Chapter Thirteen

Rafe

I pull myself back into the present, now is not the time to get distracted and lost in my thoughts. I need to focus on our surroundings and most importantly, Trick. I need to make sure that there are absolutely no threats to him.

If I am being completely honest with myself, this is the part of this process that I hate the most. The client often needs to meet in order to give us as much information as possible, as securely as possible. Obviously, things like emails and phone calls can be traced, intercepted, and hacked into. They aren’t secure and are extremely risky to use. However, the meetings hold a level of risk to us. The clients are the people who need our help for various reasons, but they have usually found us through the dark web, and people who know how to access and use the dark web tend not to be law-abiding citizens, which means that they are not safe people.

So, although they are the ones in need of assistance, they are also people that we need to be incredibly wary of. We cannot let our guard down around them just because they are in need, it would be incredibly stupid of us to do so.

Even though it is a summer evening, the park is relatively quiet; only the odd dog walker or jogger has gone past me while I have been sitting here. It strikes me as slightly odd, but I guess it could be because this end of the park appears to be in need of some renovation, so it is just not being used, at the moment. Either way, it works in our favor. I check the time on my phone; it’s eight now, and the client should be here any second.

Trick moves into position, near the fountain and sits on a bench there. He has got his hood pulled right up and obscuring his face as much as possible, and he will also try to make sure that he keeps his face angled in a certain way that doesn’t give the client a full view of his face.

My eyes scan the area, looking for any possible sign of the client, but I’m coming up blank. A kid who can’t be any older than eleven rides his bike right up to where Trick is sitting and sits down next to him.

My eyes widen, surely that can’t be the client! He’s a kid and definitely shouldn’t know how to use the dark web.

Fuck. This just got a lot more complicated.

Trick

A t first, I think that the kid is just being a kid and has decided to sit down, and then I find myself hoping that is the case.

“Are you T?” the kid asks me, and all hope that he is as innocent as he looks flies out of the window. T is the name that we give to clients so they can identify us and so we can identify them, too.

“I am,” I reply. “How can we help you?”

My voice is automatically softer than it usually would be with another client. He is a fucking kid, and that raises all sorts of red flags. It also makes me incredibly grateful that Luke brought this job to our attention and that we were the ones who took it. There is a chance that if someone else had, then they would have taken advantage of the situation in one way or another.

We most likely won’t even charge him. I don’t even need to hear what he is going to say to know that we will be taking this job.

“My stepdad is going to sell my mom to pay for his drug debt. He owes them a lot of money, but he can’t pay it. My mom hates drugs; she doesn’t touch them, and she hates that I’m around them. Although, I pretend that I don’t know what they are so that she doesn’t feel so bad,” the kid starts to talk, and my anger grows at each thing that he says. He continues, “He hits her. She’s tried to leave him, but we don’t have much money, so it’s difficult.”

I glance at his face, noticing the black eye and big bruise on his cheek, “Did he do that?”

He swallows thickly and nods, “Yeah. I didn’t want him to hurt her anymore.”

“We will take care of it. Don’t worry, you will never hear from him again,” I reply firmly.

The kid's eyes widen and then fill with hope. He pulls out a handful of scrunched up bills, “I-I-I’m sorry I don’t know how much you charge, it’s all I have.”

I shake my head, “Don’t worry kid, this one is on us.”

Determination fills his eyes, “No, I want to pay. We don’t need charity.”

I smile slightly but wipe the expression before he can see, not wanting to insult him. “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

He hands me the money, and I put it in my pocket. I will let him think that he is paying for it, but we will come up with some way to get it back to him, as well as extras if we can.

“How does this work?” he asks me.

“Well, do you know where he is now?” I ask.

He nods, “Yeah, I can tell you exactly where he is. I overheard him say that he was going to hand her over tomorrow evening. What will you do?”

“Just give us the address, and let us handle everything else. It may take right up until tomorrow evening, but we will get it sorted. Is there anywhere that you and your mom could go to stay safe?”

The kid shakes his head, “No, we don’t have anyone.”

“That’s okay. Hopefully, we will get this done as quickly as possible, and you won’t need to worry anymore.” I pause for a second and then ask, “Does your mom want to leave him?”

He nods earnestly, “Yes, she has a shoe box where she keeps any spare money that she can find, she says it's our escape plan, and we have just got to wait until we have got enough that we can leave.”

“Okay, I understand,” I reply, relieved that she feels that way, it means that there is a good chance that we will be able to help her in other ways. “You had better get home.”

“Okay,” he replies. He reels of the address where his stepfather is, and a few more bits of information, showing me a photograph of him, and I make a note of it before he gets up and I watch him ride away.

Once I know that he is gone, I get up and head into the treeline where the others will meet me. It’s merely habit at this point; it’s something that we always do just in case we are being watched by the client's people as well.

“That was a kid,” Jensen states as soon as I walk through the tree line.

I nod, “Yeah. We are taking the case, poor kid.”

“I figured that we would,” Cash replies. “There is no way that we would turn down a kid that needs help.”

“How the hell did he know how to use the dark web?” Rafe signs.

I frown, “I am guessing that he found out through desperation. It’s his mom and stepdad.”

“Fucking hell,” Riot curses.

I explain the situation in as much detail as I possibly can, everything that he told me and how we can help.

“Okay, so we need to get going then, we don’t want him to leave the location that kid has given us and then lose him,” Jensen says.

We all head back in the direction of the truck and wait until we are driving to the location to pick our conversation back up.

“So, what’s the plan?” Cash asks me.

“We are going to observe for the moment and hope that we can sort this out tonight. I want it dealt with as quickly as possible, not only because we have until tomorrow night to sort it, but because I want them safe and for the kid to know that they are finally safe as well.” I explain.

“Got it,” Cash agrees.

“I really hope I get to stab him just a little bit,” Jensen says with a dark smile.

“I hope you get to stab him a lot.” I reply, “The kid's face was black and blue. The fucker obviously thinks that he is above any sort of repercussions if he doesn’t even try to hide it when he beats the kid.”

“Yeah, abusers are usually worried about getting caught and like to keep up appearances, so they hit and mark places that can easily be covered up by clothing,” Luc says with a deep frown. “The fact that he marked his face says that he doesn’t think that he will get caught, and even if he does, that no one will believe the kid anyway.”

“That tracks from what the kid was saying,” I reply.

“Did the kid know what was out here?” Riot asks, referring to the address that we are driving to.

I shake my head, “No, he said that he had overheard his stepdad talking on the phone, and then found this address written on a notebook that belonged to him.”

“So, there is a chance that it doesn’t have anything to do with him, and he may not be at the location?” Rafe asks.