It began with a picture, over a month before. Zee had gone over all reports from all agencies without any signs anyone had seen Damian. He knew the tiger traveled all over the world, Damian enjoyed gracing his followers with his presence. Since Denton had assured Zee that teleportation was not a thing, that meant he had to flying and all airports had been put under surveillance from the first day the task force was formed to find the Cardinal Killer. But Damian had managed to avoid being seen at all of them.

With a lack of anything to go on, Zee had turned to amateurs, plane watchers. There were hundreds of sites where people posted not only pictures of planes with their details mentioned, but that of the passengers disembarking, when those plane did not stop at a gate, as private jets likes to do.

The problem was then, which airport to investigate. While they knew Damian had traveled all over since the start of all this, Zee only had a few confirmed sighting, Denver, and San Francisco were the two he’d done first, but Damian had done out of his way there to not be seen. The others were Durban South Africa, Seville Spain and Alba Iulia, Romania.

It wasn’t that anyone had seen the tiger there, but the kills had had his distinctive style, Quantico’s profilers said they were from the same mysterious killer who had begun it all. With the extra information his basement team had access to, they’d linked that killer to the camping site massacre, which Zee linked to Damian.

So, whenever he wasn’t busy with one of the current disasters, Zee perused the plane watcher sites and focused on the closest airport to those cities. That meant close to a dozen of them, over an uncertain time period around the murders.

And five weeks ago, he’d seen the tiger debarking a private jet at the King Shaka International Airport. The picture was out of focus, his had not been the flight the photographer had been interested in, but the orange, black and white of the disembarking passenger was distinct enough to mark him as a tiger, then the body language, straight, tall, looking at his kingdom. Zee had only had a few interactions with Damian, but there were a lot of recordings of him during his stay at Steel Link. And regardless of the situation Damian was in, this air that he owned was always present.

For most agents, that single image might not have been enough, but Zee had made his name within the bureau on his ability to track someone down with almost no information. That blurry image gave him a shiver of excitement. He finally had a starting point.

He contacted the airport and got the plane’s registration without having to bring up his credentials; that had to be a breach of procedure, but Zee wasn’t about to complain. With that information he linked the plane to an Italian corporation with heavy ties to the church.

His next step was to look for any jets that corporation owns near the other two cities around the times of the murders there, but he had no luck. Damian’s network was wide enough he didn’t have to limit himself to one corporation.

So, how many corporations could Zee link to this one? Forensic accounting to the rescue. Within two weeks, he knew more about it and it’s supposedly competitors than Zee ever wanted to know about an entity whose only purpose seemed to be to bring the world back to the dark ages.

He connected two other corporations to it by the criteria of a strong connection to the church and had a jet land near Seville and Alba Lulia at the time of the murders. 

Then came the more difficult part, working out which jets in their pool were on official business, and which ones were being borrowed for personal use. Zee had no doubt Damian would hide his movements within official flights, but he counted on there being places and time the tiger needed to be that didn’t match a pre-scheduled flight.

He whittled the pool down to twenty jets, which never seemed to be used for business, and whose passenger list was never registered; an advantage of private jets, although Homeland did its best to force the FAA to require those after the terror attack of 2021. But private jet owners had money and that meant they could skirt the rules as they wanted, the government’s will be damned.

Of those twenty, Zee found six that kept landing in cities with known church activists in the area. He couldn’t confirm Damian was there, but of everyone involved on the church side of the war, Damian was the only one doing all the traveling. His lieutenants might travel to adjoining cities or states and countries, but they did that by car.

The more Zee looked at where those six planes had been, the more certain he was those were Damian’s personal jets. He smiled. “Everyone makes a mistake Damian, no matter how smart they are. And this is yours.”

Still, Damian wasn’t an idiot, the jets were always on the move, making it difficult to know on which one he was, and while Zee had the authority to ask each airport the jets were schedule to land at, he was reluctant to do so. He suspected Damian used the more common means of bribes to move unnoticed within those airports than magic, which meant he would be informed of any such request. Zee did not want to tip his hand. There was no telling how someone like Damian would react. At the very least, he would make it even more difficult to be tracked.

So, Zee went back to the plane watcher sites. He made it a challenge to them, tracking and photographing the six jet’s occupant as they disembarked. They’d been sufficiently excited not to bother with questions like who Zee was or why he wanted the pictures. Although he realized who they thought he was when the first person to respond with pictures asked to be paid. They thought he was some reporter on a story. Well, he did have a discretionary fund for informants he hadn’t used in years.

That had been two weeks ago, during which he tracked Damian around the world, but couldn’t act on in. He’d considered telling Denton at the dinner, but his friend had been preoccupied with his own problems. And what could Denton do? Damian rarely stayed more than a few hours at anyone place, but the time Denton was in the air, Damian would have vanished in the sky. If the Society wasn’t in such disarray, maybe one of them could act on the information, but Denton had shown such annoyance that even those you respected his position as champion didn’t exactly respond enthusiastically to his instructions.

Once Damian was in the US, Zee told himself, he’d let Denton know. Then his friend would be in a position to act.

And today he’d been contacted by one of the watcher in the US, at the Kansas City International Airport, with a clear picture of Damian walking away from the jet.

Zee brought up the list of known Gray Church compound in Kansas and Missouri and came back with few of them. The largest concentration was on the east side of Missouri and west side of Kansas. That one Zee understood the reason, as close to Denver without being in Denton’s backyard. There was probably a family Damian was harassing in Missouri or Illinois.

But as far as they knew, there was nothing of note near Kansas City. The photographer was enterprising, and for a little more money, Zee had a picture of the license plate of the car Damian left the airport in.

One call to the Kansas City office, and Zee had its route. A reputation as the FBI par excellence tracker facilitated things at times, even when said reputation was a few years old. By the time Zee knew where the car was parked, it had been stationary for an hour. 

He called Denton.

“Agent Malhotra Bodenman,” answered a voice who wasn’t Denton, “How can I help you?”

Zee looked at the display while trying to place the voice. He had called Denton. “Jeroen? Why are you answering Denton’s phone?”

“Denton’s officially unreachable, calls are either transferred to my phone or simply dumped into his message center.”

“Can you contact him? This is important.”

“I can,” the rat hesitated, “but how important? Denton just left the airport with elder Cormoran, along with other elders. They are flying to Greece.”

Zee cursed. Greece meant that thing with the altars.

“I’m sorry,” Jeroen said.

“No, this is not your fault.”

“Can I assist you in his place?”

Could he? Steel Link had manpower, and if Zee was going to keep this unofficial, he couldn’t bring FBI agents. But was bringing an entire team the way to go? As far as he could tell, Damian traveled without an escort. And while Denton’s men were a force to reckon with, how good would they be at blending in? No, small would be better.

“Can I borrow your jet? You said Denton left with Mister Cormoran, so I expect they are using his jet.”

“Yes, I can have it ready for take-off within half an hour.”

“And can I borrow two of your more discrete men?”

“I take it this isn’t official FBI business.”

“It is not.”

“I can have two of our best meet you at the jet.”

“Thank you, I’ll head to the airport now.” He disconnected, lets his second in command know he was leaving for the day and headed for the elevator. The door opened, and he almost collided to Marcus.

“Love, I was just coming to—” Zee pushed his husband back in.

“We’re leaving.”

The red deer smiles. “Oh, and where are we going? It’s been a long time since we’ve cut work for some fun.”

“Kansas City,” Zee replied, unable to play into Marcus’ humor. “I found Damian.”

All amusement left Marcus. “You found him?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how long he’s going to be there.”

“Shouldn’t you tell Denton?”

“He’s in the air, heading to Greece to fix that problem he told us about.”

“Then you should tell the task force. Let them handle it. Love, this is a little bigger than the two of us.”

“Tell them what, Marcus? They don’t know about Damian, remember? To explain how I know about him requires explaining magic.”

“So you want to do what? Barge in where he’s hiding by yourself and arrest him?”

“Not by myself, you’ll be there.”

“Love, Damian knows magic, we don’t.”

Zee tapped the pendant under his shirt. “We’re protected, and we’ll two of Steel Link’s best. They know magic.”

The doors opened into the parking floor.

Marcus took his phone out. “Let me message Jeff. We’re in the middle of analytics and he’ll have to take over.”

Zee sat behind the wheel and slotted his phone in. Marcus’ buzzes as he sat and frowned, reading the message and typed back.

“Problems?” Zee drove out of the garage.

“No, just minor details I didn’t think to inform Jeff of, since I didn’t know I’d be leaving.” The phone buzzed again. Marcus didn’t look happy.

“Huh?” Zee asked as Marcus replied, then put the phone away.

“It’s handled. Jeff can figure out the rest.”

“If it’s that important, I can do this without you.”

Marcus squeezed Zee’s legs. “We’re a team; where you go I go.” He gave the mule deer a peck of the side of the head. “Who is going to keep you safe, if not me, love?”

Zee smiled at his husband. “I’m always safe with you, Hun.”