ISAAC

 

“Where have you been?”

“Out,” I force the word through my teeth. As team commander, I don’t need to explain myself, but as their friend, I should. Unfortunately, I can’t find it in me right now to think straight and telling them that I’ve been going to ShadowBox to watch Via for the last few nights won’t go down well.

“Go catch some sleep. We need to be up soon, and we need to be fresh. They can’t get the jump on us because we’re sloppy and tired,” Darwin tells everyone.

Nodding, they all disperse except Shelly who stays where she is. Darwin glares at her, and she arches her eyebrow back but makes no move to leave.

I chuckle, shaking my head, and Shelly’s eyes snap to me.

“What?” She shrugs. “At this point, with the number of missions we’ve completed as a team, especially where you and I have been a couple…” Shelly’s hands come up, making air quotes with her fingers. “I know you just as well as Darwin, I’m worried about you… and her.” Her gaze drops from mine, and I sigh.

“We all need to stay focused on this mission,” I reply.

“Isaac—”

“No. All of us, Shel, that means me, too.”

Darwin looks from me to her and back again and then scrubs his hand down his face. “Shit. I have a bad feeling.”

I grind my teeth together. There’s nothing more to say.

“We have four hours. Go. Sleep. We need to be on our game tonight,” I tell them both.

After they leave, I grab my laptop and open social media. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I can access—or hack—all forms of social media and have accounts under many names. However, before I left for the Army all those years ago, I had a Twitter account which belonged to me, the real me—Isaac James. Although I never post, my family, my friends… Via, they all believe I never use it. The truth is, I monitor their lives. When I can’t be near, when I want to cling to home to feel close to them, that’s when I log in. I could hack into their personal accounts, but I feel like that would be a step too far, and I need to draw the line somewhere for my own sanity.

Where Via’s concerned, though, it seems I like to torture myself by reading what she’s been up to over the years, knowing when she’s dating or having fun, living life without me in it. Still, I can’t seem to stop, even now. Opening her Twitter page is just another stab in my heart. Her status makes me grab my phone. I hold it in my hand and will myself not to call or text her before slowly placing it back down.

 

Olivia McKenna @Via_McKenna - Pain is the only feeling you can ever really trust.

 

I read and re-read her tweet, as though if I stare at it long enough, it will change. I’m just about to log out, to give myself a break when I spot another tweet from her.

 

@NoahMaitland - Saturday works.

 

And then she’s put a damn wink emoji.

What the fuck? Who was she replying to?

I click on his name as the profile photo—some sea view bullshit which tells me nothing. The moment it opens up, I read the account information, then scroll down to his tweet to my Via. I relax, realising it’s the guy from the dance studio.

 

@Via_McKenna – Wanna dance again?

 

Clicking my neck from side to side, I’m glad when the tension eases. Not only does the most recent information I’ve gathered tell me that Noah Maitland is interested and actively pursuing Via’s friend and roommate, Helena, I also watched them dance last week. There was no fire, no passion. Via likes him, but it’s purely platonic. If I ever see her dancing passionately with another guy, then I’ll be concerned. Even so, I should be her partner. It’s what I want, it’s what she wants, but it’s not what she needs. I’m not what she needs. Not yet. But I will be.

I log off and pull out the notes for the current mission. It’s just after nine p.m. now, and I should be getting my four hours of sleep too, but I can’t seem to stop my brain from running at a million miles an hour.

We need to be at Crimson, a small dive club in the centre of London, by one a.m. I’ve studied the trend of this ring as much as I can. They seem to always arrive at their chosen spot around one thirty in the morning, waiting for a few hours sourcing and watching the girls. My understanding is that they pick out roughly ten girls, but take just two or three. They hang around until four in the morning waiting for the most sober people to leave and then choose from the girls who remain. It seems it’s easier to collect their packages when the world that surrounds them is drug infused or drink addled.

I don’t want to put Shelly in that position, but I have no choice. She knows that, it’s her job. No matter what I say, the fact is I’ve become attached to my team, and with the work we do, it’s both a benefit and a curse.

 

 

“They’ve arrived.”

“You’re sure?”

“Affirmative, it’s them. Only three from the six-man team we tracked last week. Intel says more are coming, but these three are the spotters, the rest come to collect later.”

The chatter through our earpieces confirms what we all thought. Tonight is the night. As I sit at the back end of the bar overlooking the seedy club, I know I need to focus. We’ve been here for little under an hour, and I’ve spotted at least twelve possible girls they could pick. Darwin is across at the other side of the club where the second bar is situated, and much the same as me, he’s projecting the image of a drunk propping up the bar. Shelly’s sharing a table with Victor at the moment. They’re under the guise of being together, occasionally kissing and pretending to be all over each other. He will seemingly leave her alone later, following a fake argument, which will hopefully set the stage for Shelly to be the bait. Clint, Dean, and Brand are pretending to be drunk arseholes. At twenty-six, I’m one of the oldest—except Darwin, who has two years on me—which means we can all pass for horny guys out for a quick fuck. Nobody ever takes us for Black Ops, and that works in our favour. I scan the room but already know I’ll never spot Arlo and King. They’re ghosts, they always have been. I know they’re somewhere in the background, watching, lying in wait like coiled pythons. Until they’re needed, no one will see them.

While sipping my drink, I covertly scan the men who have just arrived. To most, they are pretty nondescript—all have brown hair, stand around six foot and are wearing dark jeans and long-sleeved tops—but I notice the smaller things. The first guy has a scar on his chin, he’s slightly leaner than the other two, and I’d put my money on him being a quick sprint, which means he could get away easily. “Dean, the guy with the scar on his chin?” I wait for his response.

“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.