Mancini’s impatient ass got up from his chair and came around behind the desk to read over my shoulder. “Catalina, where did you get this?” Could he maybe not sound so impressed with her shit?
“Lily and I made it.”
“Mengele where did you hear about these people?” She literally buttoned her lips and looked around the room; everywhere but at me.
“Daddy that’s not important right now, what are you going to do about these people? Because when it’s time for me to go away to college I don’t want them standing in my way.”
“Mengele you’re eight, now answer me, where did you hear about these people?”
“Around!” I distinctly remember erasing that email from her sister’s computer and the only time I ever mentioned it to anyone was in the privacy of my office on the phone.
I was waiting for her little ass to go to sleep before Mancini broke out his equipment but I didn’t know it was this bad. I don’t care how smart she is, I don’t want my eight year old kid knowing about this shit. I’ll bench that for later, right now I was more interested in the chart she had outlined on the paper.
“Explain this to me, what’s all this?” She climbed into my lap and worked the creases out of the paper. “This one on the top is the master group, they’ve been around the longest. These two are the main branches and these others down here are all the branches that are all over the world.”
My eight year old kid had made a chart of the world’s foremost underground hellfire clubs. She went on to explain how she and her little friend came up with the chart, and where they’d found the information that lead them to put it together the way they had.
I couldn’t say shit, she hadn’t in essence done anything wrong and when she explained why she’d done it I could only hug her and hope to fuck that none of this shit ever touched her. “Why did you do this Catalina?”
“Because Caitie worked really hard so she could go away to school, she’s smart daddy and she should go, all the teachers say so and even the grandmas. They don’t know why you keep saying no but I do, so I thought I could help.”
“Does your sister know about this?”
“I showed it to her today because I didn’t want her to be mad at you daddy. And daddy, Todd’s really nice. You know what he did?”
“No tell me what he did.”
“I called him and told him about this kid named Brian who was teasing Caitie at school and he came and beat him up.” The light in her eyes did not bode well for Brian.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. What did you do to Brian?”
She hopped down off my lap and headed for the door. “Ooh daddy, I forgot to put Bunny out for his evening walk around the backyard, I’ll be right back.” I’m pretty sure the little sneak had no intentions on coming back.
“Mengele just a minute.” She stopped in her tracks and looked back over her shoulder at me.
“Why were you sneaking around in the hallway before?”
“I was waiting for you to finish speaking to uncle Hank to tell him about what me, and Lily found.” She shrugged her little shoulders again before making her escape.
She left the room leaving two grown men speechless. “What the hell Hank!”
“Yeah!”
“Who’s this kid that she’s been talking to?”
“Lily Flanagan, she lives about an hour away from here.”
“How do you… never mind, do you know this kid?”
“Not yet, but I think we should talk to her parents, this is some pretty heavy shit.”
“What I wanna know is how the two of them pieced this shit together when we couldn’t.”
“I keep telling you, your kid is something special. I knew about some of these groups but I honestly never thought to link them up like this. They went back years… this…this is unbelievable.”
“We still don’t know how they came across my kid though.”
“Does it matter? What matters now is finding these people and taking them out. They did most of the work for us looks like, all we have to do is go hunting.” I looked back down at the paper. “You think they understand what this really is?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, they’re not eight like you and I were eight Lyon, their brains processes things a little different.”
“Do you recognize any of the names on this list?”
“A few yes; we’re gonna need to let the others in on this.”
“Well we’re going to Law’s in a few days and the SEALs are heading out there as well, that’s as good a time as any. I’m not sure if Creed’s gonna make it, his girl is about ready to pop.”
“He’ll be there and so will my cousin and the others. Blade and Summers.”