Chapter 189: Recruiter
"Much," said Sean.
She handed him the tea. "Max?"
"Three hours of work," said Sean. "Four connected operations across three cities. The one in this city is one branch."
Makima was quiet for a moment. "How many girls."
"I don’t know yet," said Sean. "Not just this city. Across all four operations." He picked up his tea. "A lot."
She held his gaze. "Okay," she said. "So what does that change."
"The approach," said Sean. "Going after the local operation in isolation dismantles one branch. The network rebuilds it. I need to understand the full structure before I move on any part of it."
"How long does that take," said Makima.
"Max needs more time," said Sean. "A week. Maybe two."
"And the girls in the meantime," said Makima.
"Mia is safe tonight," said Sean. "The sixteen year old is the immediate priority. I need to understand her specific situation well enough to get her out without triggering a response from the network before we’re ready."
Makima looked at her tea cup. Then at Sean. "You’re going to dismantle an entire multi-city criminal network."
"Yes," said Sean.
She looked at him for a long moment. "Of course you are," she said quietly. Not sarcastic. Just the specific wry acknowledgment of someone who had watched him walk into impossible situations and come out the other side enough times to have updated her baseline for what he considered manageable.
"I’m going to need Max fully operational," said Sean. "Which means Amara needs to still be stable and the restaurant Tuesday needs to happen because Max needs the normal thing in between the abnormal things."
Makima almost smiled. "You scheduled his sister’s celebration dinner around your criminal network dismantling timeline."
"The timing was already set," said Sean.
"Of course it was," said Makima.
She reached across the table and took his hand briefly. "Get some sleep. The sixteen year old will still need you to be functional tomorrow morning."
"Eight o’clock," said Sean.
"Eight o’clock," said Makima. "Go upstairs."
He stood.
At the door he paused and looked back at her at the table with the tea and the candles burning low and the apartment settled around her the way it always was.
"Makima," he said.
"Yes."
"Thank you for dinner," he said. "Both the food and the rest of it."
She held his gaze for a moment.
"Go to bed Sean," she said. Softly.
He went.
—-----------
Monday Morning
He was at the hotel at seven fifty-eight.
Mia was already in the lobby.
She was sitting in a chair near the window with a coffee she’d gotten from somewhere, both hands around it, her posture carrying the specific alertness of someone who had slept lightly and had been awake for a while. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday because she’d had nothing else, which was a detail Sean had noted and texted James about at seven AM.
James had handled it. A bag was delivered to the front desk at seven thirty, basic things, the specific efficiency of someone who understood that clothing was not a trivial concern when someone had left their house without planning to.
Mia looked at the bag when she’d come down and then looked at the front desk and then sat in the lobby chair with her coffee and waited to understand what came next.
When Sean walked in she watched him cross the lobby toward her with the evaluating attention she’d had since the road, except this morning it carried less wariness in it than it had last night. Not gone. Just less.
"You sent clothes," she said.
"You needed them," said Sean.
"You didn’t ask my size," she said.
"James is observant," said Sean.
She looked at him. "The driver who checks for tails and estimates clothing sizes."
"He’s very good at his job," said Sean.
"Apparently," said Mia. She looked at her coffee cup. "I slept," she said. Like it surprised her.
"Good," said Sean.
"I haven’t slept properly in." She paused. "A while." She looked at the window. "The bed was very good. I’m aware that’s a strange thing to say."
"It’s not strange," said Sean.
She held her cup with both hands. "I kept waking up expecting the door to open," she said. "Nobody at the house knocks. They just come in. Day or night." She said it without drama, the flat description of something she’d gotten used to which was its own kind of thing to sit with. "But nobody came."
"Nobody’s coming," said Sean.
She looked at him directly. "You don’t know that yet."
"I know you’re registered under a name that doesn’t connect to you," said Sean. "I know the payment method isn’t traceable. And I know James drove four extra blocks last night to confirm nobody followed us here." He held her gaze. "They don’t know where you are."
Mia was quiet for a moment. Processing. Filing.
"Okay," she said.
"Are you ready to go through everything," said Sean.
"Yes," she said. "But I need more coffee first."
"There’s a place across the street," said Sean.
—-----
The place across the street was the kind of café that existed in every city, functional and warm, the specific smell of coffee and something baked that had been there since early. They took a table near the back where the ambient noise gave them cover without requiring them to manage it.
Mia ordered properly this time, not the defensive minimum of someone managing resources, which told Sean the single night of safety had already done something.
They sat.
She told him about Soo-Jin first.
Seventeen, not sixteen, she’d had the age slightly wrong. Korean, like Mia, which was how the recruitment had worked initially, a girl in Soo-Jin’s school who was already inside the operation had brought her in because they got a debt reduction for successful referrals, which was itself a piece of the machine’s design that Sean filed carefully.
"She’s smart," said Mia. "Genuinely. She should be applying for university programs right now. Instead she’s." She stopped. Looked at her coffee. "They have her phone. They took it in the first week and gave her a replacement that they monitor. She can’t call her parents without them knowing. Her parents think she has a part-time job at a café."