Monday April 23

Undisclosed location Detroit, MI
1:15 pm

“Simon, he isn’t some lost puppy, he is a young man and you can’t just keep him.” Nikki said shaking her head. Simon had introduced Nikki to the young man they found out was named Dante. He refused to give a last name because he said he had no family anymore. He turned 18 2 months ago and he had been held hostage by the gang for the last 5 years. He had run away from home when his mother brought home yet one more loser and this particular brown stain on the mattress had taken to coming into Dante’s room at night. He left home trying to find a way to protect himself and went from the proverbial frying pan straight into hell. Even though Nikki emphasized with the boy, she couldn’t condone letting him stay with them could she?

“Look Butterfly, all I know is the boy saved my life and after what he has been through, who do you think would understand him any better than us? I can’t just cut him loose to look out for himself.” Now Simon was giving her the puppy dog eyes and that look on his face, just so not fair.

“This is Kevin’s influence on you isn’t it?” she said with mock outrage. Simon’s smile increased by about 1000 watts.

“You know, ever since the Rage had to get rid of Skidmark…” Nikki shushed him with a smooch and pulled back shaking her head, “Don’t even think about it.”

When the snipers took out the guys with the launchers, Nikki had secured the ordinance in her vehicle. After the mayhem inside the warehouse, they searched the SUV and found out the last launcher was not in the there. A team had searched the gang house and didn’t find the launcher there, but they did find several underage boys and girls in various stages of indoctrination into the gang. All had been placed into the system and the team was pouring through everything they found at the house looking for the last launcher. Simon had taken a shot at extracting the information from Lopez, but since his sister wasn’t a viable bargaining chip, he refused to divulge where the last launcher was. Nikki and Simon had been banging away on their computers trying to find a lead when Dante walked in and asked them what they were working on. Simon didn’t even look up when he replied,

“We’re looking for the last rocket launcher, it wasn’t in the SUV.” Dante hesitated a couple of seconds and then said,

“I saw a man come by the house the day before the warehouse and he left with a large black case.” Nikki and Simon stopped typing at the same time and both their heads shot up to take in the slender dark haired boy standing in front of them. Simon asked,

“Have you ever seen him before Dante?” Dante got a far off look in his eyes and said,

“I remember seeing him once before but I’m not sure why. It was also at the house. I never met him directly, but Carmen and Alejandro would fall all over themselves trying to please him when he visited the first time. He had 3 huge guys with him when I saw him, but they made all of us stay out of sight during the visit. I just remember thinking he must be important to have those guys watching over him”

Simon just smiled over at Nikki and waived his hand in Dante’s direction.

“Don’t you say it.” Nikki said, brokering no argument. She did catch the nod and wink Simon gave Dante though. She just smiled to herself and modified her search parameters as Simon started striking keys like the Rage looking for a cookie.

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