“Yep. Got him.”
“He’s yours. He’ll be fast, you need to be faster.”
“Done,” he replies, and just like that, I’ve matched the first of my team up. I can read people well, it’s one of the many reasons I’m in command.
My stare eats up the room again picking out the second guy. They’re all sitting down now, the two heftier men seem slightly squashed in their booth. It was stupid of them to pick a booth rather than an open table like Shelly and Victor have. After all, they can be pinned in that booth. The second guy scans the room, and I avert my eyes and drop my head, so I don’t attract his attention.
“You’re clear,” Darwin informs me, knowing instinctively what I was doing.
Looking back up, I notice the second guy has scabs and grazes across his knuckles, a quick glance tells me guy three has the same. They’re part of the muscle.
“Okay. The other two guys are muscle. My guess is…” I stop talking when another man moves to their table. Two of them immediately stand, and the new guy sits in the middle. He’s shorter than the rest wearing a suit and a gold watch, and he drips with power. “I was going to say I think there might be someone missing. Now I know I’m right. The main man has just sat down, probably the boss, definitely the thinker.” Pausing, I assess the situation for a split second. “Darwin, you’re on the suit. Clint, Brand, on the muscle. I don’t care which one you pick, but choose between you now, so both of you know who you’re taking down.”
“Got it.”
“On it.”
They both chorus at once. I scrub my hand down my face. “Right, my understanding is that there should have been three more arriving, but seeing as the boss has turned up, I think we should expect two more. Does the intel sound right?” I ask all of them the question because for the last week everyone has been trying to collect as much information as they could get their hands on. We were given bare scraps to work with when we were assigned this case, and as it was such a fastball, we’ve had no choice but to run with only sketchy information. I hate being unprepared, but even more than that, I hate asking my team to put themselves in danger when we only have part of the picture.
“That’s what our understanding is,” Darwin confirms what I thought.
“Prepare for the unexpected. Victor, you already know you’re to keep your eyes on Shelly in case she needs backup. That’s not a request, Shel,” I add the last comment knowing she’ll want to protest my order. “Arlo, King, I want you both prepared for anything.”
“Always are, boss,” King replies, and I’m pretty sure I hear a grunt from Arlo.
“Keep your minds clear. There might be two more or ten more. Our intel is bare metal, and we haven’t had time to build on it. You know this. I’ll be here, too. All of you, keep focused. Let’s get this done.”
I receive various murmurs of agreement from everyone. Even so, I can’t help hearing the bullshit in my own words, when my mind is fogged with long blonde hair, tattoos, and a face that has haunted my dreams for as long as I can remember.
I nurse my drink for the next hour and receive varying looks of disgust from the barman, sitting here for so long with only one drink isn’t the done thing. Still, he seems happier when I shove a fifty-pound note into the tips box.
My back straightens, and my glass hits the counter hard as I forget to breathe.
“You seeing this, Isaac?” Shel says, using my real name. But I can’t speak, my words are lassoed, and the rope that’s holding them hostage is attached directly to my heart.
“Fuck me, they’ve been spotted,” Darwin adds, and my body goes cold. “Isaac, I’ve switched to the private channel, only you can hear me. Listen, now. I know you want to go over there, but you can’t. You go over there, you’ll fuck this whole mission. If we play this right, keep an eye on the girls, we could have this in the bag tonight,” Darwin tells me what I already know. But all my brain screams is that my girl is in this shitty club with her friend at nearly three-thirty in the morning, wearing only a skirt and a fucking bra and getting herself noticed by the one group of men that no female ever wants to notice them.
“Fuck me,” I whisper, for once not having a clue what to do as my heart and head commence war.
LIV
“I can’t believe you brought me here,” I complain to Helena while looking around the dark, dingy club. “I’m pretty sure my feet are stuck to the floor,” I complain again, pulling one heel at a time from the tacky carpet beneath my soles.
“What?” Helena chirps, shrugging her shoulders and winking. “It’s not that different from ShadowBox.”
“That’s rubbish,” I state as I follow her toward the bar. “ShadowBox may be dark, but your feet don’t stick to the floor, and we’re always safe.”
We reach the bar, and Helena turns to face me. “Technically, it’s your shoes that are stuck to the floor and anyway, guys grab at us there, too,” she states, turning back to order our drinks.
“Yeah, maybe, but I’ve never felt like I was going to be stabbed in the loos,” I return, crinkling my nose and looking around. A guy at the bar stares at me, and I can feel my eyes widen as I take him in. Brooding, dark, mysterious, and definitely dangerous. He looks away, and I can breathe again. He’s scary, but I
