Page 13 of Clean Hack
But really, was it?
I was going to pay like any normal person. And I knew about some of their operations. Some of the things they’d done, all in the name of bringing the bad guy down at the end of the day, though. Sure, it was red-level danger but I had one hundred percent faith that Burke could handle it. No problem. Like a pro. And all that shit.
“It is,” he said and I imagined him sitting at his desk nodding his head absentmindedly as he thought over how he was going to present it. “I’ll take care of it. Can I reach you at this number?” he asked because he knew I changed numbers so often.
Actually, I never called them from my main phone. Instead, choosing to work my finger magic and make it seem like I was calling from a location miles, and states, away from where I really was. Ha! Like I was really using the phone at Pete’s Diner in the middle of nowhere fucking Texas. And when it was needed, using burner phones for short periods of time before I destroyed them, but even then, I would lock that shit down so they wouldn’t be able to locate me.
“No,” I said trying to hide my chuckle. I was pretty sure he was aware of what I did but neither of us would say it out loud. “I’ll call you back.”
I had a few spare burner phones that I used when I really needed to. I’d done that with them before, when there were cases that I sent them and was still gathering information on. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t think of that before I’d called. But then again, I was still in shock from the whole thing.
We ended the call, him hanging up before me.
Then I got to work. Combing over street cameras, looking for anything that would show me where he went and what happened. Then I went over the feed from the Dogs’ compound over and over again, trying to keep my stomach from kicking up my breakfast as I looked for the smallest clues. By the end of the day, I had a headache and nothing else. Nothing telling me where Savage and his men had gone.
Weeks went by. I had somewhat neglected everything else. I hadn’t so much as helped Clean out at all. And I hadn’t even stopped long enough to wonder if he might have noticed.
This wasn’t like me. I was always a step ahead as much as I could be. Not just for the Clean situation, but for other things as well. But with Savage, I was in a tango and didn’t even know the steps.
Burke took the case. He was on my side. But this meant that he’d have to go in, become one of them, and do his best to prove his worth as quickly as possible. It also meant that once he found Savage and The Devil’s Kings, he’d be going dark. I’d have little to no contact with him. Which only made me more jittery and anxious. He was where I couldn’t be. He was down on the coast, searching and listening. I had complete faith that he’d find Savage in due time.
I took a break, standing to stretch my sore back. It was then that I realized my eyes were tired and dry. I couldn’t remember the last time I really slept versus falling asleep with my head on my desk. I was afraid I’d miss something, but the only thing all this watching and searching was doing was wearing me down. I couldn’t afford to get sloppy. Especially not now.
I woke to the sound of my phone ringing.
Nadya, I said in my head as I wiped my eyes and sat up. I honestly didn’t remember making it to my bed, but somehow I had.
“Hey,” I said trying to sound awake, alert, and cheerful.
“You’ve been distant,” she said but her tone was flat as usual. She wasn’t hurt by it. She wasn’t trying to make me feel bad. She wasn’t even trying to say that she was worried about me. “I can’t stand this not having a job thing.”
“Well,” I said completely ignoring her first statement. She wasn’t asking for details and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to give them if she had been. “It’s going to take a while to get back to the top. Or, you know, even a call or something.”
We didn’t talk about the job that had gone wrong. Though, I would say wrong wasn’t the right word to use. She didn’t pull the trigger. Somehow she had a heart in that stone exterior. Which honestly did surprise me just a little. She had the shot and she had been ready to take it. I’d known all this though we hadn’t talked about it.
See that job was a big one. Not just for her, either. The FBI also happened to be working it too and they had brought in one of the Ashburn groups in. I knew a bit about it. Big, huge, gigantic case that ended with Nadya not taking the shot and the FBI taking him down instead.
From what I’d read in the reports there was a kid involved. I sort of put two-and-two together and figured that was the reason she didn’t take the shot. Nadya wanted to save the kid from having to see that. All things that I really shouldn’t have known. Things I didn’t want her to know that I knew. As far as she was concerned, she had a job that went south and she had no control over it. And now her name was on the shit list. It was hard for her, especially since she used to be number one. But what could you do?
I rubbed my eyes and made my way over to my chair, pulling one leg up and resting my chin on my knee.
“I keep moving, but it feels like I’m going nowhere. Which, shouldn’t be a big deal,” she said and I could almost hear a slight tone of aggravation there. “But when I know I’m not going to have anything to do for a while until all this shit blows over and someone else fucks up worse than I did, it fucking feels more like I’m just being stagnant.”
“I know. Cheer up. I’m sure they will be begging for you to take their jobs soon enough.” That was as much of a pep talk as I could muster at the moment.
Something caught my attention on the left screen. I made the feed bigger and instantly knew what I needed to do.
“Gotta go,” I said, hating that I was rushing her off the phone so quickly. “I promise I will call you very soon.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Then she was gone. She wasn’t mad, I knew that. She knew when I said I gotta go then I wasn’t messing around. Which was good because I didn’t have time to spare in those moments.
Like right now. It was time to make that call. The one that I usually got excited over. To the very person that I couldn’t even really talk to.
After I ended the call, I sat there in slight shock. I’d said too much. I hadn’t even realized that witnessing and knowing that the Dogs of Wrath were mostly dead had gotten to me. But it had. I couldn’t explain it because it wasn’t like I really knew these people. I’d never once stood in front of them or carried on a conversation with them. But somehow, I knew them. And they were just…gone. I sat there. I watched it. And yet there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. These people that had been a thread unknowingly woven into my world had just been cut. Stranger still, it was also tangled up in Clean as well. I had no idea if he knew or not. He didn’t seem like the kind of person that kept in touch between jobs. But it didn’t mean that it wouldn’t affect him in some way, too. I really had no idea why it hit me so hard while I was on the phone with him. And when his calm voice sounded almost worried as he asked me if I was alright, I broke.
Which was not good.
I couldn’t afford to break.
Especially not with him.
I couldn’t allow anyone to be that one person. That one thing that cracked me and then wiggled its way into that crack as well. I’d only break and crack further, until I was nothing but a pile of broken pieces scattered on the floor…with no one to help me put myself back together.
