Bridge stared at me. He dropped his voice to smooth ice. “Where the fuck is it?”
“The woman at the event, the one in red, if she’s smart, she has it.”
Bridge sputtered. “If she’s smart? What the fuck, Ben? You realize you’re risking all of us, right?”
“What the fuck was I supposed to do, mate? We needed more time. I got us some more time. You needed to download the information from both his phone and the device. I managed to do that. What would you have had me do? They were patting me down.”
Bridge ran a hand over his face before scrubbing at his jaw. “Who is she?”
I winced. “I don’t know.”
East was generally an affable bloke. Easy-going. He’d give you the shirt off his back, but when he was pushed, he could be vicious. He stormed away, muttering curses that would make the most hardened prisoner blush. Bridge lifted a brow. “Mate, tell me you’re not serious.”
“I am. I had no choice. There was no way I would have been able to leave the building with it. So we just need to find her.”
East came back after his mini tirade. “Do you think?”
I turned my gaze on him and pinned him with a hard glare. “The way I figure it, you can stand here carrying on or we can go back and start looking for her.”
I could see East doing his deep breathing, trying to calm himself down and keep his temper at bay. After everything we’d found out about Toby, he’d been a mess. We’d all been in bad shape, but East had taken it the worst.
He’d internalized what had happened. And I could see him trying to work through his calming exercises before he lost his mind. “Think, mate. Was it a clean handoff?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “It was as clean as I could make it. Van Linsted hit me, and she came running over. We both went down with security, and I shoved it in her purse. She might not even know she has it.”
East blinked at me. “Bloody perfect.”
“That’s all I’ve got right now. Are we going to yak on about it, or are we going to go do something?”
I watched him take several deep breaths. “Fuck.”
“Do you have a guest list? She’s probably on the security footage. We’re going to need to ascertain who she was there with.”
East muttered. “It’s as good a place as any to start. In the meantime, we’ll need to also comb the security footage to make sure that no one saw you make the handoff.”
“I don’t think they did.”
“Thinking isn’t certainty. If anyone finds that drive and puts two and two together, we’re toast. Our lives are over.”
“Like I was fucking around deliberately. I know why the drive is so important. I know what’s at stake.”
Bridge opened the driver’s side door. “Then let’s hope your mysterious woman in red has what we need. And you damn well better pray she’s not going to sell us out.”
I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. “She won’t.”
East glowered at me as he climbed into the Range Rover at the curb. “You better be right about that.”
I don’t know what it was about her, but something told me that she wasn’t the kind of woman who would dick us over.
But it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been wrong.
4
Ben
3 Months Earlier
The pomp. The circumstance. Some would even say tradition.
I called it bullshit. My long-hidden tattoo itched and felt heavy under my ring. I often wondered what would have happened all those years ago if, when I’d been called to the Elite, I’d said no. What if I’d gotten the card that said only a select few are to be Elite and I’d burned the thing?
What if I’d encouraged Toby to burn his too? Would he still be alive?
The dim cavern of the initiation room made it difficult to see clearly. Or maybe I wished this was all a dream. The candles burning all around us sent an incense aroma into the air. And it was so thick I nearly choked with it. Sand-colored stone walls surrounded us in a massive circle, and above us, on the ceiling, was a tapestry depicting the first brothers of the Elite in their black robes and Bauta masks on a hunt.
The same robes and masks we wore now.
In the center of the room, the new initiates lay in their coffins.
I forced myself to stand still. Next to me, I could feel the glare of Bridge on my right. He hated this shit as much as I did, but he was better at hiding his disdain. Maybe because he’d been hiding it for so long.
To my left, East’s jaw twitched. Because of the mask, I couldn’t see his face, but God, I could feel his contempt. Drew, directly opposite of me, stood stoic. As if he bought into all the seriousness.
We were inducting a new class, none of whom had any idea what they were in for. That their lives would no longer be their own but would be dictated by a preset ledger of fate and destiny. If you were lucky enough to be chosen, you would thrive. If you were unlucky, well, no one ever wanted to talk about what happened to the unlucky.
To our left, Marcus Van Linsted, the current Director Prime, some would say the most powerful man in Britain, closed out the session. “To our newest brothers, lift your masks and know that now you are amongst the Elite. Your lives will never be the same.”
Marcus had said the same words to us some time ago. We’d still all been reeling from Toby’s death, still shell-shocked, unable to function. And we’d been forced to wear those masks and act as if we hadn’t just lost one of our best friends.
We’d been told how powerful we would be, how we would be called upon to serve our brothers. I had brothers in the room, absolutely. East. Drew. Bridge. But those were the only ones I counted. To my far right, in the corner, I could feel the glare of my father. Almost like he could tell the direction of my thoughts.
I twirled my signet ring around my thumb, dying to get the bloody thing off. The moments when I wasn’t in public were the best ones because it was the first thing I took off. Possibly like many women took off a bra. I could always feel the weight of it, digging into me.
The final sacred words were the signal that I was almost free.
When the ceremony was over, I tried to relax, but a scowl leaked as Bram Van Linsted clapped his hand on his father’s back. The Van Linsteds had been in the Elite since the first class over two hundred years ago. Everyone liked to forget that those Dutch fuckers made their fortune on the backs of slaves and then increased it by pillaging a continent that had already lost so much for diamonds. Nope. Everyone likes to pretend they were on the up and up, but I knew the Van Linsteds. After all, I’d spent over a decade hating them.
As always, after the induction ceremony there was a reception, one the new recruits always looked forward to. Top shelf booze and women, carefully selected for them, of course. No one was allowed to bring their current girlfriend if they had one. All these women were escorts, discreet, and knew the game.
They were all compensated for their time and efforts. They’d been selected based on each new member’s desires, predilections, and personal tastes. It was ingenious.