Buck Moreno was another ex-Navy SEAL, which was how he and Leif knew each other. Now he made money fighting MMA. No one knew he worked for me on the side. I financed his MMA fights and paid him hourly as well.

“My man on the inside is watching Jim like a hawk,” Buck said.

“Right. The priest?”

“Yeah, Father Amos Baca. He and I served together. He was a chaplain.”

“How’d you get him into the church?” I asked.

“The less you know about that, the better,” Buck said. “Plausible deniability and all.”

I nodded. “Got it.” I already knew more than I wanted to. Buck’s methods were foolproof. And also very illegal.

“You were right,” he said. “There’s a system of tunnels under the church.”

My throat ached. I knew what was coming. “And…”

“They’re cave-like, built of stone. Legend has it they were part of the underground railroad back in the day.”

“New York was in the north. How can that be?”

“Churches were sanctuaries for runaway slaves. Manhattan was close to Maryland and Virginia, which were both slave-owning states.”

“Wow. This place has a history.”

“Yeah. A really awesome history. The tunnels were used to hide runaway slaves until papers could be forged for them. Except that now those tunnels are probably being used for something horrific.”

Nausea crawled up my throat.

“Was there”—I swallowed back bile—“anyone down there?”

He shook his head. “It’s all been cleared out, as far as I can tell. But there’s a stench.”

“What do you mean?”

He inhaled, wrinkling his nose. “You don’t serve as a Navy SEAL for ten years and not know the stench of dead human flesh. And that smell is down there.”

I swallowed audibly, literally gulping back puke. “What else?” I finally said.

“There’s an antechamber that all the tunnels lead to.” He paused a moment, closing his eyes.

“Just get on with it,” I said. “For God’s sake.”

He pulled his briefcase onto the table. “I found some things. Things that you aren’t going to like.”

“Fuck.”

“Nothing implicates you, so relax.”

“Relax? That means nothing to me. What about my brothers? My sister? Zee?”

“Zee?”

I shook my head. “A story for another time. What is it? Just spit it out.”

He pulled a folder out of his briefcase. “I took a lot of photos. It was dark down there, so the photos aren’t great, but I enlarged them and printed them out.” He pushed the file toward me.

I instinctively looked around. I was about to see something that would disturb me. That much was apparent, so I needed to make sure no one was looking over my shoulder.

A server glanced at me slyly out of the corner of his eye.

Red flag. Big red flag.

I pulled my own briefcase off the floor and shoved the folder into it. “We’re leaving.”