"This corporation owns the buildings where Wallace operates. The day-care centers, the orphanage, everything. What does that tell you?"
"Nothing good," Bolan growled.
The dark-haired woman nodded emphatic agreement.
"That's not all. Tri-State, Inc. also happens to own the New Age Center and several other profitable business concerns. The principal stockholder and chairman of the board is none other than David Parelli.
"That's how I got interested in Senator Dutton. He's on the board of directors of the New Age Center."
"You were on the right scent," Bolan told her. "Dutton is in Parelli's pocket. Parelli's got an ironclad hold on him."
And not only that, Bolan thought, but Dutton had lied to him about simply being a member of the health club. Dutton was in this whole thing a lot deeper than he claimed to be. Maybe giving the guy a break had been a mistake...
"I won't ask what that hold is," Lana said. "I don't think I want to know. To get back to Wallace, once I uncovered all of this, I went after something even more concrete."
"You live dangerously," Bolan noted.
"I live honorably," she countered. "After tonight, I know how careful I'll have to be."
"What about Wallace?" he pressed.
"His main office is at the orphanage," she went on. "I used to work there sometimes, filling in when somebody was sick or on vacation. When Mr. Wallace fired me, he forgot to get the key to that office and the one to the side door back from me."
"You went right into his office?"
"Maybe it was dangerous. I was mad, I was out of a job and there were three kids missing.
"Anyway, I ended up walking out of there with an armload of files, enough to tell me what was really going on. Up to a point, anyway. There were all these kids, dozens of them, unaccounted for. It was like they were just systematically dropping off the face of the earth!"
Bolan felt fear gnawing at his gut.
Not fear for himself.
Fear that he stumbled onto the most repulsive form yet of Cannibal Man in all his savagery.
"Could there be any other explanation?" he asked.
"I... don't know. My instinct says no. Those kids are being kidnapped and Wallace is part of the scheme. He knew I was at the day-care center by myself. He called to get me out of the room where the children were sleeping, out of the way. That's why I said the kidnappers had done it before; they've been working with Wallace."
"It all hangs together," he said softly, half to himself. "I wish it didn't, but it does. Who's going to report orphans missing? It would have to be a big operation, then they got cocky and got you suckered into it. What did you do when you put it all together? Whey didn't you go to the police?"
She emitted an unladylike snort.
"You saw Wallace at that banquet tonight. I'd be the sour grapes out to smear the good-hearted employer who had to let her go, and even if the police did follow through, Wallace would have enough connections to know what was coming and doctor the records, and I'd be left there looking like a bigger fool than before.
"At the first sign of an investigation he could play enough tricks with his computers to cover up anything, even something this bad. Phony adoptions, you name it. He'd find some way."
"So you went after Dutton, trying for another angle of attack."
"It seemed to be the only thing I could do. I knew if I could find some weak point somewhere in the puzzle, I'd have a good chance to put together something the police could really use, maybe even pressure the senator into helping me."
Bolan shook his head.
"He's been pressured by experts. You wouldn't have gotten anything but dead. You've been playing out of your league, Lana."
She turned to him.
"But I've been doing all right, haven't I?"
He grinned in spite of himself.
"Yeah, lady, you've been doing all right. But no further."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean from here on out, I do it alone."
"Do it? "she echoed.
"Put it together and take it apart," he growled. "You've helped me a lot, Lana. I came into this wanting to take out Parelli, you came into it wanting to get something on Wallace, and we connected at Dutton.
"A Mob boss, a dirty politician and a scumbag you think is dealing wholesale in missing children. That group needs to be taught a few lessons."
"I can help you."
"You won't help me by getting killed. I've lost too many people I cared about because they wanted to help me. I don't want that to happen to you."
"It's my fight too, goddammit," she snapped angrily. "I knew how dangerous this was when I started. I didn't ask for this, but when I saw what I had and that the police weren't capable of doing anything about it, I couldn't put it down and you're not going to take the fight from me."
Bolan believed what she said because in her voice he heard fragments of his determination and beliefs.
He made his decision, knowing he could very well regret it.
"All right, up to a point, you're on," he told her. "Until the shooting starts, or until I think it's about to start. Then you do as I say, Lana. You have to promise me this."
"Is that so?"
"That's so. Take it or leave it. Decide now."
She saw that he wasn't joking.
"I'll take it," she said.
For a few moments Bolan remained silent, thinking.
His thoughts raced to the children whose faces he had never seen, who were in trouble, who had been torn away from those who cared for them.
And now some demons out of hell were masquerading as human beings and ripping that security and love away.
Bolan knew now with a cold certainty that he had at last identified the undercurrent of this Chicago setup that had been bugging him since this strange night began.
Not the dirty senator.
Not vague talk of a Mafia Godmother running the show.
Not even the elusive target of Mr. David Parelli, himself.
Every one of those angles combined to make this an unusually touchy operation for a man on the run from all sides, but here at last was the thread that tied all those diverse elements into one tight package marked for termination.
The warrior shook his head sadly.
Stealing children, the true innocents of the earth.
But there would be a reckoning.
And more hellfire and killing to back it up.
Tonight.
14
Sergeant Lester Griff had never found it easy to concentrate at the precinct office that he shared with other detectives. Somebody always had a radio playing or the officers sitting around at their desks were constantly yapping at the other guys or pounding their typewriters as they wrote up reports or questioning suspects.
Headquarters was a bitch.
Especially since he was supposed to have been off duty tonight. He could have been home with Kathleen, trying to relax.
Who was he kidding, Griff asked himself irritably. If he had been home, he might have been relaxed on the surface, for Kathleen's sake, but inside he would have been seething, just the way he was here.
It was all the fault of that bastard, Bolan.
That was what they called the guy and the name fit as far as Griff was concerned.
All of Chicago was in an uproar because of Bolan's sweep through the city. Everyone from the mayor on down was hollering, which was why Griff and the rest of the Org Crime Task Force had been called in to man the office.
Griff felt as if they were all hollering at him.
After Bolan left his house, Griff felt he was duty bound to turn Bolan in. So he placed an anonymous call to a different precinct where he felt no one would recognize his voice. The sergeant gave a description of Bolan's car and the clothes he was wearing, knowing full well that Bolan could have changed both of those things within minutes of leaving his house. But Griff had felt there was no other option open to him. He relayed the information to a distant precinct to cover his own ass.