Chapter Seventeen

Cash

“W ell, we haven’t seen another car on this road so far, so I think it’s probably safe enough to slow down,” Trick replies. “I thought your mom was never going to hang up.”

“Tell me about it, I love her, but damn, she can talk when she gets going about something that she’s excited about,” I reply distractedly as I zoom in on the map.

“Hey, at least we get to try loads of cheeses,” Jensen points out, looking excited at the prospect. “Do you think she is only going to serve cheese? I mean, I’m not complaining. I’m just curious.”

“Only you would be worrying about that right now.” Luc points out with a smirk.

“Not worrying, just wondering,” Jensen clarifies.

“Mom mentioned chutneys, and knowing her, she will do some sort of charcuterie thing with meats and bread and all that shit,” I answer.

“You do realize that most teenagers would not know what the hell that is,” Trick points out with a chuckle.

“We aren’t most teenagers, and most teenagers have not grown up with my mom. We all have,” I reply.

“Good point,” he agrees.

Changing the subject and refocusing us, I reply, “Okay, so I was right to check. I think there is something up there; it isn’t a house, it doesn’t look big enough, and I think it’s like a shack or something. I don’t know, but it’s on private land,” I try to explain.

“What should we do?” Rafe signs.

“I think we should park the truck up somewhere as safe as possible and then go and check the place out. He has driven a really long way out of the city in order to get here, and I would be willing to bet that it’s not just because he fancied a drive,” Luc suggests.

“Yeah, I agree,” I say.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Trick says. He finds a safe place to pull over and somehow manages to tuck it so far into the side that it’s partially concealed.

Hopefully, it will work well enough to stop anyone from looking too closely. It’s a risk that we are going to have to take, but I think that we should be okay since we haven’t seen any more cars on this road since we started on it, and we have been on it for a while now.

“Grab the balaclavas. I want you all to be wearing them from this point forward,” Trick orders. “Are you all armed?”

“Always,” I reply, while everyone else nods that they are too.

We all have a look at the map, so that we know the rough direction that we’re going and say a quick thanks to the universe that the night is clear and the moon is out because it’s providing us with enough light that we should be able to see where we are going fairly easily.

“It’s probably best that we don’t use any lights,” Riot says as we get out of the car.

“We don’t want to let him know that we’re coming,” Jensen agrees.

Trick nods and adds, “We need to keep the communication to signing when we can and to an absolute minimum if signing isn’t possible.”

“Got it,” I agree.

We all head off, remaining as silent as we can. Fortunately, we have gotten fairly good at being stealthy now. Luc is by far the best at it, but he has always been really good at it. Being stealthy is the way that he has saved himself from plenty of run-ins with his father over the years. I hate that the reason that he knows how to move so silently in any environment is because of that. I hate that he is still living in that house, but I understand that there isn’t really anything that we can do about it until he’s eighteen.

Even then we risk him having to move away if he were to turn his father in. His whole situation is complicated, but we will find a way to make sure that he’s safe, and that his father gets what he deserves for everything that he’s done over the years.

We keep ourselves alert as we move through the woods, and I am pleased when it turns out that my vision adjusts quickly, and the moon is giving off enough light that I can easily see where I’m going. I really hope that we are following our target to something that is going to help us deal with the guy. I want this over and done with, and I really want the kid and his mom safe.

It is not often that we do jobs where we have to protect someone so innocent—usually, it’s a job between two or more people of questionable character. So, no one is really innocent in the situation. Here though, there are two people who are victims of circumstance and maybe bad decision making too.

We want to save the people involved, whereas normally, we don’t, we just do the job, get paid, and let them deal with the fallout. We do have jobs where we have to save innocents, but it is nothing quite on this scale and obviously we don’t usually put our own money into saving them. It has also been a while since we have had a job that is quite this complicated too.

It's actually quite refreshing to test our skills.

The walk is quite far. Fortunately, although we are working through the woods rather than up the road, we are walking parallel to it so that we know we are going in the right direction, but it also means that if he leaves the little shack or whatever the fuck is up here, we will see him leave.

Finally, this tiny one room cabin comes into view, lit up from the inside and with only our targets car parked outside.

Trick starts signing, “Rafe, Riot, and Jensen, go around that way and see what you can see through the windows. We will do the same this side.”

They all nod, and we split up. The others circle around so they can come to the house from the right direction while Trick, Luc, and I cautiously and slowly approach the front of the cabin.

Calling it a cabin is really generous. It is more like a shed; Billy’s place is bigger than this by a lot. It also looks like it is barely standing, like one strong wind would make the whole place crumble to the ground. I am actually really surprised that it hasn’t already collapsed; it looks that bad.

Luc and Trick go to one window while I stay low and approach the other one.

Slowly, I peek over the lip of the windowsill so I can get a good look inside. As soon as I do, my eyebrows hit my hairline.

Well, that certainly explains a lot.

I was right in thinking that it is a one roomed cabin, it is, but that’s not why I am shocked. The room is full of drugs, all packaged, but one opened enough that I can easily tell what is inside, along with stacks and stacks of money. This guy clearly has the money to pay off the dealers, and instead, he is handing over his wife, or partner, to pay for it. I don’t get it, unless he is just doing it to be an asshole. I also don’t understand where the drugs come in. I mean, he owes drug dealers money, so they will be giving him the drugs and then getting him to sell it, and then he will give them the money. He has both money and drugs here.

My eyes widen as it suddenly sinks in what he is doing, he’s ripping off the dealers. I would bet anything that they have had drugs go missing over an extended period of time and money, too.

It’s absolutely fucking stupid, but if I am right, and I have pretty much no doubt that I am, I can use it to our advantage easily.

I drop down so that I am crouched right under the windowsill and then pull out my phone, shielding the light as much as I can, even though it won't be too obvious since there is a light shining from the window anyway. All of the guys have their phones on vibrate so I send a text in the group chat.

Me: He is stealing drugs and money from the dealers; he has to be. He’s alone, so I think we should secure him, question him, and get him to tell us who his dealer is. We can then contact them and hand him over, making sure that they keep the kid and his mom out of it entirely.

I’m relieved when I see that they have all managed to look at the message, it would make it a bit more complicated if I had to go and find the other three in order to tell them what was going on, and my idea.