Chapter Fourteen

Trick

I frown, “Yeah, it could be that the kid has misinterpreted the information. But he was pretty adamant that his stepdad was going to be at this location.”

“Do we know what it is?” Jensen asks with a frown.

“I think it’s a storage place as far as I can work out.” Cash mutters, looking down at his phone and typing away.

“What kind of storage place?” Rafe asks.

“The kind that has lockers in the building as well as ones outside of the building,” Cash replies.

We fall silent as we all pay close attention to our surroundings and the area that we are heading into. We drive by the place first, getting a feel for it and to see if we can see anything that would give us cause for concern, or even mean that we can get easy access to the place to check it out.

Although it looks really run down and like it could do with a serious security upgrade, it does still have security, so the chances of us being able to sneak in and have a really good look around are pretty slim. We would immediately get noticed, just our presence would be classed as suspicious.

We loop around again, looking for any signs of our target. Fortunately, we get extremely lucky, and I notice the guy that the kid showed me a picture of leaving one of the outside lockers. He is really fucking cagey about leaving the place. Only opening the door enough that he can squeeze through and no more. We definitely want to get a good look at what is in there. Since it is an outside one, the security is a bit more lax, and we might actually be able to do it without raising any suspicions.

Maybe, it’s still more risky than I would like though.

For now, I want to follow the guy and see where he leads us. We need all the information that we can get so that we can take him down, and make sure that he isn’t a threat to the kid and his mom anymore.

“Is that him?” Cash asks as we watch the guy walk through the lot and head to the office.

“Yeah, that’s him,” I frown, “I’m surprised that he is heading to the office at this time. I would have thought that it would be shut.”

“It might be one of those places that stay open twenty-four seven,” Riot says.

“Yeah, maybe,” I reply.

The conversation with the kid lasted longer than I thought it would, clients usually say very little in the meetings and actually tend to just hand over a file with all of the information that we need to know in it and that’s it. It also took longer than I expected to get here. All of this means that the sun has finally set, and darkness has taken over.

It works in our favor because it means that we can follow the guy a lot easier.

“Do you want to go and check out the locker?” Jensen asks.

I shake my head, “I don’t want to risk getting caught before we have the information that we’re going to need to get rid of him.”

“Good point,” Jensen agrees and then asks, “so, we’re going to follow him for as long as we possibly can then?”

I nod and then sigh as I start to feel slightly overwhelmed by the situation. I really fucking want to help the kid and his mom, and I am worried that we are not going to be able to. Time is not on our side in this situation; in fact, time is actively working against us. We don’t have the luxury of following him for a few days and learning about all of his contacts, associates, and, hopefully, something that we can use to blackmail and bribe him.

That is what we usually do in this situation, and I am always surprised at how quickly we end up finding something that we can use to bribe the person we are after. It also makes me question my faith in humanity. We don’t have the time to do that though. It can sometimes take up to a week, maybe even more, depending on the situation, and we try to keep jobs like that closer to home since otherwise the parents get suspicious, and we absolutely do not want them to find out about this side of us.

They wouldn’t understand and would most likely be horrified too.

“You’ve gone quiet,” Cash mutters.

I can feel their eyes on me, they know me almost as well as I know myself, and I know that there is no point in trying to play off my silence as nothing. None of them would believe it.

“I’m worried that we’re not going to be able to stop this in time,” I say, sharing my fear with them.

Everyone looks just as worried as I am, mostly because we are all realistic about the situation we are in.

“If we can’t end this through him, then we end it through her,” Jensen suggests, his face set into a heavy frown and I can practically see the wheels in his head turning.

“What do you mean?” Rafe signs, a curious look on his face.

“We get her out,” Jensen replies, and then looks at me, “you said that she definitely wanted out and wanted to get away but didn’t have the money to do so, right?”

I nod, “Yeah, the kid said that she had a shoe box that she was saving money in and that she called their escape plan. I am fairly certain that the stepdad is financially abusing her and making sure that she can’t escape him because she doesn’t have the money to do so.”

“Fucking cunt,” Cash growls.

“That’s good though,” Jensen says, and we all give him ‘what the fuck’ looks; he rolls his eyes, “Obviously not the financial abuse, but the fact that she is so ready to leave him. We have money.”

“Shit you’re right,” Luc curses. “We can give her the money to get out.”

“Whoa, hold on it’s not going to be as easy as just being like here’s a couple hundred thousand,” I interrupt. “The kid was very proud and insisted that he paid us, so I can assume that the mom will be too. Kids learn from example, and I highly doubt that he learned that from his stepdad.”

Jensen nods, “Yeah, I was thinking about that. We could set up some sort of competition that she could have forgotten she entered, and she’s won the top prize or something.”

The car is silent as we think about Jensen’s suggestion and carry on watching the office where our target went into so we can follow him when he gets out.

“I feel like we’re going to need to get her out of the city though, and far away,” Cash replies, “if we don’t manage to come up with a solution, then the fucker might try to control the money, and the dealers might take it for themselves anyway.”

Jensen frowns, “Yeah, that’s a good point.”

“What about if we say she has to move to a town in order to get the money?” Riot suggests.

“What sort of competition is going to have that as a condition?” Luc asks.

“A made-up one?” Riot retorts.

I snort because he has a point, but we really do need to make it believable. We need to give her the money and get her out of the city and far away from this place and the fucker. We can’t just give her the money, one because I don’t think she would accept it, and two because in her eyes, it will be a teenager offering her the money, and anyone would wonder how teenagers got access to a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

“We also can’t just go to the bank and take the money out; that would immediately flag up on their systems, and it would be really difficult for her to explain where she got it from if she was paying out large sums of cash, especially since the competition is fake,” Rafe signs.

Everyone looks at Jensen, and he holds his hands up, “Hey, I’m good and all, but I can’t transfer money into a bank account I don’t know the details of. That is out of my area of expertise. I suppose I could set her up a new bank account and transfer the money into that, but that wouldn’t tie in very well with the competition winner thing.”

Cash grins, “What about if we said it was inheritance? Like some distant relative died and left her fortune. Conditions of the will are that she has to move to a tiny town miles away that we will find. We can make sure that it is safe, and we can include the card and bank details in with the letter.”

“That could actually work,” I reply, unable to hide the surprise in my voice.

“I can write up the letter; I’ve listened to my parents talk about it enough, and I have even seen a few examples. I can make it believable enough,” Cash adds.