Agent Kerrigan arrived at the Redwater County Morgue at 2:14 a.m., driving an unmarked sedan with mud on its wheel wells and a scratch along the driver's side door that spoke of rural roads navigated at speed. She was a tall woman with cropped grey hair and the kind of face that revealed nothing—not surprise, not sympathy, not the exhaustion that Rowan could see in the slight droop of her shoulders. She wore plain clothes: dark jeans, a waterproof jacket, boots that had seen miles of crime scenes. She carried no visible weapon, but Rowan had worked with federal agents before and knew that the weapon was there, concealed and ready.
Kerrigan listened to Rowan's summary without interruption. She examined the box of files Elara Voss had preserved. She watched Jesse's video twice. She interviewed Leo Driscoll in a quiet voice, asking questions that were precise and careful and never once patronizing. When she was finished, she stood in the center of Rowan's office and said, "We need to get inside that estate."
"With a warrant?" Rowan asked.
"Warrants take time. Warrants require convincing a judge, and judges in this district golf with men like Ashford." Kerrigan's jaw tightened. "Besides, a warrant means announcing our presence. If Ashford gets wind of a federal investigation, those children underground will disappear. Permanently."
Jesse stepped forward. He had been sitting on the cot, Leo beside him, the two boys pressed together like littermates against the cold. "I can get you in. I know the layout. The kitchen window, the service hall, the door to the underground rooms. I saw it all."
"You saw a panic room and a study," Rowan said. "You didn't see where they're keeping the children."
"But I know where to start looking." Jesse's voice was steadier now, hardened by something Rowan recognized—the transformation that happened when fear was given a purpose. "And I know the tunnels. When I ran, I went through a drainage culvert under the east wall. It's narrow, but it's not locked. The hunters didn't know about it because they never needed to escape."
Kerrigan studied him. "How old are you, Jesse?"
"Sixteen."
"And you're willing to go back into that place? Knowing what's waiting for you if you're caught?"
Jesse met her eyes. "I've been running from places like that my whole life. I'm tired of running."
Kerrigan nodded slowly. Then she turned to Rowan. "You said the first victim had plant material embedded in his clothing. Pollen, seeds, soil traces."
"Consistent with a specific type of wetland ecosystem. Sphagnum moss, bog myrtle, and a particular strain of peat mold that only grows in acidic, low-oxygen environments." Rowan pulled up her microscope images on the computer. "I also found traces of a rare orchid—Cypripedium calceolus, the lady's slipper. It's a protected species in the Vinland Republic. It only grows in one place in this county: a private game reserve owned by the Ashford family."
"Can you prove that? In court?"
"I can prove that the pollen on the victim's clothing matches the pollen from that specific location. I've already sent samples to the national botanical database for confirmation."
Kerrigan allowed herself a small, grim smile. "Forensic botany. I've used it twice in my career. Both times, defense attorneys didn't know how to cross-examine a plant." She turned back to Jesse. "You said there's a culvert under the east wall. Can you draw it?"
Jesse took a piece of paper from Rowan's desk and sketched the estate from memory. The manor house, the gardens, the tree line, the bog beyond. He marked the drainage culvert, the kitchen window, the service hall, and the heavy oak door that led to the underground rooms. He marked the panic room where he had hidden, and the study where the hunters had met. His drawing was crude but precise, the work of someone who had learned to observe his surroundings with the desperate attention of prey.
"There's a bunker," Leo added quietly, leaning over Jesse's shoulder. "Beyond the study. A staircase going down. The cages are there. They're not cages, exactly—they're rooms with locked doors and no windows. But we called them cages."
"How many rooms?" Kerrigan asked.
"Six. But only three were occupied when I left. Me, a girl named Sasha, and a boy called Tomas." Leo's voice dropped. "There was another boy. Finn. They took him the night before I escaped. I heard the shots."
Kerrigan absorbed this without flinching. "Sasha and Tomas. Ages?"
"Sasha is fifteen. Tomas is fourteen. They're both from the coast—fishing villages where nobody asks questions when kids disappear."
"Then we move tonight," Kerrigan said. "We have three days until the next hunt, according to Leo's timeline. That means we have exactly one night to plan and execute an extraction before Ashford's security posture changes." She looked at Rowan. "I need you with us. If we find evidence—documents, trophies, anything that can tie Ashford to the murders—I need someone who can identify and preserve it properly. I also need someone who can testify to chain of custody if this goes to trial."
"And the boys?"
"Stay here. The morgue is compromised—Dryden knows something is off—but it's still safer than anywhere else in the county. I'll leave an agent outside, someone I trust. If Dryden or anyone else tries to get in, they'll be met with federal credentials and a very unfriendly attitude."
Leo grabbed Jesse's arm. "I'm not staying. I know the underground rooms better than anyone. You'll get lost without me."
"Leo—" Jesse started.
"I've been in that cage for three months. Three months of listening to people die. Three months of wondering when it would be my turn." Leo's voice cracked but didn't break. "I'm not staying here while other people go back. I'm not."
Kerrigan looked at Leo for a long moment. "You understand the risk? If we're caught, Ashford won't let us leave. Any of us."
"I understand."
"Then you're with us." Kerrigan turned to Rowan. "The fifth member of our team is a wildlife crimes agent named Sullivan. He's ex-military, specializes in tracking and surveillance. He's been building a case against a poaching ring on the Ashford game reserve for six months. When I called him about your botanical evidence, he connected the dots immediately."
"Poaching," Rowan said. "Ashford's been hunting protected species on his own land?"
"Worse than that. Sullivan believes Ashford has been importing exotic animals for private hunts. Endangered species. Big game. Clients who pay hundreds of thousands of crowns for the privilege of killing something rare." Kerrigan's expression was stone. "The human hunting is the same business model, just a different prey species. The clients are the same. The methods are the same. The only difference is that killing a child is cheaper than killing a white rhino, and the Vinland Republic's legal system has spent decades making sure no one looks too hard at missing street kids."
Rowan thought of Mateo Varela's bones. The bullet tracks that matched hunting patterns. The drugs used to disorient and slow the prey. The luxury food in the stomach, the last meal of a condemned animal.
"How many clients?" she asked.
"Sullivan has identified at least a dozen. Businessmen, politicians, a retired judge. Men with money and power and a taste for violence they can't satisfy legally." Kerrigan pulled out her phone and showed Rowan a series of photographs—men in hunting gear, posing with dead animals. In one photo, barely visible in the background, Rowan recognized the stone wall of the Second Chance Foundation estate. "The hunts are invitation-only. Ashford charges a membership fee—a million crowns a year, paid into an offshore account. For that, members get access to the game reserve and what Ashford calls 'special expeditions.'"
"The children."
"The children. And anyone else Ashford considers disposable. Sullivan has evidence of at least three homeless adults who went missing after being picked up by Foundation outreach vans. The pattern is the same: vulnerable, isolated, unlikely to be reported missing. People the world has already forgotten."
Rowan felt something shift inside her—a cold, hard certainty that replaced the fear and anger with a single, focused purpose. "When do we go?"
"Tomorrow night. Sullivan will meet us at the reserve's perimeter at 2300 hours. Jesse and Leo will guide us through the culvert and into the underground facility. We locate the children, extract them, and document any evidence we can carry. If we find Ashford on site, we arrest him. If not, we take what we have to a federal magistrate and get a warrant for his arrest within twenty-four hours."
"And if something goes wrong?"
Kerrigan met her eyes. "Then we improvise."
The night of the operation was moonless, the sky a black sheet pulled tight over the Vinland Republic's southern wetlands. Rowan sat in the passenger seat of Kerrigan's sedan, her forensic kit in her lap, watching the headlights carve a tunnel through the darkness. Jesse and Leo were in the back seat, both of them silent, both of them staring out the windows at the passing trees.
Sullivan met them at the rendezvous point—a fire road that dead-ended at the edge of the Ashford game reserve. He was a compact man with a weathered face and eyes that moved constantly, cataloguing threats. He wore camouflage that blended into the winter-bare forest, and he carried a rifle slung across his back.
"Perimeter's clear," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "No patrols on this side. Ashford's security is focused on the manor and the main gate. The east wall is unwatched."
"Any sign of the children?" Kerrigan asked.
"Thermal imaging picked up three heat signatures in the underground structure. Two small, one larger. Could be the kids and a guard. Could be something else." Sullivan looked at Jesse and Leo. "These are the witnesses?"
"They're guides," Rowan said. "And they're under my protection."
Sullivan nodded. "Then let's make sure they stay that way."
They moved through the forest in single file, Sullivan leading, then Kerrigan, then Rowan, then Jesse and Leo. The ground was soft with decaying leaves, muffling their footsteps. The air smelled of wet earth and pine and something else—a faint, acrid scent that Rowan recognized as peat smoke, drifting from the direction of the bog.
The culvert was exactly where Jesse had drawn it: a concrete pipe half-hidden by ferns, its mouth dark and glistening with moisture. It was narrow, maybe three feet in diameter, and the bottom was slick with algae and standing water.
"I'll go first," Jesse said. "I know the way."
He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the pipe. Leo followed. Rowan went next, the cold water soaking through her clothes, the concrete pressing against her shoulders. She had been in tight spaces before—collapsed buildings, mine shafts, the cramped confines of mass graves—but this was different. This was the darkness of a place where children had crawled toward freedom, and she could feel the terror embedded in the concrete like a stain.
The culvert ended in a drainage grate that Jesse had already loosened. He pushed it aside and climbed out into a narrow service trench behind the manor's east wing. The others followed, and suddenly they were inside the estate, the bulk of the manor rising before them like a sleeping beast.
"Service door," Leo whispered, pointing. "That's where they bring deliveries. It's never locked during the day. At night..." He tried the handle. It opened. "At night, sometimes they forget."
They slipped inside. The service corridor was dark and narrow, lined with shelves of cleaning supplies and industrial-sized cans of food. At the end of the corridor, a heavy oak door stood ajar, orange light flickering through the gap—the same light Jesse had seen on the night of his escape.
"The study," Jesse breathed. "They're meeting again."
Kerrigan motioned for silence. She crept to the door and peered through the gap. After a moment, she turned back, her face unreadable.
"Ashford is there. Six others. They're looking at a map." She paused. "One of them is wearing a Redwater County police uniform."
"Dryden," Rowan said.
"No. Older. More rank." Kerrigan's voice was hard. "It's Chief Constable Hewitt. The head of the entire county police department."
The revelation hit Rowan like a physical blow. The chief constable. The man who oversaw every investigation in the county, who controlled the allocation of resources, who decided which cases were pursued and which were buried. No wonder Mateo Varela's missing person report had gone nowhere. No wonder the bog bodies had been discovered and yet no serious investigation had been launched. The man in charge of finding the truth was one of the hunters.
"We need to keep moving," Kerrigan said. "The children first. Evidence second. We deal with Hewitt later."
Leo led them past the study, down a narrow staircase hidden behind a false panel in the service corridor. The stairs were stone, worn smooth by years of use, and they spiraled downward into a darkness that smelled of damp and fear and something else—the same veterinary tranquilizer Rowan had found in the first victim's toxicology report.
At the bottom of the stairs, a corridor stretched into shadow. Doors lined both sides—six in total, just as Leo had described. Each door was solid steel with a small viewing slit at eye level. Rowan approached the first door and looked through.
A girl was curled on a thin mattress in the corner of the room. She was maybe fifteen, with dark hair matted against her scalp, wearing the same grey sweats as Leo. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but they were glassy and unfocused—the look of someone who had been drugged for so long that reality had become a distant, irrelevant thing.
"Sasha," Leo whispered. "That's Sasha."
Kerrigan tried the door. Locked, but the mechanism was simple—a heavy bolt on the outside, designed to be opened quickly. She slid it back, and the door swung open with a groan of rusted hinges.
Sasha didn't move. Didn't react. Her eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling.
"Help me," Kerrigan said. "We need to get her out."
Rowan entered the room and knelt beside the girl, checking her pulse and pupils with practiced efficiency. "Heavy sedation. We'll need to carry her."
They found Tomas in the third room, similarly drugged but more responsive. He blinked at Leo as though recognizing a face from a dream, his lips moving silently. Leo took his hand.
"We're getting you out," Leo said. "We're all getting out."
The second room was empty. The fourth, fifth, and sixth were also empty—clean, recently scrubbed, the mattresses bare. Rowan noted the absence with a cold dread. The empty rooms meant one of two things: either the remaining children had been moved, or they had already been hunted.
"Sasha said there were more," Leo protested. "Last week there were at least four others. They can't all be gone."
"They were taken to the reserve," Sullivan said from the doorway. He had been exploring the corridor while they freed the children, and his face was grim. "There's a processing room at the end of the hall. Medical equipment, restraints, a cabinet full of drugs. And a logbook."
He handed the logbook to Kerrigan. Rowan looked over her shoulder as she flipped through the pages. It was handwritten, meticulous, organized by date. Each entry listed a name, an age, a physical description, and a series of notations in some kind of code. At the bottom of each entry, a final notation: a date and a location, written in red ink.
"These are hunt records," Rowan said. "Every victim, every location, every outcome." She flipped to the last entry. "December 12. That's today. Location: North Bog, Section 4. Subject: Finn."
"The boy they took the night I escaped," Leo said. "They're hunting him tonight. Right now."
Rowan looked at Kerrigan. "We can't leave him."
"We have two drugged children who need medical attention. We have a logbook that's enough evidence to put Ashford away for life. If we go into that bog now, we risk everything."
"If we don't, a boy dies."
Kerrigan held her gaze for a long moment. Then she turned to Sullivan. "Take Sasha and Tomas to the extraction point. Call for backup—real backup, federal tactical team. Tell them we have a live hunt in progress and we're going in."
Sullivan nodded. "And you?"
"I'm going hunting." Kerrigan checked her weapon. "Ashford's prey has been running for five years. Tonight, the hunters become the hunted."
Rowan grabbed her forensic kit. Jesse and Leo fell in behind her. Together, they climbed the stairs and moved toward the estate's back gate—the gate that led directly into the wetlands where, somewhere in the darkness, a boy named Finn was running for his life while men with guns closed in.
The bog was waiting. And somewhere in its depths, Magnus Ashford was about to learn that the dead had finally found their voice.
But as they crossed the lawn, the manor's floodlights blazed on. An alarm began to wail. Someone had seen them. And from the direction of the study, Rowan heard Ashford's voice, calm and cold as a scalpel blade: "Secure the grounds. No one leaves."
The hunt, it seemed, had just acquired new prey.
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