Chapter Twelve

Rafe

“H e’s emailed me back,” Trick announces, and we all lift our heads, looking up from whatever task we have given ourselves to keep us occupied for the hour or so that it has taken Luke to get back to us.

“Yeah, what did he say?” Cash asks.

“He said that the client wants to meet tomorrow night at St James Park, near the broken water fountain.” Trick replies.

“Oh okay, that gives us somewhere pretty decent that we can set up, and make sure that we have got a good view of whoever is talking to the client,” Riot replies.

“So long as it’s not really crowded,” Luc points out, his eyebrows dipping slightly into a frown.

“Well, actually, even then, that would be fine. I mean, only the person meeting the client has to keep their identity hidden, and that can be done well enough with a hoody and the balaclava around the bottom half of their face. The others can all remain exactly as they are and mingle with everyone else. In a park, it’s even easier to blend in and pretend that we are just there to enjoy the place.” Jensen explains. “Especially in the summer.”

“An excellent point,” Trick commends. “Alright, let’s get some sleep since it's now the early hours of the morning. The client wants to meet at eight tomorrow evening, so it will still be light out. The balaclavas are out, because it would be extremely suspicious if we started walking around a park in daylight with our faces completely hidden.”

Jensen snorts, “I would call the cops immediately.”

“Exactly. We will have to do what you suggested. Hopefully, tomorrow evening will be fairly cool, and we won’t have to worry about standing out, and looking suspicious wearing a hoody in the summer.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cash replies. “Are we going to head there an hour or so early so we can get in position and, if necessary, hide so that we can keep an eye on the situation?”

Trick nods, “Yeah, I will be the one that is speaking to the client. Are you all comfortable with me making the decision to help based on what happens in the conversation without first having to explain it all to you guys?”

I immediately nod, and so do the others. We all trust Trick’s judgment, and although I think it is extremely unlikely that he will decide that we are not going to help if he did, we all know that it would be for a damn good reason, and we would be happy to walk away.

He is our unofficial leader for a reason, and it’s because he is so good in these kinds of situations and because he has an instinct for it. Some people are just born leaders, and Trick is very definitely one of those people.

“Of course,” Cash answers for all of us, just in case Trick didn’t get the point that we all agreed with all of the head nodding.

“Great,” Trick replies with a smile, “I will send an email back to Luke and get him to confirm it all. I will also get him to send me the exact location where the client wants to meet, which side of the fountain, that kind of thing.”

“Great,” Jensen replies and then grins, “now, let’s eat.”

“Dude, we ate loads at the restaurant not that long ago,” I sign, my eyebrow raised. “Plus, I doubt that there is any food here.”

His smile drops slightly before it lifts again, “Well, there is one way to find out.”

I watch with an amused shake of my head as he makes his way into the kitchen area of the open-plan layout and starts searching for food, opening all the cupboards.

“Well, I’m going to go and get some sleep. I’m tired, and we are going to have a busy day tomorrow.” I sign.

“Alright, man,” Trick replies with a smile. “Don’t forget that we can sleep in for a bit tomorrow. We don’t have to be at the park until seven, and we know what the plan is now, so it won’t be a big deal if we just get up and go.”

I nod and add with a smile, “And eat. I think Jensen’s stomach will eat itself if it doesn’t get fed every hour.”

“Oi, I can see you!” Jensen yells from the kitchen, and I chuckle.

“Night,” I say before I head off in the direction of the bedrooms, or at least where I am assuming that they are.

This place is really nice. Cash did well when he picked it out.

**********

We get to the park an hour before the meeting with the client, just like we had planned. To be honest, I’m surprised that we managed to get here in time. I was right last night when I said that Jensen was going to need to be fed. He did manage to find snacks in the house last night, but rather than think about the fact that he would probably be hungry in the morning, or that any of us might be hungry in the morning, he ate everything that he found, which meant that he woke up this morning, or rather this afternoon, hungry.

A hangry Jensen is very trigger-happy, and since there is a very real chance that he is going to end up with a trigger in his hand today, we all decided that it was safer to take the time to get him some food than it was to risk making him wait.

Plus, we were all hungry too. The fact that we are supposed to be blending into the surroundings means that I have gotten to bring my coffee with me as I sit on a bench facing the broken fountain and pretend to scroll on my phone.

Luc is up in a tree somewhere, which gives him the perfect vantage point to watch the meeting go down. Jensen is hiding in the tree-line and so is Riot. We are all spread out enough that we have the area completely surrounded, and if anything were to go wrong, we could either get to Trick in a few seconds tops or go after the client without them having too much of a head start.

It protects us as much as we can be protected in this situation. The fact of the matter is that this is an incredibly dangerous situation, and one that someone would find it difficult to believe that we would put ourselves in voluntarily. We do though, and we love it. If this job checks out and we decide to take it, then it means that we will be preventing an innocent person from being sold to a drug dealer to pay for a debt that’s not even theirs, and in my mind, it makes it worth putting up with a little bit of danger if it means we can keep someone safe.

Plus, I like the line that we walk; we definitely operate in a morally grey area, and I am absolutely fine with that. I always have been. We all have. It’s not like it is a new thing that has happened over the last few years; even when Ever was around, we operated in a morally grey area, albeit not quite as severely as this. We were kids, after all. We would do things like, if we saw a kid being bullied, we would protect the kid but make the bully terrified of us and what would happen if they did it again.

We would steal food for kids who had nothing, and we would take the fall for things that weren’t our fault if we knew that the kid had a challenging home life, and it would physically be taken out on them if they got in trouble.

The kids at school didn’t just start trusting and respecting us out of the blue; we have been fucking earning it from the get-go. They both fear us and like us. Obviously, as we got older, our methods got a bit more extreme, and our Tomlinson feud grew to what it is now, which meant that we had to step up our game. We were already doing the odd job before Atlas came into our lives, but not to the extent that we do now; he put us in contact with the contacts that help us get the jobs.

We enjoy it, and I don’t imagine that we will stop what we are doing any time soon. Even when we go to college, we will be able to carry on the jobs that we do because they take us all over the place, and the contacts that we have will just make sure that they offer us jobs that are near the college instead.

I am actually looking forward to it, a change of scenery will be nice. There are a lot of memories in our town, both good and bad.