmac.
Thirty-two hours in the air across two continents and his legs had forgotten what solid ground felt like. He wanted to run. They wouldn't let him.
Pam was standing beside the silver BMW. Jake and Jimmy were a few meters back. They were all here.
She wasn't.
Pam's head moved. Just barely. Just enough.
He gripped the spine of the plane's entry rail and looked out across the airport toward the city.
Las Vegas in the dark was all light. Every color the spectrum had, stacked and blinking and relentless, running from the Strip all the way to the horizon. He had loved this city since he was twelve years old and Godric had first brought him here and told him that a man who could learn to read this city could read any room in the world.
He looked at it now.
He could not see a single color.
He let go of the rail and walked down the steps toward Pam.
She said nothing. That was how he knew it was bad.
"Where is she?" he asked.
Pam looked at him carefully. "Eli."
"Where is she, Pam."
She took a breath. "Russell has her. They took her from the hospital parking lot twenty minutes ago. Corbett was with them."
Eli stopped walking.
"Her father," Pam said quietly. "She saw him and she went to him and they took her."
He stood on the tarmac with the city blazing behind him and said nothing for a long time.
Then he turned back to the plane.
"Refuel it," he said to Roman.
"Eli, where"
"Find out where Russell is taking her." His voice came out flat and very level, the way it did when he had already made every decision and was simply waiting for the world to catch up. "And get me Felipe."