Chapter One

Trick

"H ave you heard anything yet?" Luc asks from the couch, as we watch Jensen and Cash battle it out on some game.

"No, but it's Atlas; if he wanted us to know, then we'd know," I reply.

"I know man, but aren't you worried?" Luc asks again.

Riot lifts his head from whatever he's been doing on his phone and says, "He's right. Atlas just up and left with no word, note, or anything."

"We're trying to find him. We've got all the resources we have currently trying to find him, and I haven't heard back from any of them," I reply. "The thing is, we've known for a while that there's something else going on with him, and we were giving him time to tell us what it was."

I get why they're all worried, I do. He's one of us, and we have no idea what happened to him.

"Yeah, I kind of wish that we pushed him on that now," Rafe signs.

"I could probably get into the security cameras, the ones that are on both of the roads that lead out of town," Jensen adds, his eyes still on the screen.

"You can?" I ask. He's never mentioned having the skill before.

"Yeah, I mean, it sort of came up when I was securing our money from the Pit, so the cops didn't find it when they took it down. It still amuses me that they thought the operation was so much simpler than it was and that it was just kids messing about. If they'd dug any deeper, then we would've been fucked. Anyway, I figured it was a good thing to learn. The cameras here are old, so I need to actually plug my laptop into them, but as soon as I've done that, I should be able to get the footage; we know that he had to leave by one of those two ways: there isn't a third."

"What are we waiting for? Let's go check it out," Cash says, quickly abandoning his game.

"Now?" Riot questions.

"We may as well; we don't have to start organizing anything for the fight at the Pit until later this week," I reply with a shrug.

It's the first week back at school, and that means tensions are going to be running high since we haven't been able to do any of the fights since the Pit was taken down at the beginning of the break, which means the fight at the Pit that we usually do before school starts is even more important to ensure that the tension doesn't spill out elsewhere and cause us issues.

"Are you sure that we should risk it? It's only been a couple of months since we got caught, and the Pit was taken apart," Riot questions.

I sigh; it is something that I'm worried about, but the alternative is a lot more violence, "We're testing the waters with this fight; we've got a new location further outside of town and a temporary setup. We're going to be putting escape routes in place for everyone, and we're only doing three fights."

"I'm still fighting, right?" Jensen asks, violence prominent on his features.

I nod, "Yeah, I'm waiting for Trev to get back to me with information on your fighter. I think he's struggling to find a match for you since no one wants to go up against you."

Jensen grins proudly and then frowns, "As proud as I am of that, it's going to be pretty fucking shit if I don't get to fight anymore."

"We'll figure it out," I tell him, knowing that it's going to become a big problem if he can't fight. I'll cross that bridge when we come to it; for now, I carry on answering Riot's question, "If it goes wrong this time, then we're going to have to stop for a lot longer to make sure that the interest in us has really died down. My mom is watching me a lot more closely and has only just started to relax a bit."

"Mine too," Cash adds with a slight grimace. "Although, the track on your grandad's farm was a nice silver lining we got out of it."

"Not as good as fighting," Luc mutters.

"No, it's not," I agree. "Come on, let's go and check the cameras out and see if there's anything that will give us some more information about what happened to Atlas."

"Sounds good to me," Luc agrees as he stands up and stretches.

"Let me just grab my laptop and the cable I need," Jensen says as he jumps up and throws his controller down on the bed.

"Have you got the cable with you?" Cash asks with a confused frown.

Jensen shrugs, "Yeah, I was planning on suggesting it before, but I got distracted and completely forgot until you mentioned Atlas."

"I'd question that, but it's you, so I'm just going to go with it," Cash replies.

I roll my eyes as I get up and say, "I'll go and let Mom know that we're heading out."

I leave the guys to get their shit together as I head downstairs, finding Mom and Kat sitting in front of the TV in the front room.

"We're heading out for a bit," I announce.

She glances over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing slightly, but she still replies, "Alright, be safe, don't do anything that I wouldn't do."

Kat laughs, "That leaves him an awful lot of stuff that he can do."

"Hush, he doesn't need to know that." Mom giggles.

"No, I don't," I reply with a smile.

Cash comes down the stairs quickly, followed by the others, and heads straight for his mom, kissing her on the cheek as he says, "See you later, Mom, don't worry, I won't be out late."

"Good, it's a school night," she replies.

I barely manage to contain my eye roll at that, but the more in the dark I can keep our parents about the shit that we get up to, the better. It's not exactly safe or legal.

Grabbing my keys, I follow the guys out of the door, and we all load up into my truck.

"Which one should we check first?" Luc asks.

Jensen leans forward in his seat, "Well, it's not exactly discreet what I need to do, and knowing Atlas and his Uncle, they probably would've gone out the back way and through the woods anyway, so why don't we check there first."

I smirk, "Sounds good to me."

Fortunately, this town is too small for it to take very long to get anywhere, so it won't take us too long to get to the camera. As we get into the truck, Rafe gets our attention and begins to sign.

"Don't you think it would be a good idea to make sure that we're the only people out here before we start sticking wires in security cameras?" he asks.

"Good point, we've already got good old Marty breathing down our necks after our last mark got a little bit too chatty." Cash replies, his eyes flashing dangerously.

It always makes me laugh that he's viewed as one of the nicer ones out of all of us. The truth is that he is just really good at hiding his crazy. He has just as much as the rest of us, and it pretty much stems from the same place: her; when we lost her, it broke something in all of us, and now we help others in the only way we know how, violently.

It's earning us a pretty good wedge of money too.

We were using some of the money that we had been earning to help us find Ever, and Atlas was helping us, but he's not going to be anymore since he's disappeared, too.

He better be fucking okay.

Him just up and disappearing is stirring up a lot of shit for us, especially since it's pretty much the same thing that Ever did, although we know that she had no control over it since she was only eight at the time. Atlas isn't a dick though, well, not like that, which means he never would've left like he did if he had a choice. Whether that's because he had to leave urgently or something more sinister, we don't know, and that's what we're worried about.

We've put enough hints together over the time that he's been with us that we know he has a dark past that he's not entirely free from; I just hope that it hasn't caught up with him.

"So, if it turns out he left unwillingly, we're going after him, right?" Jensen asks, violence flashing in his eyes. The violence never really leaves his eyes though.

I nod sharply once, "Yeah, we are. I don't know how we'll manage to swing that past the parents though? Especially at the moment, they're all still on edge after the Pit."

Luc shrugs; his parents aren't a concern like some of the others are, but they more than make up for it in other ways. Worse ways. "The same way that we always do, school trip."

I grimace, "They're going to catch on to that at some point."

"And we'll deal with that when it happens," Riot replies.

He's right; we will because we always do, and it's a necessity.