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It was almost coordinated. They must have done this before.
I tried again. “Hello. I…I need to find The Five. Can you please point me in their direction?”
No one was looking, but boy did I have their attention again. The hairs on my arms bristled and stood at attention. They were listening to me. They don’t have to be looking at me to hear. Despite knowing they could hear me, their silence amplified my tension, making me utterly aware that I stood in a room surrounded by predators. If even one of them so chose, I would become their prey, so I needed to get out of there before that happened.
The bartender sauntered over to me. “Sorry, I can’t help you with that. The Five? Never heard of them.” He pointed toward the door. “Out.”
This is bad. He was either lying—my preference—or things had changed so much in the past years that they were all gone. Surely, someone would remember them?
That meant that this man was lying.
I tried again. “Listen, if you are…declining to tell me the truth for whatever reason…and I’m sure it’s a good reason…I need to, please, ask again. I’m here on a task that I have to complete. I just have to.” With every fiber of my being. “I can go. I know I don’t belong here. I get it. And I don’t want any trouble. If you could just tell me who any one of them are, or where I can find them, I will go and never come back.”
Chairs screeched and wobbled as several people—seven of them to my count—quickly left the bar. Were The Five among them? The joke of the whole situation was that there were now only four of The Five left. They just didn’t know it yet. I knew their names, nothing else.
The bartender narrowed his eyes in what best could be called a threatening expression. “Let me give you a piece of advice, girlie. When someone like me tells someone like you to get out, you get out.” He pointed at the door. “Or there are consequences.”
Tears threatened again. I tended to cry when I got really angry, like my signals got crossed in my brain, and I couldn’t tell the difference between anger and sadness. With the burden I carried, it was even harder for me to decipher the two feelings. I couldn’t start the tears. Wouldn’t. Not here. Not with these people throwing me out in the rain without even letting me do the last thing my best friend ever asked of me.
I nodded, my lips wobbling despite my determination. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“Ransom,” a man who sat in the corner said as he rose. He knocked twice on the table and even more of the bar exited, fast. I lost count of how many, but they left in a hurry, like a drove of fleeing enhanced men. That can’t be good.
In the end, that left four men in the bar with me. Ransom was certainly one of The Five—I recognized the name. He was the youngest of them, and Amias had said he was like his little brother.
Of course, the big, strong, intimidating man who told me to go didn’t look like anyone’s little brother. Not to me, at least.
That meant the other three were Crew—and he was in charge. Gunnar. And Mace. I didn’t know who was who, but I’d guess the one who made everyone leave was Crew. I tried not to look at them. Now that I knew that Ransom was Ransom, I would simply hand him the letter and get on with it.
Everyone would be glad to see me leave.
I pulled the letter out of my pocket. It was dry, at least—the only thing I’d managed to keep that way. In what was absolutely not a swift move, I extended my hand to pass the letter to Ransom.
He stared at me and didn’t move.
The man who had spoken walked toward me. Like Ransom, he didn’t seem to be in the least bit of a hurry. My hand shook, and I dropped it, still holding the letter to my side. My stomach growled; I was hungry. It had been hours and hours since I’d eaten anything.
“Who told you to bring that to The Five? That’s not a name we’ve used in a long time. Where did you hear it, and who gave you that note to give to us?”
I turned to the man. He was as tall as Ransom, with longish black hair and green eyes. They were striking, but I couldn’t read anything from him. Barely there interest at best? He crossed his arms over his chest, like he was bored.
My tears fled easily in that second. This was just…awful. I wanted to curse at him for being so cold and disinterested when I had come so far to do this job. I’d learned over the years to hide what I thought, and I schooled my features into careful neutrality, but I should really thank him. Just his one look saved me from the humiliation of sobbing in front of him.
“Amias. He sent me here to give you this.” I held out the letter to him this time.
They all shifted slightly at the sound of Amias’ name. I let myself look at the other two men in the room. One of them was blond, and the other more of a light-haired redhead, like a strawberry blond. They were as tall as I expected them to be—Super Soldier sized.
“It has been a long time since any of us have heard that name. Where is he? Why did he send you instead of coming himself?” Their leader wasn’t bored anymore. No, he pulsated fury, his jaw hard, his gaze threatening to tear me apart.
It is my job to deliver this news. I’m not sure how I made it that far without it ever occurring to me that I’d be the one responsible for telling them. I’d thought of the note…not about having to tell them why I brought it. Grief clouded my brain—I’d been just trying to put one foot in front of the other up until that point, rather than processing any of it.
I let out a breath I’d been holding. “I’m afraid I have to tell you he is dead.” It was hard to speak the words, and my voice cracked on the word dead. “He died a little over a week ago, and his last request was that I give this to you.”
The man I thought was likely Crew grabbed the note out of my hand. My fist clenched, but far too late to be of any good. His movement had been so fast, I barely tracked it, but the note was in his hand, and he read it quickly.
I almost cried out as a sob caught in my throat. That piece of paper…small and delicate as it had been…represented my last link to Amias.
With it out of my possession, the wave that I held off for so long struck me so hard, it might have knocked me over if I hadn’t been leaning against the bar. I blinked. How did I not begin to process what losing Amias and Stone actually meant?
