Chapter Fifteen

Trick

“T hat’s fucking perfect, man,” Jensen says. “I can set up an account pretty quickly.

“Great.” I reply and then add, “I think that should be our plan no matter what happens, but I would really like to get the threat taken care of so there is absolutely no chance that he or the dealers can go after her and her son.”

“Of course,” Cash replies, “I don’t like leaving loose ends anyway. I think we would all feel better if we knew for certain that they were both safe.”

“So, it’s agreed then?” I ask. “We make sure that this guy is taken care of, and we ensure that she’s going to be able to get away from here, start again, and be safe, in case anyone who was associated with him comes looking for him and uses her as a bargaining chip.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a pretty solid plan to me.” Riot replies. “That’s him getting in the car, right?”

“Yeah, we will follow him and see what he gets up to,” I reply.

Starting the truck and preparing to follow him, I wish that we were in one of the cars that we kept at the yard but, one, they’re now burnt out husks and two, we didn’t expect that we were going to be on a job, we thought that we were just coming up here to see if the lead that Luke had was actually Ever, so we would have ended up doing this job without the backup cars anyway.

“I’ll get started on the accounts while we are in the car, we are going to want to have it all set up pretty quickly so that we can implement it as soon as possible. Whichever way this goes, we need to get her and her son out of the city as quickly as we can.” Jensen suggests, and a glance in the rearview mirror shows that he is already on his phone and doing things that I don’t understand.

“I’ll start to write up the letters as well. We are going to need them to sound as convincing as possible. The last thing we want is for her to start questioning it and then realize that it’s fake.” Cash starts to explain and then suddenly curses, “Shit, do we know her name? A full name would be better, but I can make a last name work too.”

“Erm no I didn’t get one,” I reply with a frown. “Luc could you go on my phone, and email Luke and see if he can find out the kids name or even the mothers? If he kicks up a fuss, explain the situation. I’m sure that he won’t mind finding out what he can then. I would rather not give too much away upfront, the fewer people that know about our plan to help them the safer that they will be.”

Luc nods and grabs my phone, “Got it. If he does want more information, then I will make sure that I give him a condensed version with as little details as I possibly can. Once he understands the situation, he will know why I have done it.”

“To be fair to him, he was pretty keen on us taking this anyway. I doubt that he knew that the client was a child, but it was mentioned in the job description that there was an innocent person involved,” Rafe signs.

“Yeah, he hates innocent people being involved in this kind of thing,” Riot agrees.

“Don’t we all?” Jensen mutters.

“Good point,” I reply.

My focus switches from what they are doing to following our guy. He has got a pretty fucking nice car considering his partner and stepchild are struggling to make ends meet. I am not assuming things either; I noticed that the kid's clothes had holes in them, and his sneakers did, too. His clothes were on their last legs, he desperately needed some new ones and yet here is his stepfather driving around in a car that’s only a couple of years old.

It’s fucking disgusting.

It also gives me even more incentive to get this worthless excuse of a man away from the kid and his mom.

Following him is pretty boring at first. We follow him back to a run-down apartment building and I am reasonably sure that this is where he lives with the kid, and I’m proven right when we see the kid that I met at the park rushes out of the doors and storms off down the road.

It is far too fucking late for a kid of that age to be out, but there is fuck all that we can do about it right now. He certainly can’t come with us, and I would be willing to bet that out here is unfortunately, safer than in there. All we can do is sort this situation out for him and get him away from the city.

Which reminds me, “Can one of you look for a safe, welcoming little town as far away from here as you can get?”

“We’re already on it,” Riot says, gesturing to Rafe and himself.

“Awesome, thanks, guys,” I reply.

“We have narrowed it down to two, and we are just trying to figure out which one they would like more of,” Riot mutters.

I smile. I am reasonably sure that they will be happy with absolutely anything so long as it means that they aren’t here anymore and are under threat.

“It would be worth looking at the housing prices in the area; we don’t want her to fall short and struggle living there and then end up moving back to a city,” Cash mutters, sounding distracted as he types up a draft letter on his phone. “I’ll put some extra money to make sure that they can purchase a decent house and remain comfortable for a while, so she doesn’t have to panic about getting a job straight away.”

“I’ll put in some extra as well,” Luc says.

“Take some extra out of our accounts as well.” Riot says for Rafe and him again. “Also, that’s a really good point; we will see which one makes more financial sense.”

“Jensen, take some out of mine as well,” I say, just in case he was in any doubt that I wanted to make a bigger contribution.

Jensen nods, “Are you guys sure, it is going to make quite a hit to what we have got. I can get it back fairly quickly, but it won’t be an immediate thing. That investment that I told you about a few months ago is doing quite well though.”

We all reply that we are sure that we want to give more. It is for a good reason and at this point in our lives, being that we are teenagers, still living with our parents, and have no real expenses, they need it a hell of a lot more than we do, and we can make it back.

Jensen is a genius.

“He’s on the move again,” I tell them, since they are now all occupied with doing other things.

They all mutter their acknowledgment of my words and then go back to what they are doing. Luc is sitting in the front of the car with me and is the only other one who is focused on following the guy and not something else. We follow him again and I start to get concerned about where we are going and how easy it will be for him to spot us since we are heading down back roads now with not much around us. I am having to keep him a long way in front of us, so he doesn’t get suspicious.

“Fuck,” Cash curses, and I think for a moment that we have been made and then realize that I have got my lights off, and I can only just make out his brake lights in the distance; there is no way that he knows that we are following him.

“What?” I ask.

“Mom’s calling, if I don’t answer she’s going to assume that we’re up to no good.” Cash replies with a frown, looking down at his phone.

“Turn the music on, so she won’t be able to hear the sounds of the car,” Jensen says, and then adds with a smirk, “but don’t turn it up so loud that she thinks that we are having a party, because she will tell the other parents and then they will all come and check on us, and find that we aren’t even at the house where we are supposed to be.”

I turn the stereo on, keeping it low enough that you can have a conversation and high enough that hopefully it will cover the sound of the car.

“Hey, Mom,” Cash says, doing a good job of sounding relaxed and not stressed about the situation at all.

“Cash,” she greets, “why did it take you so long to answer the phone?”

Before Cash can answer we hear Cash’s dad Marc yell in the background, “He didn’t take long, you are worrying for nothing! Leave the poor kid alone.”