AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have a man we need to track.”
Vincent heard both rustling and a deep sigh as Marco moved to the other end of the line. Waking up, maybe. “What’s his name?”
“We need to find it.”
Marco didn’t reply as Vincent tightened his grip on the car’s door handle and paused. Something didn’t feel right. He couldn’t decide which sense detected something unusual, but Vincent lowered the phone from his ear and cast his net of awareness outward. He scanned the car before him and pulled his hand from the handle, narrowing his eyes.
At the bottom of the door, looking almost like a chuck of grime in the darkness, something clung to his car. He stepped back and knelt, peering at the space between his car and the paved street, tightening his jaw at what he saw there.
“On second thought, we can talk about that later,” Vincent said, cutting off the start of whatever Marco planned to say next. “I have a bomb on my car.”
Marco fell silent. “Laker?” he asked.
Vincent shook his head, unconcerned that Marco couldn’t see it. He looked closer at the device and exhaled a breath. Vincent knew bombs and understood the mechanics of simple ones. He’d built and used them a handful of times, though he didn’t know them as well as Luca, another member of his team.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It has a pressure plate. It doesn’t look remotely accessible. Call Luca. I’m outside of the Wheel.” He ended the call and stood, scanning the street with narrowed eyes.
The bomb could have been placed hours or minutes ago, but Vincent assumed that the person who placed it—Krill Laker—would be close enough to see or hear the explosion. He’d need tobe sure that Vincent was off his trail, as Vincent was the known threat to him and his plans.
Complications, he realized. His distraction on the night he had met Kiera brought about messy complications that he’d need to sort through quickly.
Vincent adjusted the lapels of his jacket and stood a little straighter as the frustration of the situation hit him. The man should have been dead over a week ago.
He scanned the streets before walking through each nearby alleyway and checking all the usual hiding holes. He found a few homeless people sleeping, one woman doing drugs in a concealed space beside a large industrial dumpster, and a few nighttime revelers strolling through the darkened city streets. None of them knew his face, and none of them looked remotely like the man he hunted.
By the time he returned, Marco stood alongside his car, and a figure concealed in shadow examined the mechanics of the bomb. The secondary figure sprawled across the ground, one knee propped up and the other extended into the empty street.
As Vincent grew closer, he found the young face and physique of the kid whom they’d recently recruited to do their spying and technical work. The man’s oily black hair hung from his scalp in strands longer than Vincent would have ever allowed his hair to grow. The pale skin of the boy appeared darkened by the shadows of his car as he fearlessly felt the wires of the bomb with a pinched expression.
Only three members of the splinter cell were made known to the public eyes. Luca had been recruited as the fourth, most secretive member. For missions that required stealth and secrecy, Luca became useful.
And for missions that included bombs.
He’d always been quite useful with bombs.
Marco nodded at Vincent’s approach, keeping his attention on Luca as Vincent took his place beside him.
“The kid just got started. He said it would be a while,” Marco claimed. A flashlight clicked to life, and Luca placed it between his lips, clutching a pair of pliers as he analyzed each multicolored wire with laser focus. “You were lucky that you didn’t open the door. It was rigged to go off.”
“I thought as much.” Vincent thanked himself silently for being aware of his surroundings, unlike the night he first met Kiera. She never fell far from his mind, but she’d been far enough that he’d been able to focus on his own safety.
“Who did you need us to track?” Marco asked after a moment of silence.
“I don’t know his name, but he had the mafia brand,” Vincent said, gesturing to his own branded wrist. All of their wrists held the same emblem—the same marker to show their loyalty to the world. “He seemed low-level. Quick to temper and even quicker to antagonize.”
“Why does he matter? Is it possible he planted this?”
Vincent shook his head immediately. He’d been too quick to back away, clearly able to tell when someone outranked him. For that, Vincent was grateful.
“No,” Vincent said, shaking his head. Luca clipped a wire, and Vincent’s jaw ticked at the sound. One wrong wire and the consequences would be astronomical. “But he’s going to come after either Kiera or one of your employees at the Grotto.”
Vincent didn’t need to explain himself to Marco. They’d each been trained to see a person’s character and motives with a glance, so Marco knew that Vincent’s judgment had been made with both purpose and experience backing it. Their lives often depended on those judgments.
“Which employee?” Marco asked.
“Is Kiera close to anyone specific?” Vincent recalled the anger that lit her eyes—the utter hatred she exuded when forcing the man from the restaurant. The woman in question had to be a friend.
“One of the other servers is her roommate.”
