“And the stuff highlighted in blue?” Top asked, squinting until Saint poked him with a pair of reading glasses. Top glared harshly at his vice president, but snatched the glasses and jammed them on his face without a word.
“Far as I can tell? The names of all the people Ghost has taken out himself.” Nasa's answer had murmurs of surprise and confusion running around the room, but no one spoke up to interrupt as he continued. “There's a family tree of each of their drug suppliers, from the production crew to the street dealers.
“Arms dealers, small time and large where the Leviathans get their hardware, and computer hacktivists they utilize to do work for them. I've got tattoo artists, accountants, doctors, truck drivers, teachers of all fuckin' things, and stash house owners.
“I've got addresses for the places where they take the people they kidnap, recordings of phone calls between Leviathans and their suppliers... This is the Holy Grail of organized crime, and considering Dillon and I got Ghost to confirm he's not Andrew Stanfield, now more than ever, I'm convinced he's undercover for Homeland or some other agency on assignment.”
Shocked silence had descended upon them all, but Roar was the first to recover. “Ghost is an undercover agent taking out the Leviathans one by one, all by himself?”
It made perfect sense to her, but Dillon stayed quiet, watching the men of Perdition thinking it over, seriously considering it everything Nasa had brought to them.
“Technically, he used us to take out a hefty chunk of the Leviathans for him while he was here with us,” Saint answered with a testy curl of his lip. “Which—as much as I hate to admit it—was a pretty smart move. The only part of this new theory I find hard to swallow is that no agency would sanction the murder of innocent civilians in order to keep Lewis's cover.”
“He didn't take out innocents though, did he?” Damon pointed out. “Contractor Jerry turned out to be laundering money through his business and reporting his undocumented workers to ICE when they asked for a fair wage.
“The UPS driver had a history of domestic violence, and we found out after I tapped some of my military contacts, the medical discharge the real Toad got wasn't because of a bodily injury.
“It was the sort of discharge the military gives someone who's fucked up so bad, it would make international news and cause more problems than the court marshal was worth. Maybe Lewis is purposefully taking out dirtbags to keep his cover and performing a civil service all at the same time.”
“No way,” Roar insisted with a stubborn shake of his head. “Just because Ghost has this crazy detailed list and is taking out civilians who aren't exactly lily white doesn't mean he works for the government.”
“That's true, but the pieces still fit.” Top grunted in displeasure.
Ruckus looked around at his brothers in wide-eyed astonishment. “Am I hearing y'all right? Are we actually considering this asshole is a good guy?”
Nasa cut a harsh glare toward the redhead. “Undercover agent or not, there is no world in which John Lewis, Toad, Ghost, or whatever the fuck he's calling himself, is a good guy. The pile of facts we have to prove it—most recently added is how he threatened to blow up a shelter full of women and kids if he didn't get what he wanted—is of the giant steaming variety.”
Ruckus raised two thumbs up over his head, “So that's a no on the good guy part. Got it.”
“Now that's established,” Pen drawled facetiously. “Agent Granger created the task force after we started hunting for Ghost. He could be the one feeding that asshole.”
“It's a fair assumption that anyone outside this room could be feeding Ghost information,” Nasa pointed out, “Obviously not counting the women.”
“Then we don't give Granger shit,” Roar stated, as though it was a foregone conclusion. “I never liked that tool, anyway. So, what are we going to do?”
“For now, we're not gonna do shit,” Top declared firmly, leaning back in his chair to fold his hands over his belly, frowning so hard it made deep grooves in his forehead.
Nasa looked as though he'd been hit upside the back of the head with a two by four. Clearly, it hadn't occurred to him he wouldn't be able to utilize what he'd uncovered, especially after everything they'd done, everything they'd been through, to get it. In looking around, no one seemed happy with the decision, and Dillon couldn't claim she felt great about letting the information just sit.
However, Top was right. She certainly didn't want to be doing any of Ghost's dirty work for him. Neither did she want to screw up what appeared to be an investigation that might lead to dismantling all the truly terrible shit the Leviathans were doing.
“Like Saint said, we've been doing his dirty work by taking players off the board for him, and I'm not too keen on being used as a pawn. And, on the rare chance this nutball is a government agent, I can't in good conscience screw with this kind of long term undercover op.”
Heads nodded in agreement with Top's assessment, but scowls of unhappiness still clouded most everyone's face.
“Not to totally change the subject, but Nasa, you said Ghost might have reason to go after Rachel,” Gee spoke slowly in his calm, quiet voice. “If we keep pushing Vanguard to tell us where to look for her, are we delivering her right into Ghost's hands?”
“Shit,” Raid swore, thumping his fist on the table.
Damon's chair creaked as he rocked back and forth, pressing his fingertips together in a steeple, staring at nothing in particular. “I hate to sound like an asshole, but Dillon already got this girl to safety, and she's warned the people she can to keep an eye on Rachel. Far as I'm concerned, we don't need to stick our noses in it any further when we've got problems of
