

### FORESIGHT

EJ McBride

~~~

Smashwords Edition

May you have the Foresight to know where you're going, the Hindsight to know where you've been, and the Insight to know when you've gone too far...

Copyright © 2014 EJ McBride

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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### Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

Chapter 08

Chapter 09

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Connect With EJ

Prologue

For the second time in less than 24 hours, Clara Phelps found herself in handcuffs.

And for the second time in less than 24 hours, Clara Phelps found herself praying for someone to spare her life.

She awoke feeling groggy, that initial sensation of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, only amplified times a thousand. Her immediate response was to lift her head and scan the unknown room for some kind of clue, a tell-tale piece of furniture, a door or a window that might give her an idea of her whereabouts, but an overwhelming feeling of drug-induced double vision mixed with the darkness of the early morning hours made that almost impossible. She could barely see a few feet in front of her, and what she could see, she couldn't see clearly at all. She yanked at her right hand, with the intention of using it to check her face for wounds, to be sure that she'd not been stabbed or burned, but found it being stopped short after only a few centimeters. Whatever she was cuffed to, she wasn't getting away from it that easily. She lifted her left hand, confirming that her left arm at least was free to move about, and delicately scanned the contours of her face, her fingers gliding quickly and efficiently over her nose, her eyes, her ears. Everything was OK, nothing too bad to report back.

Finding nothing more than a couple of small cuts, she began feeling her way around her surroundings, starting with the ground under her butt and slowly pinching and scraping around in a circle. She realized she was sitting upright, leaning against whatever it was she had been handcuffed to. She curled her left arm back behind herself and felt large, vertical clumps of cold steel attached to a thick concrete wall. Surmising that what she was imprisoned against was in fact a large radiator, she reached her left arm across her chest and began feeling for a gap in the metal to slide her cuffs through. She felt slowly up and down a couple of times, pinching and grasping at the dirty metal joints and washers, the dust and gunk lodging itself unpleasantly underneath her finger nails and in the small cuts littered all over her hands. Finally she slapped her hand back down on the floor, defeated at the realization that her captor hadn't been that stupid.

She switched her focus to her sense of smell. Although this was never going to be her first choice as a means of identifying her location, she knew that a give-away smell like the odor of the seafront or the stench of a smelting plant nearby might make the job of rescuing her easier for the police. Of course, how she was going to alert the police was another matter altogether, but she figured it best to focus on one problem at a time. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, paying particular attention, more attention than she'd ever paid before, in fact, to what she could smell. And what she could smell was an overwhelming aroma of damp, the kind of damp that takes years of neglect to perfect, the kind of damp you simply can't buy or replicate. Wherever she was, she knew she was probably the first person to be there in some time. She could sense dust, realizing that with every additional inhalation, her nostrils felt dirtier, the particles building up in her lungs, tickling the back of her throat.

Is this a factory? she thought. It would certainly explain why the place reeked of damp, and she immediately began compiling a list of abandoned warehouses in her head, even though she was almost certain that she wasn't in New York any more.

The old smelting plant, she thought, or maybe the shipping docks, her mind utterly focused on finding a factory or warehouse that might fit the bill.

CLICK.

The sound echoed through the room, giving the impression of enormous depth and emptiness. It was as clear as day that whoever had made the sound had made no attempt to cover it or muffle it, and it appeared to be no more than twenty or thirty feet away from her. Clara jumped in shock, then sat as far forward as she possibly could, her mouth open slightly as she channeled every part of her concentration into the task of hearing a clue as to who or what had made the mystery sound. Nothing, just absolute silence, deafening silence. Despite her instincts telling her not to, Clara eventually plucked up the courage to speak.

"Hello, is anyone there?"

Nothing. Total silence. Seconds passed, seconds of torturous quiet that somehow seemed to defy the laws of time and felt like minutes, hours to Clara, until a sudden burst of activity in the same direction as the first noise, the unmistakable sound of footsteps walking slowly toward her. Clara felt her heart launch itself uncomfortably into her mouth, her stomach sink, the hairs on the back of her neck stand upright. She thought of a thousand different threats she could scream at her captor, but settled on an involuntary whimper, a barely audible chirp that achieved nothing other than confirming her absolute paralysis of fear. She felt all of the muscles in her body clench as if bracing for a hit that she knew was coming, and as she strained her bloodshot eyes, she realized that her double vision had now cleared. A figure hovered in front of her, head bowed down toward her, then crouched to get closer to her, a face appearing in the dull light shining in through a window behind her.

She gasped as a tear streamed down her cheek.

"Hello, Clara."

Chapter 01

It was a colder than usual April morning at the waterfront in Brighton Beach, New York. Clara sat on a park bench, arms down by her side, her hands hidden away inside the pockets of her warm coat, her breath dancing in front of her face with every exhalation. This wasn't the first time Clara had stared out at the water from here, and it was one of the few parts of the city where trivial things like rapidly declining temperatures didn't seem to bother her.

"Now?" quizzed Mckenzie, the scruffy thirty-something year old sitting next to her, equally cold and growing impatient with her desire to sit and do nothing.

"Not yet," she replied, not breaking her gaze for even a second. "A few more minutes."

She had come here as long as she could remember, sitting in the exact same spot on the boardwalk with her father and her older brother year after year. He'd buy his kids Syrniki, a sweet Russian fritter, his with jam and theirs with honey, and they'd all sit on the bench and watch the ocean. It was one of the few activities where Clara felt she could relax growing up; the space, the relative quiet contrasted with the hustle and bustle of the rest of the island, the constant drama and upset of the rest of her life. They were cherished memories, and whenever she felt as though things were really getting on top of her, Clara would enjoy the natural therapy of starting her day with a trip to the water. She took one final glance out over the gleaming white railings, took her hands out of her pockets, and blew through them for warmth.

"OK, now," she said, and without uttering another word, the pair stood up and began walking along 6th street and toward Brighton Beach Avenue.

Clara was slight in build, with auburn-tinted brown hair that rested delicately just below her shoulder blades. Despite her self-admitted tomboy tendencies, she still managed to dress in a way that highlighted her feminine side, combining her coat with skinny pink jeans, a pair of Vans and a wooly hat. She was beautiful in that girl next door kind of way that so many men would find appealing, if only she had the girl next door personality to complement it. Mackenzie, on the other hand, was tall, about 6 feet 1, but skinny in build. Wearing a long dark coat, his hair in a side parting and thick rimmed glasses sitting on his unshaven face, he could easily pass for "geek chic" if only he had the good looks to pull it off. The pair made an unusual couple, but in this part of New York, few people cared what kind of couple you made so long as you kept to yourself, something they were both more than comfortable with.

They walked with purpose, not slouching or slowing down even for a second, moving quickly past the rows of houses, their destination the busier streets of Brighton Beach, the parts of town where you could easily spot a potential target without getting yourself into too much trouble. The pair knew exactly what they were looking for without even acknowledging it. They'd worked together for a few years now, and every day they would spot someone that they knew would be easy pickings. They generally targeted the older crowd. Brighton Beach was full of old Russian women, often going about their daily errands completely on their own, often without anyone at home keeping tabs on where they were. Not that Clara or Mckenzie would do anything particularly awful to them. They took a certain amount of pride in the fact that in all the years they'd been working together, not once had they physically hurt anyone. Of course, the psychological pain they inflicted was always much worse, but the pair both had an unwritten rule that they would never discuss that.

The pair continued up 6th street at a brisk pace. On their left they passed a newly completed block of condominiums, red brick with tall arching windows and promises of year-round water views. For Manhattan, they weren't that spectacular, but Clara tilted her head as she walked past, glancing up toward the top floors and wondering what kind of life the people up there must live. Despite everything, she'd never given up completely on the idea that one day she might live in a place like that. Sure, she may not have the steady employment and credit history of a college graduate with a high-flying career, but she knew how to make fast money, and she wasn't stupid about tucking a few dollars under a mattress whenever she got the chance. She knew she'd be living in the penthouse suite one day, so she just had to figure out the finer points in the meantime. The entire building had been part of the renovation project of this part of New York, a project spearheaded mainly by tax breaks that James Friedman, the wunderkind Mayor of New York and hot candidate for the next Presidency, had implemented. Friedman's time in office had so far been nothing but a major success, and while Clara didn't consider herself especially politically minded, she liked Friedman, felt as though he was doing good things for the city, and especially liked his handling of the murder of Helen Berghaus, a political opponent running for mayor a few years before, killed in a botched robbery attempt. She figured that a lesser man could have used the situation for political gain, and while his gains had been significant, she admired the class with which he responded to the news. In her experience, it was a character trait that few men in general had, never mind politicians.

After about ten minutes walking, the pair arrived on Neptune Avenue and stopped to take in their surroundings, leaning casually against the old railings of a dirty apartment building. Mckenzie pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket, placed one in his mouth and lit, inhaling as he did. Without breaking his forward-facing glance, he closed the packet and slipped it back into his pocket, exhaling and dropping the cigarette in his hand down to his right-hand side. He stared ahead of him before sensing a pair of piercing eyes looking right through him from his left. He turned and made eye contact with Clara, who was giving him the kind of look that could turn men to stone, could turn milk sour.

"Yes, you dick, I know I quit. You could still offer me one. I like being able to say "no."

"Jesus Christ," responded Mckenzie, not sure whether he was more pissed off at her tone or the fact that she knew exactly what he was thinking, as usual, without him having to utter a word.

Mckenzie had always known that something wasn't quite right with Clara. They'd met when the pair of them were sleeping rough a couple of years back, and while he'd always felt safe, comfortable even in her presence, he knew that there was far more to her than most. She had the uncanny knack of knowing every thought that passed through his head, whether he uttered a word or not, whether it was good or bad. It wasn't one of those between friends coincidences, either. Clara could read him like a book. He'd tried to convince her to prove his theory once, to play the "what number am I thinking of" game. When she refused, his angry, innermost private thoughts about her bad attitude reduced her to floods of tears. They hadn't spoken about it since, but Mckenzie had learned that with Clara, it was best to assume that whatever you were thinking, she already knew about it. The safest thing to do was to try to keep your thoughts positive.

The pair glanced around them. Behind them stood a tall, seven-story apartment building, the kind you could see in any street of any borough of New York, with fire escapes and air conditioning units climbing in formation up the walls. On the opposite side of the street were smaller three-story buildings with the bottom floors dedicated to small shops and family-run takeout restaurants. This was essentially Russia town, but even here you couldn't escape New York's multi-cultural attitude, with a Chinese deli, a Mexican restaurant and a Starbucks all sharing a strip of retail space no longer than 75 feet. The pair knew that this would be the place to spot a sucker, someone they could relieve of some money with minimal fuss or collateral damage. They played the waiting game.

"You know the problem with stopping smoking?" quizzed Clara, not expecting Mckenzie to offer up any kind of response. "It makes you want to do everything else that's bad for your body. Shit, you didn't even do that often when you smoked. I swear to God I've had to change my route back to my apartment to avoid the Dunkin' Donuts."

"The one on 18th?"

Clara glared at the side of Mckenzies' face, unamused at his fairly useless response. "Yes, that would be the one, Sherlock," she snapped. "Honestly, I'd be the size of an SUV if I went in there as often as I want to. And coffee, my God, the coffee. Five minutes off of the nicotine and my body is craving any kind of drug. I swear I'm drinking coffee like it contains an elixir for ever-lasting youth or something."

Mckenzie glanced across the four lanes of traffic at the Starbucks opposite, and by the time his eyes met with Clara she'd already responded to the question he hadn't even asked, at least not verbally.

"Yes, please, I'd love one," she ordered, a wide smile across her face.

Mckenzie sighed and used his elbows to lift himself off of the railings he'd been slouched on, his hands not coming out of his pockets even for a second. He paused as he waited for a couple of cars to pass him, then lifted his right foot to step out into the road, stopping dead in his tracks as a hand grabbed his left arm. Clara pulled him back on to the sidewalk.

"The bakery," she said, her eyes transfixed.

"All right, on my way back," replied McKenzie.

"No, asshole," she snapped, nodding vigorously away from her.

On the opposite side of the street stood a small bakery, one single door leading into a sales room no bigger than the average person's kitchen. There were two counters, each one half full of bread and cakes; it had clearly been a good morning of business for the place. Outside stood an old lady, clearly of Russian descent, her face aged in a way that made it tough to pinpoint exactly how old she was. She wore a long, nondescript beige coat and ushanka hat, although minus the ear covers. Despite her age, she appeared to be pretty mobile, but was clearly struggling with too many bags of groceries. She was gripping one in her right hand while another balanced between her chest and her left arm and a third was tearing away, the contents slowly tipping down toward the ground, a morning's food shopping about to smack into the pavement. Without speaking, the pair quickly bolted across the street in the direction of the old lady.

"Here," bellowed Mckenzie at the woman, "let me get that for you." He grabbed hold of the paper bag, just seconds before the contents would have emptied out onto the sidewalk. He cradled her groceries in his arms like a young child, almost hugging them, and looked at Clara. Clara turned to face the old woman, holding eye contact with her for a couple of silent seconds. "Where to?" she asked.

"Oh, bless you both," replied the lady. "I was sure I'd be able to carry them, but they were just too much. Are you sure you wouldn't mind?"

"Of course not," replied Clara. "This way?" She pointed up the street in front of the woman. "Of course it was this way," thought McKenzie.

"Just a couple of blocks, I promise it's not far," insisted the lady. "Bless you both."

The trio walked, Clara and Mckenzie being sure to keep the lady engrossed in conversation the entire time. They talked about how they weren't from around here, that they were in town on their honeymoon and had gotten married in Chicago the weekend before. They told her that they'd always wanted to see New York, and that he had family who lived out here, so it just made perfect sense for them to visit before his career took off and she would focus on raising their family. It was all nonsense, of course, but they needed a good cover story, something that painted them as the sweet and thoughtful couple long enough for Clara to be able to slip her hand inside the woman's bag and remove the $87 she had in her purse, which she did with startling efficiency. When they arrived at her building, even walking up to her apartment and dropping the groceries off on her kitchen counter for her, the old lady couldn't have been more grateful.

"Bless you both," she beamed, reaching into her bag and removing her purse. "Here, I feel as though I ought to give you . . . ."

Clara reached out and gently gripped the purse, still in the lady's hand, clasping it shut again.

"Please," Clara pleaded. "We couldn't possibly. Besides, you remind me so much of my Grandmother." She stared into the old lady's eyes for a moment, pausing, thinking, before trying another approach. "I'd be insulted if you offered me money."

"Oh," said the old lady in a defeated tone. She stared a moment longer into Clara's eyes before looking back down at her purse, removing it from Clara's hand, and placing it gently back into her bag. "Then at least take some of these," she said as she reached into one of the grocery bags and pulled out a box of Dunkin' Donuts, handing them to Clara. "I don't know why I buy the damn things; I never eat them all."

Clara took the box as Mckenzie let out a quiet chuckle, Clara fully aware of the irony. Still, anything to keep the old woman out of her purse long enough for them to leave, something they needed to do quickly before she got much of a better look at them and realized they'd just robbed her.

"Thank you," Clara responded. "We'll let ourselves out." And with that, the pair left, hearing the old lady close her apartment door behind them. They exited onto the street, and moved quickly in the direction they'd just come, back toward Neptune Avenue.

The next few hours seemed to drag. Clara had long felt that her luck generally came in waves, rather than random pockets of good fortune here and there. If she had a decent score in the morning, that luck would usually carry her through to lunchtime and the afternoon, and on a good day it wasn't unheard of for her to pocket anything up to $1000. Then there were the days when try as she might, nothing seemed to come together, and she would leave at the end of the day with the same amount that she started with–zero. Clara called it luck, but she suspected there may have been an element of confidence in there too. A decent pocket in the morning got the adrenaline going and made her more alert for the rest of the day. It had been the same ever since she was a kid, always with her parents wrapped around her finger, always better than her brother at the childish games they'd play.

The rest of this particular day should therefore have been a breeze for her, but for whatever reason, nothing happened, and Clara and Mckenzie spent hours standing around, chatting what could only really be described as shit and keeping a close eye on everyone who walked past. It was vital that Clara pick out a target properly; neither of them were skilled in any form of combat, and they hated running. Besides, running was for bank robbers. They didn't consider themselves robbers because robbers point guns in people's faces and demand their money. They were opportunists. In fact, Clara's insistence on picking targets who were in need of help meant that they would often lend a helping hand in the process. It was karma balancing out the universe as far as Clara was concerned.

"You see anything?" quizzed Mckenzie.

Clara paused, as if giving their next target a couple of extra seconds to present themselves, before sighing a defeated sigh.

"No. I'm going home."

Clara pushed Mckenzie gently with a playful prod, knocking him slightly off his balance and grinning as she did it. Mckenzie tutted and sighed as he staggered over to one side, regaining his balance quickly but making the most of the opportunity to appear annoyed. He knew this was about as close to affection as he ever got with Clara, so he let her childish actions slide. He watched as Clara began walking up the street and noticed her stop sharply, her eyes transfixed across the street.

He followed her line of sight over to a pristine Range Rover Sport, a blindingly bright cherry red color and kitted out with all of the additional luxuries that an elite few Range Rover owners could afford. The hood of the car was up, steam billowing from the front, while its owner was leaning up against the front fender, clearly distressed and flicking through her phone. She looked young, her designer jeans, top and boots giving the impression that she could have been a high-powered business woman in her early thirties, but with a face that clearly put her in the early-twenties, maybe even late-teens. She was a brunette with dark hair sitting just below her shoulder blades, a snow-white pale complexion, and she wore a disappointingly large amount of makeup considering how naturally beautiful she was. Her eyes were puffy, as if she'd been crying, though her face wore the hallmark characteristics of anger rather than sadness.

Mckenzie switched his attention back to Clara, who by this point hadn't even waited to get Mckenzie's seal of approval, and was carefully navigating the traffic, moving in the direction of the girl.

"Car trouble, huh?" Clara asked, even though she knew it was more of a statement than a question.

"What?" asked the girl in a delicate, sheepish tone, taking her gaze away from her cellphone.

"Your car," said Clara, pointing at the Range Rover. "Looks like you're having a bit of trouble. My boyfriend's a mechanic, he could probably help you out." Mckenzie arrived, almost right on cue.

"Isn't that right, baby?" Clara stared at Mckenzie, holding his gaze. Although her abilities were limited to seeing what other people were thinking and not influencing their thoughts, she possessed that natural female ability to tell a thousand stories with just one facial look.

"Uh, oh . . . Yeah, absolutely," said Mckenzie, so unconvincingly even he wasn't sure if he believed his own lie. He walked to the hood of the vehicle and tilted his head in for a closer look. "This where you seem to be, uh, having the problems?" he asked, pointing directly into the cloud of steam that was by now gushing from the enormous engine block.

"Uh, yeah" replied the girl, doing her best to not sound sarcastic in her response. "Look, I really appreciate you guys coming to help, but I've just got off the phone with roadside recovery and they told me to. . . ."

Clara interrupted. "How long did they say they would be?"

"Um, like an hour or something. She said they didn't have any trucks in the area. It's bullshit, I don't even care about the money, I just don't wanna be standing around outside all night."

"It's cool–Dan will help you, won't you, Dan?!" Clara nodded in the direction of Mckenzie, who knew from previous experience that this was his cue to respond. Clara had learnt to use fake names at all times, and the more generic the better. Dan was good, and so was Tom or Steve. Never over-complicate by moving away from the one-syllable rule. People remember the weird names far better than the short and common ones. A "Dan," especially one that's uttered quickly, can very easily jumble itself up in a victim's head and become a "Bob" or a "Paul" by the time the cops arrive to take a statement.

"Oh, uh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah man, shit, these Range Rovers. Man, if I had a dollar for every Range Rover that came into the shop broken, ya know. . . ."

The two girls, grouped by the passenger side door, stared unimpressed at the rambling Mckenzie, who quickly took the hint and put his head back into the hood.

"Hey, uh, baby. Are you able to work out what's wrong with her car? You sure you don't need her to come to the front and have a look at anything with you?" quizzed Clara, trying her hardest not to flash Mckenzie the "know what I mean?" look.

"Oh, yeah, no doubt. Yeah, hey, sweetheart, could you uh, come and help me? I need to move a couple bits, and I don't want to touch anything on the car without you seeing what I'm doing."

"Really?" asked the girl, her face the epitome of unwilling. "I don't want to get oil anywhere. This sweater cost 100 bucks."

"You won't, I promise, I just need you to see what I'm doing."

The girl turned and for a brief second, made eye contact with Clara. "Shit, she doesn't know whether we're trustworthy or not," was the message Clara received loud and clear.

"Look hun," Clara began. "We're willing to help you, but you've got to cooperate. We're running late and really need to pick our twins up from the daycare center. We were on our way over when we stopped to help you." She waited for the girl to look back at her, pausing for that second of eye contact. When she finally did, Clara got the confirmation she needed; the "They must be trustworthy if they're parents" trick had worked like a charm.

The girl made her way to join Mckenzie at the front of the car, who proceeded to point and gesture at various sections of the enormous engine, moving his hand around while trying to make his actions appear as deliberate as possible. He'd occasionally tug on a cable or twist a screw cap, even burning himself on a particularly hot radiator valve. "What I'm doing is checking for, uh, leaks," he assured the girl, who by this time was out of sight of Clara, and more interested in what she was reading on her cellphone than the "leaks" Mckenzie had tried to convince her he needed to find. Clara, still standing by the passenger side door, got to work. She glanced into the car, spotting a designer handbag, its contents half-spilled out onto the passenger seat, facing away from where Clara was standing. Clara glanced over her shoulder, noticing that the road was quiet. She reached her hand in and pulled the top of the bag up so she could see some of the contents, making out what was clearly a purse. She crept her fingers along the top of the bag in a "walking fingers" kind of motion, desperately trying to get enough purchase to reach for the purse without having to pull out the entire bag. She felt the soft leather of the purse, and squeezed her fingers together in a pinching movement. Nothing. She tried again but just couldn't seem to get a firm hold on her prize. She tried a third time, before giving up and changing her hand position, trying instead to find a zipper clasp she could pinch hold of. She knew that the quickest thing to do would be to get into the car, but that would make the car move and risk giving the game away. She tried one more time before realizing that this wasn't going to work. She made a mental note of the bag, taking a "snapshot" in her head so she could put everything back exactly as it was, and grabbed the bottom of the bag, quietly sliding it over to the passenger seat. She glanced around her, sensing the coast was clear enough, and scooped the bag into her left arm, her right arm removing the purse and opening it as quickly as she could. Her eyes glossed over the stacks of notes inside, trying to count them as quickly as she could. She knew without having to try too hard that she'd already spotted at least 20 $50 bills. She'd hit the jackpot.

"Can I help you?" a deep voice in a broad Russian accent quizzed from just over her right shoulder.

"Daddy! I'm so glad you're here, these guys were just helping me. . . ." The girl hopped excitedly around the side of the passenger door, confronted by the sight of her father and the "mother" she thought had come to her rescue, holding her purse in one hand, and $2,800 of her money in the other. "What the...?! You're robbing me?!"

Before Clara could even consider a response, the huge paw-like hand of the Russian mobster had been clamped around Clara's throat, the force with which he threw her back toward the car making her head bounce off of the metal work like a tennis ball. The man wasn't that tall, maybe six feet, but he was broad. His face was chiseled, clearly a man in his mid-to-late fifties, with the eyes of a soldier, someone who'd seen things the majority of us couldn't imagine in our worst nightmares. His hand, one of the only parts of his body that Clara could see at this point, was littered with tattoos; Russian writing and stars clearly his preferred subject matter. He was wearing about two day's worth of stubble, his nostrils flared in anger, his mouth sealed shut, his demeanor a quiet calm that could erupt without a moment's notice. Whatever he had in store, it wasn't fazing him one bit. Clara could do nothing else but stare into his eyes, and what she saw wasn't good.

Clara winced and let out a whimper, the only sound she could make with the diminishing oxygen in her lungs. She was beginning to panic, and the Russian's grip seemed if anything to be getting tighter. She used both hands to claw at his one hand, convinced that her feet had actually left the ground by a couple of inches. His daughter stood by his side, staring back at Clara.

She hates me, she wants her Dad to kill me, I'm in real trouble, Clara thought, not that she needed to read the girl's thoughts for confirmation on this occasion.

"Why were you robbing my daughter?" asked the Russian, not releasing his grip even the tiniest amount, suggesting that he wasn't actually looking for an answer. "You see her in trouble and you think you can make some money from her? You Americans think we're the bad guys, but you do this? To a girl who needs help? Have you any idea who I am!?" Again, no response was required. Clara didn't know exactly who he was, but she knew who his collective was. The tattoos on his hand, the soulless stare in his eyes, the ridiculous wealth he was able to lavish on his daughter all sent the same message. Clara's clearest vision of the day was quickly looking like it might be her last conscious thought; she'd picked the wrong girl to scam.

As Clara came to, she began to realize she was on the pavement, her eyes opening slowly, making out the shape of the enormous tire of a Range Rover Sport just an inch or so away from her face.

"Clara, come on, wake up! We need to leave!" It was Mckenzie's voice, which Clara figured was a positive thing. She turned and rolled over, her head pounding from the impact of thudding against the cold, hard concrete, her eyes doing their best to keep their state of single-vision. Mckenzie was hunched over her, his hand reaching down and grabbing hers, pulling her up to her feet with an almost aggressive amount of force, something she'd gladly have chastised him for in any other circumstance, but right now anything that was going to help get them out of this situation was all right with her. As she was lifted up, she tilted her head down to her left, spotting the large Russian man slumped on the roadway, a metal pipe covered in equal amounts rust and blood lying near his head, his daughter a mix of uncontrollable panic and anger as she attempted to wake him up. Clara knew that Mckenzie may have made their situation a whole lot better, or a whole lot worse; it really all depended on how the next few minutes played out. Before she fully understood what was going on, Clara realized she was running, unaware of speed or direction, just following Mckenzie, hopefully to safety.

Clara glanced ahead of her, trying to gain some idea of where they were heading, and spotted the bakery, the scene of their previous crime, only a few yards in front of them. She took some reassurance from this; it was nice to spot a familiar landmark when you're running for your life, but it also meant that, unsurprisingly, they hadn't travelled far in the last 15 seconds since she was lifted up to her feet. They needed to get more ground between them and the Range Rover, which by now either had a very angry or a very dead Russian mobster next to it. Either way, they were entirely responsible. As she approached the doorway, Clara willed her body to turn right, bringing her parallel with the street so she could continue running, but her legs it would appear had other ideas, and she wobbled before slouching left, the glass window of the bakery the only thing stopping her from landing flat on her face. Then suddenly, a "pop," before the huge glass window that was keeping her upright shattered, her body dropping into the empty space and snapping painfully against the window frame before dispatching her bloodied and bruised back out onto the sidewalk. Clara had spent much of her life hanging out with the "wrong crowd," living in the bad side of town, but despite this the sound of a gun firing was pretty alien to her, and her initial feeling of surprise at how different from the movies it sounded in real life was quickly replaced with the realization that this guy meant business. She needed to move, and she needed to move now. Clara hoisted herself up to her feet, doing her level best to keep her head as low as possible, while doing everything she possibly could to convince her legs to start moving her forward. She glanced back at the car and could clearly see the Russian standing tall, not even attempting to mask the handgun that was pointed in her direction. Another "pop" was followed immediately by something sharp stabbing the left side of her face. Clara screeched and grabbed her left cheek, terrified at the damage a bullet to the face would have caused, pulling her hand away to reveal a small amount of blood, before noticing the bullet hole in the wall next to her, a moment of microscopic relief in among the chaos.

Clara continued to run, aware that the Russian would continue to take potshots at her until she was out of his line of sight, but also aware that like so many criminals, he didn't really know how to use his weapon. She figured that if he pulled off only one more shot, her luck might continue, but the more shots he had, the better his aim was going to get, and the more likely he was to find his target. She was also aware that Mckenzie was nowhere to be seen, and despite the bleakness of the situation for both of them, she couldn't help but be a little upset at his preferred attitude of self-preservation. She glanced ahead of her, seeing that she was coming up to a crossroads, an ideal chance to bolt down a different street, maybe jump into a taxi or dive into someone's backyard. She was running faster than she'd run for a long time, her eyes scanning the horizon looking for a hiding place, something she could make use of. She looked in front of her, making brief eye contact with a man, somewhere in his mid to late twenties, his right hand held up in a "stop" motion, his left hand reaching into his jacket for something. Clara read him; He's a cop, she thought. He wants to know why I'm running, and he can't work out whether I'm the threat or not.

"There, he's got a gun!" Clara screamed, stopping only momentarily to point out the Russian. It took only a half-second more for the off-duty cop to unholster his weapon and take aim.

"NYPD, drop the weapon!" he screamed, his standard-issue pistol targeted squarely on the mobster who, clearly un-fazed by the sight of another gun, fired back what was either a warning shot or yet another badly placed round.

The cop yelled and ducked and weaved to move to some cover, shoulder barging Clara in the process, knocking her down off of her feet and onto the sidewalk. He fired back, his bullet flying with a far greater degree of accuracy than the angry Russian's, slicing against the mobsters' right arm before continuing its path, finally ending up in the leg of his daughter, still standing by the Range Rover just a few feet behind him. She screamed in pain while her father, now struggling to aim his weapon, admitted temporary defeat.

"You're both dead!" he yelled, grabbing his daughter by the arm and hobbling over to his car before speeding off. Clara winced as the adrenalin began wearing off and the pain of her various cuts and bruises started to kick in. She started to lift herself up, only to find the firm hand of the plain-clothes detective pushing her forcefully back down.

"No, you don't," he responded, "it was you I was coming to arrest, sweetheart." Clara lay there, held in place underneath the young cop's knee, listening as he called in the license plate of the mobster's car, hearing the oh-so-familiar sound of sirens in the distance as they took chase, and waiting for a car to come and collect her. She looked into the officer's eyes, read his thoughts for a moment, and knew that her monumentally bad day was far from over.

Chapter 02

Clara was sat upright in a chair, her hands wrapped behind her back and bound tightly together with plastic cable, tight enough that her little finger had gone purple, throbbing in pain. This was the first of a few signs that suggested to Clara that she was in more trouble than usual. A lot about her situation was painfully normal to her. This wasn't the first time she'd been in a Police station, and as she glanced around at the dull grey walls, the cold metal table and the one-way mirror covering the length of the room, she felt oddly at home. She'd been in her fair share of trouble before and was well aware that every time she ended up back in a holding cell she was one step closer to spending a considerable spell behind bars, losing her life to the system. It was her astonishing ability to tap into people's thoughts at random that had proven pretty useful here. It's amazing how easy it is to talk your way out of a prison sentence when you know exactly what the judge needs to hear.

But this occasion felt different. Something wasn't right, and an irritating, nagging voice in the back of her head, like an itch that you just can't scratch, told her that she was in more trouble than she could imagine this time.

The door to the room swung open, and a man in his mid to late forties strode into the room. Clara didn't recognize him, a fact that she added to the mental pile marked "reasons why I'm screwed this time." Clara had gotten to know most of the DIs at most of the precincts around NYC at some point in her life, and while a new face specifically didn't worry her, there was something about this guy she didn't like. He was about 5 feet 11, just the shorter side of 6 feet. He was clean shaven and wore a particularly expensive suit, a sure sign that this guy had been drafted in for something in particular; whomever Clara was about to speak to, she knew it was no longer NYPD. He had piercing eyes, short, meticulously kept dark hair and a smart-looking watch with a leather strap. He paced the room for a while before delicately pulling a chair out from the other side of the table and sitting down, crossing his legs and reading from a pile of papers he'd brought in with him.

'You're in trouble, you know that right?" he quizzed, a broad Glaswegian accent catching her completely off guard. "As in, screwed. Seriously."

He paused, as if waiting for a response, one which Clara wasn't about to give, and one that it would appear, he wasn't that worried about hearing. He tapped on the pile of papers with his index finger, then pointed back and behind himself, as if trying to pinpoint the exact spot downtown where Clara's attempted robbery had just taken place.

"The girl you tried to rob was Valentina Lebedev. She's 17 years old, soon to graduate high school, currently nursing a bullet wound that won't kill her, but will certainly make prom night a lot less magical for her."

"Save me the sob story," replied Clara, not looking up from the table, although sensing that this wasn't the point he was trying to make.

"She's also the daughter of Mikhail Lebedev, one of the Russian Mafia's most up-and-coming members." He threw a bunch of files across the table to land right under Clara's line of vision. The photo at the top of the file was a surveillance shot of the very man who was trying to kill her some thirty minutes ago. "We know he's murdered at least six people personally and can't even begin to count how many executions he's had some kind of involvement with. He's well connected and good at what he does, which is why we can't bring him in for any of those six murders. A couple of our undercover guys tell us his nickname in the family is 'Pal'tsy,' which roughly translated from Russian means 'fingers.' We're told it's because this guy is somewhat fond of the hands when it comes to making people suffer. Old fashioned shit like thumbscrews, new-age stuff like razor blades under your finger nails, or even just grabbing a hammer and going to work until your hand looks like a packet of rotten sausages." He tossed a few more black-and-whites showing what Clara believed were hands in various states of destruction, photographs taken from crime scenes. She winced and looked away, trying not to make her disgust too apparent.

"He knows who you are, and if he doesn't, the Bratva has enough cops on their payroll here to lead him right to you. He'll have your name, your address, the names of your friends and family within the hour."

He paused for a moment, and Clara glanced up, catching his eyes. At this point, she didn't even want to know what he was thinking, but figured it wouldn't hurt to see if there was anything she could say or do to improve her situation. This guy looked serious, and while Clara knew there was no amount of flirting or "puppy dog eyes" that would make a difference, anything was worth a shot at this stage. She stared deep into the guy's eyes, holding his gaze for a moment. Her icy-cold expression, her "you can't scare me" bravado, shattered in a split-second, a look of horror replacing her previous look of utter defiance. I know you're reading what I'm thinking, was what she saw, as the man stared calmly back into her eyes.

Trust me Clara, you're only seeing this because I'm letting you.

Then, nothing. Blank. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Clara was trying desperately to read someone, but seeing nothing. She'd learned over the years how to "switch off" certain people, allowing her to focus her mind a little from the external noise of everyday life, but that was different. That was because she chose not to read them, and she was in control. This was the first time she'd ever been unable to read someone despite trying, and the guy appeared to put her in that situation completely effortlessly. Clara gasped, broke away from the impromptu staring competition she'd started, and looked down at the floor beside her, her heart racing, her breathing visibly more labored.

"You want to know how I blocked you out, don't you?" the man asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," replied Clara.

"Sure you do. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You've spent years of your life racing around the city dipping in and out of people's thoughts at random, like your own personal playground. You don't ask for permission, you don't respect people's innermost secrets, desires and wishes. You just break in, take what you need and exploit it. You're the worst kind of criminal. You're a step down from the guys who rob old ladies."

Clara took a breath before tilting her head to look into the man's eyes again. Caught on a good day, that kind of tough talk would have elicited some kind of smart-arse response, but today she was more interested in working out what had just happened, still unable to see anything.

"You quite finished?" she asked, her voice shaken, desperately trying to claw back a shred of arrogance.

"No. You have an ability. And at some point in your pathetic life you chose what to do with that ability. I'm not going to lecture you about all the good you could have done with it–those days are long behind you now. But your days of making everyone around you vulnerable, your days of exploiting people are done."

He paused, waiting to see if Clara would look back at him before flicking back through his paperwork, finally tussling all of the papers into a folder and placing it gently on the table in front of him, interlocking his hands and resting them in his lap.

"You're not walking out of here free. Not this time. You have two options, and I'm not going to bullshit you, these are your choices. Right now, you can choose the one you prefer, but if you mess me about, I'll take the decision out of your hands. Number one, you face the judge for what you did today, along with your previous rap-sheet."

He tapped his right-index finger on the pile of paperwork in front of him. Clara, still unable to read his thoughts, looked at the file and saw her name at the top. She knew there was a chance that he was bluffing, that the file could be full of the proverbial hot air, but she also knew that if the file contained even a tenth of the crimes she'd committed, she was in trouble, and this guy had so far proven himself to be pretty accurate and honest.

"With a lenient judge you're looking at 10 to 15 years inside. I will personally ensure that you don't get a lenient judge. Lebedev is part of a brotherhood with countless thugs and goons in jail, many of whom are never going to see the light of day and live every moment for the chance to destroy whiny little bitches like you."

Clara shuffled in her chair, clearly uncomfortable by what he was saying, but doing her best not to look up.

"Or option two. You come and work for me. We'll offer you protection from the Russians, and your criminal record gets wiped. You start from scratch. Maybe even redeem yourself a little for all the shit you've done."

He stopped talking, leaning casually back for a moment, eyes fixated on her. "You have thirty seconds to decide."

Clara looked at him, her expression a mix of fear and anger, a couple of tears dropping delicately down her face, her voice broken.

"You want me to agree to work for you, and you want a decision in the next thirty seconds?" She waited for the man to respond, but he ignored her question, his eyes still fixated on her. "What's the job?" she asked.

"You'll find out later, after you've said yes," he replied.

Clara let out a halfhearted laugh. "Later? Screw you. This is bullshit."

"As you wish," the man responded, lifting to his feet, turning and walking to the door, banging a couple of times. "Guards, we're done here," he shouted.

"Wait!," Clara yelled, visibly angrier. "I just want to know what the job is going to be. You expect me to sign my life away in thirty seconds with no explanation about what I'm going to do?"

"That's the offer," replied the man.

"Your offer is bullshit!" screeched Clara in response. The door opened, and two police officers walked in, moving straight past the man and toward Clara. One grabbed her shoulder, hoisting her up out of her chair, while the other grabbed her hands and began to march her out of the room. She looked across at the suited man, who was standing by the door she was about to exit through, and took one last glance into his eyes.

You'll die in jail, Clara, and you know it was the thought she read.

"Wait!" yelled Clara, the guards pausing for a second and looking back at the man.

"I'll take her from here. Thank you, gentlemen," he replied.

Chapter 03

The plane journey hadn't taken long, maybe an hour or so, and from her surroundings Clara figured she was still in the USA, although her new colleagues were less than cooperative when the subject of whereabouts was brought up. Certainly, she knew she'd not needed a passport, which was handy as she didn't have a passport, although she'd also noted that the guys she was travelling with knew enough about her not to really need one, and the travel method hadn't exactly been the "Did you pack your bags yourself" type. The last 24 hours had been a blur, so much so that she wasn't even sure which day it was anymore. She'd been taken directly from the police station by undercover armed escort to her home and given a tiny suitcase in which she was told to pack enough clothes to last a couple of days, on a strict three- minute time limit, and told that everything else would be provided for her at a later date. She was told that any sentimental items that could fit in the case could come, but everything else would have to be left behind. It was kind of like the Witness Protection Program, only sped up and with zero compassion on offer. She was then taken to a helipad somewhere in the city, which took her to a private airstrip, and on-board a private jet, landing a couple of hours later.

She stepped off of the plane and was told to get into an unmarked car. She'd noticed throughout the entire process that in real life, these government agencies, as she assumed they were, didn't actually race around in tinted-out, all-black SUVs like they do in the movies, because nothing attracts more attention. Their vehicles of choice are often bland and nondescript, designed specifically to blend in with everyday life, and the car she was being transported in was about as bland as it came, a dull grey Ford, bottom of the luxury pile. She hunched into the middle of the backseat, a plain-clothed agent flanking her on each side, squashing her into the vehicle. She knew she wasn't exactly the President, but she felt as though they could have made a bit of effort.

Clara didn't know either of the burly agents sitting on either side of her, nor did she know the guy who was driving, but she recognized the man in the passenger seat from the police station earlier on.

"Where are we going?," she asked. The man didn't respond, continuing his stare straight ahead out of the windscreen for a good ten seconds or so before tilting his head back and making eye contact with Clara, his thoughts still strictly off-limits to her.

"You and I will talk when we get there," he said. "Don't panic; there's nothing to worry about. Just relax and try to enjoy the journey."

He turned back to his previous pose.

"I'd ask you if you fancied a game of eye-spy, but we both know you'd win," he said. Clara grinned for a moment, then after catching his eye in the rear-view mirror, wiped the smile from her face and remained quiet for the rest of the journey.

It was late by the time they arrived at the huge, sprawling home somewhere up in the hillside. Whoever it was she was about to start working for, they had money, or at the very least they had friends in high places that they could call in favors from. From the outside, it just looked like a nice house with nothing too grand about it. A paved driveway with LED lights all the way along led to a four-car garage that automatically opened as they approached, allowing the car to pull in. Clara and the others exited the car, and she grabbed her bag and looked around at the interior. It was minimalist, grey and almost surgical in its look. It was missing character, missing the kind of objects that give you some clue as to the people who live inside, luxurious but purely functional on the most basic of levels. The place gave the impression that this wasn't a family home. It didn't have the telltale signs of everyday life that come with homes that are really being lived in. This was the kind of place that people moved into for a short period then moved on. An agent held open a door leading into the house itself and beckoned Clara to go through.

The house was made up of multiple levels, cleverly intertwined with walkways and balconies creating clearly sectioned-off areas of the home while being open-plan enough that you could stand in the middle and see almost all of the building from one spot. Wooden floors covered every area of ground, and the main living area boasted high arching ceilings, an enormous fireplace and views out on to a quiet valley. The kitchen was modern, with stainless steel and granite all over and various kitchen appliances in mint condition. The house boasted a small library, a home-theatre on the bottom floor, and even a gym. It was pretty spectacular, especially if you came from the kind of world that Clara came from. She glanced out of the double-doors and noted that as far as she could see, this was the only house around for miles. Wherever they were, they were pretty much on their own. She dropped her bag on one of the large leather couches and began to examine some of the various artifacts and ornaments, mainly Far East and Asian, that were positioned around the house. The agent she'd been speaking with at the police station approached her, tapping her on the shoulder and gesturing up the large wooden stairs to the next floor up, Clara squinting slightly to try to better understand his thick Scottish accent.

"Up there, third door on the right. That's you. You've got an en-suite and a balcony if you want some air. We'll eat in one hour, so go get yourself cleaned up."

Clara paused. "When do I find out what this is all about?" she quizzed.

"I'll tell you everything you need to know over dinner," he replied, picking her bag up off of the couch and handing it to her. Clara snatched the satchel out of his hand and headed up off the stairs before turning back to face him.

"So I'm like a prisoner here, then?" she asked.

"Nope, not in the slightest. Free to go whenever you like."

Clara gestured at the front door of the house.

"What's to stop me walking out of that door right now?"

'The next house is about 45km due South. No roads, no people until that point. The only other civilization around here is the people you're sharing this house with. There are no phones in the building, other than the ones that my guys and I have, and you'll have to kill us before we let you make a phone call that we don't have absolute control over."

He stared at Clara, allowing her unrestricted access to his current thought.

"Does that answer your question?"

Clara, unimpressed, sighed before turning and heading to her room.

Dinner was served promptly at 8 p.m., something Clara was informed would be standard throughout her stay. She'd arrived deliberately late in an effort to prove a point and was thoroughly unimpressed when her act of teenage-like rebellion had gone unnoticed, a plate of cold food staring up at her from her place. She sat at a large dining table with the man who had brought her here in the first place, along with the other three agents who had escorted her in the car. There were a couple of faces she didn't recognize, but she assumed from their dress sense and demeanor that they were also agents, and one guy she couldn't put her finger on. He was young, maybe mid twenties, with dark hair and a chiseled, handsome face. From where he sat opposite her, she could see he was wearing a loose-fitting, casual shirt, making him instantly stand out from the stuffy clothing of the agents, but appeared apprehensive and cautious, occasionally glancing over in her direction, almost deliberately avoiding eye contact.

"It's pasta tonight," stated the agent who had brought her here. "I hope that's all right with you?"

He looked at Clara, who shrugged, uninterested.

"We've got two cooks here," he continued. "This isn't exactly the Ritz, and we certainly don't do room service, but your meals will be covered, and if you ever want anything outside of meal times, just go in the kitchen and ask nicely. They're generally pretty good about it."

"I don't care about meal times," responded Clara. "You said you'd tell me what this was all about."

Before responding, he paused as one of the cooks began bringing out plates of food and serving them up.

"What would you like to know?"

"Let's start with who you are."

"My name is Joseph Boal," he replied. "I work for a part of the government that you really don't need to know about, other than the fact that we work with people like you. The men and women who work here are all paid to help keep you safe and to teach you what you need to know."

"What exactly do I need to know?" Clara asked?

Boal, who had just taken a mouth full of his meal, stopped eating, placing his knife and fork down on his plate and wiping his mouth, clearly aware that the question wasn't going to wait until after dinner.

"We've been following you for a while now—."

"Following me?" Clara interrupted.

"Yes, following you. We operate a computer program, an algorithm that tracks various different official reporting media from all over the world, looking for patterns. We aggregate data from every source you could possibly imagine. School reports, medical reports, even social media. Your police report was what gave you away. A con-artist with seemingly exceptional skills, rarely arrested, but even when you were, you were able to talk your way straight out of trouble. It was clear when we interrogated your file a bit further that you possessed an ability to influence people with almost impossible ease. That in itself is a skill we're interested in, but we knew there was more to you than that."

Clara stared back at Joseph, transfixed on the conversation.

"None of which explains how you could be so sure about my abilities. How do you know I'm not just taking you all for a ride now?" she asked.

"We were always pretty certain, but I knew I needed to meet you. I knew from the second you realized that you couldn't read me. The look on your face back at the police station told me everything I needed to know. You don't work for an organization like this, work with people like you, without learning how to close your mind off."

Joseph calmly picked his fork back up and began to eat, glancing occasionally over at Clara, who looked puzzled, the weight of the world on her shoulders as she struggled to take in everything she was being told.

"Why me?" she asked. "Why not just throw me in jail?"

"The same reason why governments throw only the worst hackers in jail. The good ones, the really good ones, are given jobs, a chance to avoid a life of crime and turn things around."

He paused for a moment before once again putting down his knife and fork.

"Look, it's not like you have much in the way of options, but this is what we're offering you. You have a very specific skill-set that we can make use of. Interrogation has always been an imperfect way to get information out of people, and too often you're interrogating someone too late in the day anyway, unable to prevent a crime from taking place. Undercover operatives are great at extracting vital information, but we never really know whether someone's being honest or whether they're setting us up. We employ the best people in the world when it comes to detecting lies, people who can read subtle body movements or the tiniest giveaway facial tick or speech slur. But we still can never know for certain what that person is thinking."

"Riiight."

Clara nodded, unimpressed, a dry smile suggesting that while she understood what Boal was feeding her, she wasn't about to eat it.

"Let me ask you something," she said. "Why should I? I mean, putting myself in harm's way. Risking my life. Why? What's in it for me? You gonna pay me millions?"

"You'll be paid the going rate for an undercover operative," replied Boal. "Which is generous, by the way, but certainly not millions. Consider it danger money."

"So, you're not going to make me rich, but you expect me to give up my life for you people? Just like that?"

"Yes, basically," replied Boal. "It's not like you had much going on for you beforehand."

"Like you'd know what I had going on beforehand," snapped Clara.

Boal leant back in his chair, reaching behind him to a sideboard covered in files, taking one out and opening it up on the table. He gestured to the other people sat around the table, the agents and the guy she still hadn't met, who were eating their meals as if the conversation unfolding in front of them was the most normal thing in the world.

"You sure you want to discuss this in front of. . . ?"

Boal paused, waiting for an objection from Clara, who held his gaze. He continued.

"You've no family. Or at least, no family that you still have a relationship with. Your brother, the only family member you ever considered yourself truly close to, passed away when you were young. You don't have a life on the streets, you have an existence on the streets. You scam anyone you think you can make a quick buck off, young or old, rich or poor, but usually vulnerable. You run around with the one 'friend' you have, who by the way is currently a wanted fugitive, and you'd better hope the cops get to him before Lebedev does. You're not big time enough to make a decent living from all this, and it's not like you can just run around town like you own the place. We know you pay at least two of the local goons some protection money, which I'm guessing gets more expensive rather than less."

Boal waited for a moment, as Clara continued to stare back, her expression now one of defiant acceptance while she tried to keep from showing that Boal had finally touched a nerve. "Can you help Mckenzie too?" she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

"What we offer you is a chance to make something of yourself, a chance to do work that has purpose and meaning, to actually help people rather than rip them off. We'll pay you, we'll keep you safe. If it matters to you, we can even put Mckenzie in Witness Protection."

Boal leant forward, tussling the papers from his file together and putting them back on the sideboard from where he'd got them, before turning back to face her.

"I guess at this point, Clara, if I'm honest, I'm waiting for you to remind me why I should give you this opportunity at all, and not just throw you to the dogs."

Boal casually picked up his knife and fork and continued to eat, glancing up at Clara, who was trying her best to remain emotionless, staring down at the table in front of her. "Why don't you take the night to think about the offer?" he asked.

Clara didn't sleep well at the best of times, but had struggled more than usual in her new and unfamiliar surroundings. She was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by a female agent who came into her room, pushing and prodding her until she finally gave in and got up. She hobbled into her en-suite shower, threw some clothes on and headed downstairs to be met by Agent Boal, who was pouring himself a coffee in the kitchen.

"Good morning. Coffee?" he asked, gesturing toward her as though she wasn't sure what he was offering.

Clara winced, shaking her head at him. "Too early"

"Maybe," responded Boal. "But you're not going to get a chance to eat again until lunch. I'd suggest you line your stomach with something. There's fruit, cereal and bread, so take what you want."

Clara grudgingly picked up an empty cup and poured herself a coffee. She pulled out a stool from below the large breakfast bar and sat down, the flatscreen TV in the corner of the kitchen playing the morning news. The anniversary of the Helen Berghaus murder was the main talking point for the day, as various news anchors recounted the events of one year ago, the bungled robbery in a busy parking lot that had led to one of the city's most promising mayoral candidates losing her life. Clara watched for a moment before turning her attention back to Boal.

"What are we doing today?" she asked.

"We are doing nothing. You are in training."

"What training?"

Boal walked around from the large, modern kitchen units and pulled out a stool, black leather with a metal base, the kind you'd find in any trendy coffee shop or bar the world over. He took a seat at the breakfast bar.

"You have a skill set, but you don't know how to use it, despite what you might think. We can help you learn how to use your abilities properly." He took another sip from his coffee. "Plus you need to learn how to fire a gun."

Chapter 04

The next week or so was more or less the same routine. Clara would wake or be awakened at about 5:30 each morning, instructed to get ready and breakfast before spending a day out with one or two agents as she was taught various different skills, both physical and psychological. Clara was being well treated; she received three meals a day, her surroundings were surprisingly plush, and she was even allowed access to the house's sprawling library of books and DVDs in the evening. She'd planned to read one of the handful of literary classics she'd spotted in the bookshelves, but ended up falling asleep most nights watching Dirty Dancing or Notting Hill, a telling display of her softer side, had she allowed anyone to witness it. She didn't mind the agents; they were nice enough to her, weren't condescending in their training, and approached the whole thing with a "just doing my job" kind of attitude that Clara could actually get on board with. They were all empty books too. Clara had tried on countless occasions throughout the week to read them, at first deliberately catching people's eyes to see what she could see, each time seeing nothing, their minds blocked off, no trespassing allowed. What began as an enormous feeling of frustration to her gradually become a blessing; she was no longer worried about people having unspoken thoughts about her. For the first time in her life, she was ignorant of what those around her were thinking, and she found the ignorance to be bliss. Each evening, as the desert sun set and the cooler nights drew in, the team would meet for dinner, and while Clara didn't feel the need to engage any of them in conversation, the frosty atmosphere of the first night's meal had at least subsided. Plus every evening, the same young guy, the one person she'd not been able to say two words to or even make eye contact with would sit on the opposite side of the table, too far away to spark up any kind of introductory small talk with. She never saw him during the day, and each evening after dinner he would finish before everyone else and disappear quietly to his room.

The training was tough. On one occasion she'd been driven out to a deserted shooting range and spent a day being shown how to handle weapons, mainly small pistols and a couple of high-caliber handguns. Boal had promised Clara that she wouldn't have to carry anything like this in the work that he was expecting her to do, but that he couldn't guarantee where she might get sent or who she might come up against, so skills at taking out a threat were vital. She was shown how to apply handcuffs and how to use pepper spray without getting a face-full of it herself. She was assigned a personal trainer, who had her eating healthy food and running every day, finding a level of fitness she never knew she possessed. She was taught some basic martial arts, jujitsu throws that she could keep up her sleeve, ready to use in a last-case scenario. Clara had never felt further away from her past life, but at the same time never closer to home.

However tough the physical training was, the psychological training was even tougher. About nine or ten days in, Boal had told Clara over a morning coffee that she wouldn't be leaving the house that day, but instead was to head downstairs and meet him in one of the meeting rooms. Clara had followed his instructions, choosing not to mention that she hadn't even realized there was a downstairs, and making her way into the enormous basement of the house. It was fully furnished, nothing like the basements she'd seen in houses growing up, and like the rest of the house was kitted out with functionality and luxury as the main design factors. She wandered down the main corridor, trying two locked doors before eventually spotting an open door leading into a large room filled with tables and chairs, a projector and screen at the front. Boal was inside, perched against a desk at the front, scanning the screen of a tablet computer in his hand, the image being beamed onto the wall behind him via the projector. Sitting in the front row, the only other person in the room, was the young guy from dinner, who glanced her way, double-taking when he realized it was Clara and not one of the agents, making eye contact for just the briefest of moments.

I finally get a chance to speak with her, he thought, a thought which Clara picked up loud and clear. He hurriedly turned to look down at the desk he was sat at, his demeanor changing to embarrassment, his face becoming flushed. He picked a pen up and began playing with it, twirling it around his fingers as he plucked up the courage to speak.

"I know you saw what I was just thinking," he said.

"Yeah," replied Clara. "It's ok, I'm glad I get a chance to speak with you too."

Awkward silence, not exactly the response Clara had hoped for, but he didn't seem unimpressed at her honesty.

"Please don't be offended, but I don't want to look at you. I've never met anyone who can read me before–I'm used to being the one who can read," he said. "I'm still trying to learn how to deal with it. Can we just talk, no eye contact?"

"Sure," replied Clara. The pair waited quietly while Boal, seemingly unaware that Clara had even entered the room, continued flicking through the pages of his tablet computer.

"I'm Clara Phelps"

"Nice to meet you, Clara Phelps. I'm Robin Burr."

Robin reached his right arm through his left and in front of Clara, who looked down, realized what he was doing, and used her right arm to shake his hand, the pair both still avoiding eye contact. They chuckled before going back to their original pose.

"How long have you been here?" asked Clara.

"I got here two days before you."

"How'd they, ya know, persuade you to join?"

Robin shifted uncomfortably in his chair, toying with telling Clara the truth or making up a less shameful story.

"It"s cool," interjected Clara. "They caught me robbing a Russian gangster's daughter."

"Holy shit, that's impressive!" laughed Robin, still holding his gaze away from Clara.

"They caught me running an insurance fraud," he eventually said. "Nothing quite as glamorous. The money was good, but it was gonna catch up with me eventually. Pretty much had me over a barrel, it was this or a super-max jail for the rest of my life when they worked out what I could do."

"Yup, that's my experience; they like the ones with no alternatives."

Clara looked up at Boal to see whether her wise-ass comment had garnered a reaction, and in perfect timing he stopped what he was doing and looked at her.

"Well, nice to see you two getting on well," he said. "And yes, to respond to your comment, the more hopeless and pathetic they are, the better for us."

Boal looked across at Clara, who flipped him the middle finger without even looking in his direction, before he continued.

"So, you guys have probably worked out by now that you're not as unique as you thought you were, certainly not in this place."

Boal picked up a small USB presentation pointer, clicking a button as the lights in the room dimmed and the projector screen changed to an image of a black and white photo of someone in a chair, tied up and clearly distressed.

"It's about time you both learned a little more about why you're here."

He clicked the button again, and the projector moved on through the PowerPoint presentation. The subject matter was more of the same, various slides talking about interrogation techniques through the ages and why they were often not as reliable as intelligence agencies would like, the idea that the US government was investing heavily in underground methods of "information extraction." After a few minutes of introducing the subject to them, he sat down in one of the chairs, placing the presenter down on the table.

"You both have a very unusual skill, but you also both need to learn how to manage it effectively. I know for a fact you've both tried to read me while you've been here; you're probably both trying to read me now, and I don't need to be psychic to tell you that. I can also tell you that you get to see only what I allow you to see. I wasn't born with that skill–I learned that, and you're both going to learn how to do it too."

He stood up and walked to the back of the room, picking up a can of soda before walking back toward his seat.

"Clara, what am I thinking right now?" he asked. Clara looked into his eyes, then screwed her face up in disgust.

"Oh, you're disgusting," she fumed, "how old are you?"

Boal laughed.

"Yeah, immature perhaps," he said, "but it proves my point. You've not learned how to deal with what you see quickly enough to manage your reaction. You think I'm an open book, but you give away your own thoughts and feelings on your face, and you think other people can't see them. It's one thing reading someone to see if they're an easy target, but what if you're talking to a murderer or a rapist? What if you're trying to read someone, and you realize they're a pedophile?"

"How are you able to choose when we can and can't read you?" asked Robin.

"I can't–I can just make it incredibly difficult for you," he replied. "You two are both used to reading people who don't realize they're being read. It's like stealing money from someone's wallet: when they don't even realize the wallet is missing, there's no challenge. It's like hacking into an old person's computer who doesn't even know what a hacker is. The difference is that I know what you're trying to do, so I can prepare myself for it."

"So what, you're gonna show us how to bluff? Easy!" said Clara with confidence. "I mean, Robin's the only other guy in the world who can read, right, and he's on my side."

Boal grinned and shook his head, slowly making his way to the door.

"The only other reader in the world?" he said. "Jesus, Clara, this training's going to take longer than I thought."

Chapter 05

Clara woke earlier than usual, around 4 a.m. The magnitude of her situation was clearly catching up with her, meaning her slumber was now being regularly interrupted with thoughts of what was coming next. Clara had been at the house for almost a month now, and the training had been intense every day. Weekends offered minor respite in the form of a slightly earlier finish on a Sunday, but this was more to allow the agents time to recuperate than it was to allow Clara or Robin time to gather their thoughts. Boal was a taskmaster, and while he wasn't hands-on in all of their training, he would often "pop in" unannounced, rapidly assessing the training that was being delivered before almost always insisting that they weren't being pushed hard enough. Clara and Robin had both discussed Boal at length, trying to figure out who he was and what made him tick. Despite the cloak and dagger of their setup, most of the agents they spent time with were willing to open up at least a little bit. One was married with two young children and had taken the job because of the money; it was his way of fast-tracking a military career, creating a nest-egg and then retiring young and living out the rest of his life in Florida. Another, their least favorite of all the instructors, would bore them rigid with his bigoted opinions and tales of how the country was going "down the shitter," before admitting that he had been single for the past six years and didn't really have any friends. It wasn't much, but for a team of people who were professionally "closed off," it was a rare glimpse at their human side.

Boal was better at hiding his human side than anyone else at the agency. Most of the instructors chose not to enter into conversation about him, never bringing his name up and steering conversation away from him when they needed to. Despite his relatively mediocre size and stature, he'd built up a reputation for being fierce with a fiery temper. He was ex-military back in the UK, Clara knew that much, but beyond that he was as much of a closed book as was possible in Clara's life, keeping his thoughts shielded almost effortlessly from her and Robin around the clock. There was no "catching him off guard." His role in the agency wasn't clear, but then you don't exactly contact Human Resources for a copy of your job specification when you work for a highly secret government agency. From what they understood, he was the recruiter and "talent scout," as he referred to it. He would get tips about people with certain skill sets and then put himself in a position where he could meet and test these people. He'd mentioned in a conversation over dinner one evening that more than 99% of the people he met and tested didn't have the skills that Clara and Robin had, or even close, and that despite the advantages of using computer algorithms to pull these people out of the woodwork, more often than not he wasted his time. This had made Clara even more dubious of his intentions, and she'd often ponder why a man with his level of intelligence and employability would devote his life to the pursuit of literally less than a handful of people, meeting potentially thousands of "fakes" along the way. She figured that whatever she was going to be doing for him long-term, it was more than just the odd bit of interrogation, and found herself getting panicky and anxious when she considered what might happen if she ever decided she wanted to leave.

Sleepless nights were unfortunately compounded by this thought, in more ways than one. Not only could she not leave the agency, she couldn't physically leave the premises, and save for the odd trip to a makeshift shooting range or assault course somewhere out in the desert, she'd spent the last 4 weeks in the same house. The garden of the building was stunning, full of lush tropical plants, paths that would lead off through trees and around small water features; there was even a heated outdoor pool. Still, the entire place was sealed off with enormous walls, the kind you usually saw on the news belonging to drug lords, with tanks and armored personnel carriers smashing through the front door for the television cameras. Surveillance equipment tracked every square inch of the grounds, and the agents would take it in turns to man the exits. Clara knew that Boal had made it clear that if she ever wanted to leave, all she had to do was go, but she was pretty confident that wasn't the case at all. As she sat outside on this particular early morning, staring at the gate that led out of the grounds, her mind racing back to the days she'd spent on the pier in Brighton Beach, she wondered if she should put her theory to the test. She missed the hustle and bustle of New York, and not knowing when she was going to get out, was starting to get antsy.

At about 5:40, Clara headed inside, glancing at her watch and realizing that were it not for the surveillance cameras tracking her every movement, the fact that she wasn't in bed for her 5:30 wake up call might have ruffled a few feathers, or at the very least raised a few eyebrows. She was almost disappointed as she strolled nonchalantly into the kitchen to find everyone getting about their day as normal, not at all worried about her whereabouts. She walked over to the coffee machine, pulled out the carafe and poured herself a cup before perching on a stool at the breakfast bar. Robin arrived a few moments later, just out of the shower, his eyes puffy and half-closed, his body still not used to the early morning starts.

"Good morning," she chirped, her uncharacteristically dapper outburst causing one of the agents in the room to glance at her, unconvinced.

"Sure," mumbled Robin, "yeah, good morning."

He poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat opposite Clara, his lack of eye contact for once due to his tiredness as opposed to his shyness, something that with Clara at least, was wearing off. The pair ate breakfast, and as Robin began to feel more awake, they talked about the events of the last few days. They were desperate to talk about what their next piece of training was, but this was never announced until they were actually doing it. There was no itinerary to follow, no plan, or at least not one that they were privy to, and so conversation over breakfast would often start out well but ultimately fizzle out, just as it had this morning. The silence was broken by an agent walking into the room.

"Briefing room in 10 minutes. Boal wants to speak with you both."

The pair glanced at each other; it wasn't unheard of for them both to be required for some form of training together, but a meeting with Boal, especially this early in the morning, was rare. They finished their meal and headed downstairs.

The pair walked into the briefing room to find Boal in what Clara had referred to as his "trademark pose," which meant he was leaning against whatever piece of furniture he could find, his head facing down to his hand, totally engrossed in the Blackberry Smartphone he was holding. The thing was never away from his side, but Clara had spotted enough of it to see that this was more than the average government smartphone, security specced to the max. The thing required a pin each time Boal picked it up, but Clara was convinced that this was all for show. She could see from the various sensors, the way he looked at it and spoke to it, that voice recognition, face recognition and fingerprint recognition were all in constant operation on the device, and the device would be as good as useless in the wrong hands. Whatever was on there was for his eyes only. Boal glanced up, clicked a button to switch off his smartphone screen, and placed it by his side before addressing the pair.

"I'll keep this short and to the point," he said. "You've both been here for what, a month or so now. You've both made good progress, but we still don't know if you've actually learned anything."

"Charming," sneered Clara under her breath, rolling her eyes for added effect.

"I want to see how well you can both perform in the field. Now I want to stress that at no point will I be putting you in harm's way throughout this exercise, but up until now you've only been practicing on people who already know your backstory and with no consequences. I want to see how you guys can handle a real life situation."

He paused for a moment, as if waiting for some kind of acknowledgement or objection. Receiving none, he continued, picking up his phone and pushing a button. The plasma screen behind him suddenly showed a photograph of a casino.

"This is Hocus Pocus, a trendy nightclub and Hotel just off the strip in Vegas."

"Team road-trip!" cheered Clara, her joke making Robin chuckle, but not even registering on Boal's radar.

"They're also one of the fastest growing casinos in all of Las Vegas. Their casino has doubled in size in the last two years, and they're taking away some serious business from some of the big names. It's trendy enough that the celebrities and super-rich like to be seen pissing away their money there, and as we speak Hocus Pocus is pushing for the contract to host the World Poker Tournament there this year. As part of that bid, they're hosting a pay-to-play tournament with Tony Jepsom."

Boal paused, glancing away from the projector screen to look at the two.

"Yeah, I'd never heard of him either, but apparently he's the number-two ranked player in the world."

"Let me guess," muttered Clara, "you've bought us a seat?"

"Wrong," replied Boal. "I've bought YOU a seat."

He pulled out a chair and sat down, clicking a button on his phone as the plasma screen projected an image of a white guy in his mid-twenties, unshaven and scruffy and sporting a designer baseball cap. "You're going to get into the casino, join the game, convince people that you're an amateur player, and then beat the second best player in the world."

"That's a pretty severe case of "beginners luck" wouldn't you say?" asked Clara, the sarcasm in her tone clear.

"It's up to you to manage that," replied Boal. "This isn't just about beating some guy at poker–this is about reading a room. Your objective is to walk out of that casino the winner, but without anyone smelling a rat. You're often going to have to convince people that what you know, what you're able to do, is nothing more than coincidence. And beating the number-two ranked poker player in the world at his own game is a pretty good test of that. I'm serious; we don't want anyone thinking something's up."

"And by anyone, I assume you mean security?" asked Clara.

"Sure, security are going to be looking at you to see if they spot any cheating. But they don't know how to look for the kind of cheating that you're going to do. They're trained to look for wires, electronic devices, hand signals and facial ticks. You don't need any of that, so I'm sure you'll be fine."

"And if we're not?" quizzed Robin, his first words since breakfast.

"Like I said, we're not going to let you get into trouble," replied Boal. "We obviously can't give Clara a wire, but we can give you one," said Boal, his eyes focused on Robin. "You're not going to play this particular mission. Your job is to make sure Clara does what she needs to do without any interference. Robin," Boal went on to explain, "you're carrying a special phone, not a wire. We'll hear anything you say within several feet of your phone. If you think things are going wrong, you've got a direct line to us. We storm in, wave our badges and pull her out. Seriously, you've nothing to worry about." He paused for a moment, letting the pair digest the last few sentences, before looking back at Clara.

"Unless you think this is too much, in which case we can swap the roles?"

"Screw you," snapped Clara.

"Excellent. You know how to play poker?" Boal asked.

Clara chose not to answer, staring directly into Boal's eyes, fully aware that she wasn't going to see anything, but focusing her energy on willing him to drop dead.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Boal. Your car leaves in 2 hours."

Chapter 06

Hocus Pocus was located off the main strip in Las Vegas, its relatively young age and comparative lack of funding meaning it had to settle for being an "up and coming" as opposed to being one of the Vegas mainstays. Compared with the Bellagio or the Mandalay Bay it was small-fry, but by real-world standards it was a sight to behold. A modern building, the premises began life as a high-class nightclub for the rich and famous, the kind of place that the latest Atlanta rapper or British movie star could be photographed hobbling into a taxi at 3 in the morning. The proprietors later realized that most rich and famous people don't want to go home after a big night out, and so they added a hotel, which was then followed by a restaurant. The casino was the newest addition to the business venture, having just celebrated its third year in business, but the gothic styling and ultramodern vibe meant that it was so far proving as successful as the rest of the place.

Clara and Robin arrived at the front door with their cover story in place. They were a young couple, married last year, and this was the vacation they'd been promising each other since the honeymoon, but never got around to doing it. He was a big shot in New York; she was a stay-at-home socialite who rarely stayed at home, and the Agency ensured that their clothes and car both looked the part, albeit completely fictitiously. The top-spec Aston Martin that Robin had been tasked with driving to the door was on a short-term lease from a local company whose clientele usually consisted of middle-league sports stars and celebrities, the type that couldn't quite afford to buy the $400,000 car but wanted to show up to an after-party in one anyway. It was without a doubt the most expensive vehicle that either of them had ever spent any time in, and acting as though this was "the norm' proved difficult, Robin especially having to try extra hard to keep the grin off of his face when they pulled up to the front. The pair stepped out of the car, Robin in an Armani Navy suit, Clara in the kind of evening dress that wouldn't look out of place on a Paris catwalk. The pair felt and looked awkward, something that wasn't helped by Robin's failure to leave his keys for the valet and having to be prompted by one of the Casino's doormen, rushing back outside when he realized his error, a queue of cars building behind his luxury vehicle. Still, new money or old money, in Vegas it really didn't matter, and with Robin using the wad of notes the agency had given him to tip everyone from the valet to the cloakroom attendant, they were soon getting the VIP treatment, drinks in hand as they entered the main casino room.

"Boal said he wanted us to spend a few minutes taking a walk around, familiarize ourselves with the exits," said Robin.

"I know," replied Clara under her breath, focusing her attention on looking the part. "We were in the same briefing."

"Sorry. I talk too much when I get nervous." Robin gripped the bow tie that was around his neck, twisting and loosening it a little before taking a sip of his drink.

"Easy, tiger," said Clara, "it would suck to draw too much attention before I've even played a hand."

The interior of the Hocus Pocus casino was much like they'd expected any casino to be, although a little bit less gaudy than some of the places Vegas was known for. In the bar and restaurant, the voodoo, witchcraft and vampire themes that the place was clearly based on were allowed to run wild, with a section of the bar known as the "Blood Bank' where luminous cocktails would be served, and a VIP area called the "Twilight Lounge." But in the casino, the designers had kept things much more in-keeping with the standard, unwritten Vegas casino rules. The fact is, you can theme things up as much as you like, but when people go to a casino it's because they want to gamble their money, even in Vegas. And when people want to gamble, they like to be able to see what they're doing, so the atmospheric moody lighting was out, the enormous chandeliers and spotlights were in. The floor was carpeted with huge, industrial-style patterned carpet, hardly in keeping with the rest of the decor and almost seeming an afterthought, as though the project manager had left it off of the list and had to plump for the cheap option at the last minute. The owners clearly took security very seriously; everywhere along the ceiling were the ominous round black orbs representing 360-degree surveillance cameras, all linking back to a main control room known as the "eye in the sky," a room situated toward the back of the casino. Most gamblers couldn't even tell it was there, but as Robin paced the floor he noticed a spot around from the slot machines and near the restrooms where he could still look reasonably inconspicuous, but also get a look at the room. He couldn't see anything of what was going on in there, but he could at least make out how many people were in there; he figured that if he spotted a sudden burst in activity, they ight be in for trouble. The casino had even opted for lower tables and chairs, large comfy ones that wouldn't look out of place in an up-scale hotel lobby. The theory was that by removing the stools, where people could quite naturally drop their arms down behind their backs and signal to one another, you removed an entire method for people to cheat. After all, you'd have to work really hard to be able to reach your arms behind the back of an armchair.

The pair took a walk around, stopping occasionally to watch someone else's game, the odd trip to the lounge to refresh their drinks. They had both received clear instructions that they were to act the part, to behave like the young and in-love couple that they were, which they both felt totally awkward with. Robin decided to make the first move, opening the door for her whenever he had the chance, pulling her seat out before she would sit down at any of the tables, and occasionally stroking her back as they walked along. With thirty minutes to kill before her poker game, the pair decided to take a seat in the lounge, a slightly raised area on one side, Robin deliberately choosing them a table with a great panoramic view of the entire casino.

"You're not bad at this," said Clara.

"Bad at what?"

"The whole 'being a gentleman' thing. You bring a lot of skill to our bullshit relationship," joked Clara, raising her glass to him and flashing a wry smile.

"You too, Miss Phelps," said Robin, clinking his glass against Clara's.

"It's 'Mrs. Burr,' in case you'd forgotten, and no, I'm not good at this at all."

"What makes you say that?" quizzed Robin.

"I dunno. Lack of practice, I guess." Clara paused, waiting to see if Robin had flinched at what she just said. An advantage to their weeks spent with the agency was that the pair were now both better than ever at hiding their thoughts from hypothetical "other" readers, although neither of them was perfect. They'd spent time confiding in one another to a certain degree, but both had agreed to make a concerted effort not to read the other unless they absolutely had to. Privacy of thoughts had never been top of their agenda until they each realized they weren't the only ones who could read minds. Clara stared at Robin for a moment, wrestling with a thought.

"You ever had a girlfriend?" asked Clara. The question was as uncomfortable for her to ask as it was for him to answer, Clara's face wincing immediately after she asked it, as though the words had come spilling out of her mouth by accident. Regardless, she held off from apologizing, just to see what Robin would say in return.

For a few moments, Robin was perfectly still, his eyes fixed in the mid distance across the busy room they overlooked. Then, still not returning her gaze, he held up one finger in a "wait for it" signal and carefully, using two fingers only, reached inside his coat to bring out the phone Boal had given them and set it quietly on the table by their drinks.

Her mouth made a perfect small "o" as Clara remembered Boal's exact words to them: "We'll hear anything you say within several feet of your phone."

She looked back at Robin, finding his gaze still fixed at nothing in particular across the room, and realized, even without "reading" him, the thought in Robin's mind: _What we say to each other now is for each other only._

For a moment, all of Clara's years hiding her secret, shutting others out, held her as still as Robin.

Then she reached out and with the lightest of touches, a finger only drawing a small circle on his wrist, drew Robin's eyes to meet hers as she raised a single silent question at the front of her mind: _Are you ready for this?_ _Are WE ready for this?_

For the first time in the weeks they'd known each other, known each other's ability, Robin held her gaze. _I think we have to be_ , she read in his mind. _Are you?_

_We'll give it a try, "Mr. Burr,"_ she smiled, trying to lighten the stressful moment. _Now, I think I asked if you'd ever had a girlfriend!_

Ever? What if I have one now?

Robin held his eyes on Clara, waiting to see her reaction. She scoffed, seemingly unimpressed with his show of bravado.

_OK, Johnny Depp, tell me about her,_ she quipped.

I said "What if." I didn't say I had one.

And just like that the conversation stopped, almost turning sour, the game of emotional poker unfolding in front of them before any cards had been dealt, neither one of them wanting to overstep the new relationship that was building before their eyes in their silent exchanges.

_It's not easy,_ said Robin. _I'm telling you this like you don't already know. I dunno, I guess there have been girls._

Robin waited, staring into his almost empty glass, as if he were hoping that the script, a prompt for what to say next, might be engraved onto the bottom of the glass. He thought for a moment longer.

The problem with relationships is that people tell you they're built on honesty, when you and I know that's bullshit.

He looked across at Clara, not needing to read her thoughts to know that she understood what he was saying. He fidgeted awkwardly in his seat.

I used to try to convince myself that I could live with someone even though I knew her every thought, like that wasn't an issue. I used to tell myself that it wasn't ok to read them, that it was an invasion of their privacy.

He looked at Clara with a firm stare. _I don't know about you, but I've never been able to just switch this off_ , he thought.

Clara nodded. _It's like your boyfriend asking you to look after his secret diary for him without taking a peek at what he's written._

_Exactly!_ replied Robin. _So yes, there have been girls, but no, there isn't one now. Relationships might be built on honesty, but it's the lies that keep them afloat every day. You take away the lies, you give everyone in the world the ability to see nothing but absolute honesty. Then what?_

_You're assuming that everyone has a hidden agenda,_ sniped Clara, her mental tone clearly referencing a crime that Robin hadn't committed yet, but in Clara's mind was only a matter of time from doing so.

Robin's response, as they grew more accustomed to each other's inner voice, was quieter, almost introspective: _I'm assuming that the little white lies have the power to cripple a relationship when you can't use them anymore._

Robin sat upright, took a sip of his drink before swirling the glass in his hands. _My Mom used to worry about money when we were growing up. We weren't poor–my Dad worked for a construction company, and he had a pretty good job, but Mom liked to play catchup with the neighborhood. We had to drive the best car, and we had to have the newest kitchen appliances when her friends came to visit, stupid shit really. My uncles used to joke with my Dad, tell him she was taking advantage of him. Of course, they used to think she was a gold-digger, but my Dad was a big guy and they knew better than to say that to his face. And my Mom was everything to my Dad, his sweetheart, ya know?_

For a moment, Robin paused in the flow of his thought, and Clara realized the point of the story he was telling: _He knows how to be loyal,_ she thought to herself. _He watched his father live it._

_So when I was like 11 years old,_ Robin's internal story-telling continued, _my Dad gets laid off. And he's faced with two options. He can tell my Mom that he's been laid off, that there's no more money, which would upset her and make her worry and make them argue. Or he can fix it. My Dad spent two years working two part-time jobs while he was looking for another job, and he did it all without my Mom ever knowing. He used to get up early and get into his suit, tell my Mom that he had to do unpaid overtime, and then he used to go work a shift changing tires. He'd get cleaned up in the bathroom at lunchtime, wash all the oil out of his fingernails, the grease off his face, miss lunch and then go work an afternoon shift as a cab driver. He used to avoid any calls for our neighborhood in case someone he knew spotted him and told my Mom._

Robin took another sip from his drink and repositioned himself in his chair.

And somehow in among all that, he'd still find time to get to the job center and spend an hour applying for jobs that paid well like his old job. He'd get home at like 8 or 9pm, changed back into his suit, kiss my Mom on the forehead and apologize to her for coming home late. Can you believe that? He used to apologize. I, of course, knew everything. And I used to sit there and look into his eyes sometimes, and I'd know he was worrying about whether he'd get another job. He was worried about what happened if I or my sister got sick. He was worried about what might happen if the washer stopped working, or the car broke. He was worried about all of the credit card debt he'd accumulated because of it. He called the phone company and stopped them from allowing incoming calls because he didn't want the credit card companies calling and speaking to my Mom; my Mom just thought none of our family gave a shit about us enough to call.

Robin put his glass down on the table, clasped his hands together and sighed.

You know why he did all that? Why he lied to her every day for two years? Because he adored my Mom and he couldn't bear to upset her. He didn't do it because he was too proud and he didn't do it because he liked lying to her. He did it because he had to.

Robin ran his hands through his hair awkwardly, as if just recounting the old story was bringing back memories he'd tried his best to keep tucked away. _That's why people need to be able to lie. That's why I hate knowing what everyone is thinking._

Clara stared back at him intently, absorbed by his story, the sudden pause appearing to snap her out of it. She leant forward and grabbed her glass, taking a gulp of the vodka lime and soda she was drinking, and then returning her gaze to Robin.

_All I know_ , she responded, _is that I've put my trust in too many assholes who say all the right things, but don't mean any of them. Call me stupid, but if I get given the option of finding out if someone is an asshole early on or having to wait a few years to find out, I'd rather not be wasting my time._

_So what about you?_ Robin smiled, turning the question around and gesturing toward Clara.

What about me?

_I told you mine,_ Robin responded, letting just a small air of impatience tinge his thoughts at Clara's hesitation to share her life story with him.

_Yeah, you did,_ Clara sighed, putting her drink down on the table and folding her arms.

OK, what part of my train-wreck life would you like to know about?

_I dunno,_ thought Robin in response. _I feel as though I know nothing about you. What about your Mom and Dad?_

_What about them?_ snapped Clara.

_Jesus,_ sighed Robin. _If this is the response I get I guess I'll—._

_My Mom and Dad are dead,_ came the thought Clara had been trying to avoid, interrupting Robin and halting his response dead in its tracks. His expression changed subtly, anger fading and a look of sympathy taking its place. _I'm sorry,_ he thought to her, letting the empathy warm his words.

_No, I'm sorry,_ replied Clara. _I mean, it's complicated. They're not dead, I don't think. But they're dead to me._

Robin tutted, shaking his head as he took a sip from his drink.

_You can disapprove of my choice of words all you like,_ thought Clara. _My Mom and Dad never understood me, they didn't know how to deal with someone as "special" as little old me. My Mom hated me, and my Dad changed after my brother died._

Robin raised his right eyebrow.

_As in actually died_ , continued Clara, her inner voice becoming momentarily choked, almost whispering as she spoke of it. _He was kidnapped and murdered when he was little. They sent the sick son of a bitch who did it to jail, but families never really get over that._

Clara's eyes welled a little, her mind racing with the memories of her brother, the only fond memories of her childhood that she possessed.

I guess I never really got over it either. I ran away when I was in my early teens. It was easier to just not be around my Mom and Dad. And you know what the best part of it is? They never came looking for me.

The angry flow of Clara's memories stopped for a moment while she seemed to reflect on that time. She realized her gaze had drifted from Robin's and looked back to see if he was still "hearing" her. His nod encouraged her to let out the rest of her angry summation. _Never even reported me as missing. Me leaving was the best thing that ever happened to them. Some kind of relief. So for me, there's no amount of lying my Mom or Dad could ever do to convince me that they ever loved me._

Before Robin could respond, his phone beeped loudly. He glanced down and picked it up, flicking his thumb across the touchscreen to read the reminder that had flashed up, before leaning forward in his chair and looking above the railing they were sitting next to, out across the casino. In the distance, a crowd had gathered as several people began taking their seats around a poker table. Robin jumped to his feet, dusting down his suit and fixing his collar.

"Come on," he said aloud to Clara, reaching out his hand to take hers. "This is us."

Clara placed her hand in his as he gently pulled her to her feet, her clutch bag in the other hand, and for a moment only, they held each other's eyes without needing to read the other's thoughts. Then the pair began walking down to the poker game.

"You ready?" Clara asked, quietly wiping a tear away from her eye.

"Absolutely," replied Robin. "With your good looks and my talent, this should be a walk in the park."

"Sure thing, bucko," said Clara. "Why don't you go take a look around, let me get on with the real work?"

Tony Jepsom had already taken his seat by the time the pair arrived at the table. They had read in an agency report that he was in his mid to late twenties, although the apparently large amount of money he was winning from poker clearly wasn't being spent on self-grooming. He wasn't overweight as such, but he also didn't look in particularly good shape. His jawline had been at the point of "designer stubble' several days ago, and he'd clearly been happy to just let his facial hair grow without boundaries ever since. He wore a baseball cap, the name of one of the chip manufacturers emblazoned on the front, one of the many money-spinners a professional player like him could enjoy. He was famous for often wearing sunglasses, which at this point were resting on his baseball hat, pointing up toward the sky. Clara had been contemplating how tough it would be to get an accurate read if he was wearing shades, and was relieved to see that, for now at least, she wasn't going to have to bother. He wore blue designer jeans and a black sweater, a gaudy designer watch on his right wrist and elastic bands on the other, something Clara thought would be quite the ironic statement were it not for the fact that she didn't think he had the intellect to make one.

She approached the table, stopping to speak to the steward who had been left in charge of ensuring everyone who was playing at the table was supposed to be there.

"Good evening, Madam, may I see your invitation and ID, please?"

Clara handed over her two cards, one a small plastic card with a QR code printed on the top. The steward took her smartphone, scanned the QR code, and a photograph of Clara appeared on her screen alongside the name _Mrs. Jayne Benson_. The second was a photographic ID card, doctored to include Clara's photograph and the correct name.

"Thank you, Mrs. Benson," said the steward, pulling a seat out at the table for Clara, who sat down and made herself comfortable. "Would you like another drink?"

"Yes, please," replied Clara as she surveyed the table, scoping out her competition for the evening. She began by looking across at Jepsom. She'd planned on waiting to read him until the game was in motion, but figured there was no harm in having a quick "look." She smiled across the table as they made eye contact.

'It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jepsom," she said. "I don't feel worthy to be playing at the same table as you, I do hope you don't take too much of my money this evening."

He smiled a wide smile, reaching across the table to shake her hand. "The pleasure is all mine."

Clara continued to smile as she shook his hand, her eyes focused intently on his.

_I hate playing these tourists,_ he thought. Clara fought back the urge to say something witty, fully realizing that her usual trick of saying something to scare him wouldn't go down well at all, instead just smiling back, reading what she could, learning anything that might help her.

Chapter 07

Aware that she was going to be at the table for some time, Clara made herself comfortable and began scrutinising her opponents, looking for some kind of weakness to exploit. It was an intimate game, Clara being one of only two other players, not including Jepsom. Her previous conversation with Boal had led her to believe that the Agency had paid a hefty price-tag to get her into the game, and the small number of players compared to the large crowd of spectators who had arrived to watch the game seemed to prove that. The table was long with plenty of space, leaving ample room in fact to have squeezed another 5 or 6 people in should they have wanted to. Clara was sitting almost directly opposite the dealer. Jepsom, to her right, sat just beyond the corner of the table so as to be facing the dealer and all of the other players, and the remaining two players were spread out to her left. Both were men and appeared to be polar opposites of one another. The first guy looked to be in his mid to late thirties, overweight and unhealthy in his appearance. He had light brown hair with a receding hairline and wore round glasses that didn't complement the natural roundness of his face. He sported a beer-belly, a scruffy-looking striped polo shirt over the top, with clearly no effort made to dress up for the occasion. Clara shifted her position slightly toward him and made eye contact, choosing to ignore the lurid thought he had about her, and instead focusing on making an introduction.

"Hi, I'm Jayne."

Using his left arm, he hoisted himself up out of his seat, the weakness of his underused arms showing as it shook slightly from his bodyweight as he leaned forward to shake her hand.

"Shaun," he said, before sitting down and beginning an awkward silence. Clara read him momentarily, realizing that he didn't feel confident speaking to women, and while sexually attracted to her, now felt under enormous pressure at the fact that he would be playing against a female. She figured she could easily use this to her advantage later, but decided to dig a little deeper.

"Where are you from, Shaun?" she questioned.

"Virginia," he replied, before employing the same "stare and stay silent' strategy he'd previously been using.

"Wow, Virginia. Long way," said Clara, fumbling about inside her own head, looking for some way to keep the conversation flowing.

"What brings you to a game like this?"

"I'm a professional player," he said, glancing toward Jepsom, who remained oblivious to the fact that he was even talking.

"Yeah, well, I'm like semi-professional, ya know? I won a tournament to get into this game. I mean, eh, I won a big tournament and it paid out a big jackpot, and so I used the money to get into this game. I figured it would be good to try to push myself, and when I heard Tony was playing here, I figured I could use some of my winnings."

Clara smiled as he talked, nodding her head in agreement.

"Uh, like a small portion of my winnings," he continued. "I've won so much over the years that a trip like this, it's nothing, ya know?"

Clara read him as he rambled on, picking out little snapshots and painting a picture of the man she was talking to. He was single, and she figured he probably always had been, his continued lack of female companionship making him more awkward around women every day. He played poker online and had won a couple of small tournaments, mainly no prizes whatsoever although the occasional $500 jackpot. He lived with his Mom, and this trip had been paid for, like the gaudy gold watch around his wrist, using a combination of life savings and credit cards.

Clara, realizing that she had all of the ammunition she needed on Shaun, switched her vision to the gentleman sitting to his left.

"And you are?" she quizzed.

The man smoothly lifted out of his seat, reaching across the table with a firm but gentle handshake, holding eye contact the entire time.

"Bill Sanderson," he said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, young lady."

Clara stared into his eyes, reading him in a split second. He was attracted to her, and while Clara didn't exactly ooze confidence, she knew she was a pretty girl, especially this evening and in this setting, so an older man finding her attractive wasn't exactly surprising. But his thoughts actually appeared quite sincere to her, almost throwing her off balance. He was an older man, mid to late fifties, but had grown old incredibly gracefully. He had a chiseled and defined face, a head full of salt & pepper hair with a matching beard groomed to perfection, but without looking fake. He wore a grey suit and a blue shirt, and although Clara couldn't tell who the brand was, it was clear that it was both Italian and custom tailored. Whoever she was dealing with, he had the funding to warrant his seat at the table. He had deep blue eyes and a smile that, try as she might to look for something seedy or underhand in his mind, seemed to be backed up by a pretty clean conscience. Clara smiled back, his endearing character taking her by surprise.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hocus Pocus casino."

A man in his mid to late fifties had appeared, dressed in black tie, microphone in hand, addressing the crowd of about fifty spectators who had gathered around the table to view the game.

"We are absolutely thrilled this evening to be joined by the current World Poker Tournament Number 2 ranking, Mr Tony Jepsom," he said, gesturing across to Jepsom as the crowd applauded. "We've got a wonderful evening of poker ahead of us, and remember, ladies and gentlemen, the bar and lounge are both open, so please enjoy yourselves. And now, if our players are ready, let the game begin."

The man clapped, the crowd joining him in a half-hearted applause, signaling to the dealer to begin the game. The dealer introduced herself to the table and began dealing out the opening hand of the game.

Robin leaned down behind Clara, gently squeezing her shoulders and whispering into her right ear. "I think the social norm is to wish you luck," he said.

"So?" responded Clara. "Or was that it?"

"I don't want to jinx it. This is going to be a walk in the park. In fact, I'm going to take a walk and get a drink," he said. "Give me a good chance to, eh, check the place out a bit."

He kissed her gently on the cheek before walking toward the bar. Clara blushed slightly, her recent unfamiliarity with human affection showing. She watched Robin as he walked away before turning her attention back to the game.

The casino had numerous bars, and Robin wasn't fussed about which one he drank at. He knew that he shouldn't stray away from the table for too long so as not to create any suspicion, but also felt it important to get an idea of the layout of the place. While the need for a quick exit was unlikely, he'd always felt it better to be prepared than not. He deliberately picked the bar furthest away from the table, situated almost completely opposite the poker game at the far end of the room. It was a huge square that had been dropped into the building, a lowered ceiling hanging from the main ceiling, small spotlights and LEDs creating beautiful dancing light patterns on the bar surface below it. Designer metal stools lined the outside, while-three tiered shelves ran all the way along the bar behind the serving staff, filled with high-priced liquors and spirits, green and yellow spotlights behind them giving the place the look of a science lab, as if they were serving potions instead of beverages. Robin took a seat, running his hand across the brushed marble counter, which was immaculately clean with more LED spotlights installed in its surface, shining up through the drinks that patrons would rest on the bar. At one end, a young cocktail waiter dazzled a crowd with his throwing, twisting and shaking skills, creating luminous drinks for his impressed audience, while at the opposite end, a huge chrome bowl was being used to create dry ice, bottles of champagne positioned all around it.

"Good evening, sir, what can I get you?" quizzed a bartender, a young man in his mid twenties, immaculately dressed and groomed.

"Scotch and ice," Robin replied. While he didn't want to draw attention to himself by not drinking, he also knew he needed to remain as sober as possible, just in case. Whiskey was his drink, especially when he had it clean, and he knew that so long as he paced himself, drank a few waters, and tried to eat something whenever the opportunity arose, he could take a fair few before they had any kind of adverse effect on him.

The bartender disappeared off to the shelves behind him before coming back with his drink, placing it deliberately on top of one of the table LEDs, the yellow scotch now reflecting off of the bar.

'Thanks," said Robin, turning around in his stool and perusing the room. At the distant end of the casino, he could see the poker table, the game in full swing, the crowd still present. Across the room in front of him a variety of games were being played, from Blackjack to Roulette, accompanied by the occasional cheer or laugh from a small crowd of players as someone won or lost. To his right was an open doorway leading through to the lounge area, and to the left of the doorway were the slot machines, deliberately positioned away from the main room because of their natural obnoxiousness, a mess of bright neon lights and overly loud noises. The clientele at the slots was different, mainly lone players, small buckets of coins in hand, losing track of how long they'd been playing or how much money they'd spent until it was all gone. Robin paid particular attention to this area as he noticed a black door, deliberately unmarked and designed to blend into the wall in which it was built. He spotted a member of the casino security coming out of it quickly and quietly, closing it behind him and walking into the main area of the casino. Robin waited a moment, following the security agent with his eyes, who by this time had stopped to monitor a roulette game. Robin gently eased himself up off of the bar, drink in hand, and walked over to the slot machines. He stood by a bank of five slots, spotting an elderly player at the far end pumping coins into the machine in a steady flow, seemingly oblivious to everything around her. He watched the player for a moment before scanning to his right, back to the door he'd just watched a security guard walk through. To its right, he could clearly make out a small numbered control panel used by the security team to access the door. He took a sip from his drink, pondering how he might be able to get the code to the door. He knew that unless things went desperately wrong this evening he wasn't going to need it, but something in his gut told him that it would be a code worth knowing.

Suddenly, something caught his eye, moving past his peripheral vision to his right, two members of the security team heading toward the door, deep in conversation. Robin made momentary eye contact with one, reading him in a second, realizing that these guys were planning the rest of their night, a shift about to finish, and probably weren't going to be coming back through that door anytime soon. He moved quickly, heading toward the pair, drink still in his right hand. The security agents reached the door, one of them reaching out their hand, fingers just inches away from touching the buttons.

"Excuse me," shouted Robin as he approached them.

"Can I help you sir?" said one of the staff, the pair eyeing him with an expression of intimidation that he didn't have to read.

"Where are the bathrooms?" he asked.

The security men looked at one another, puzzled, before one gestured directly behind them, back toward the lounge door, at the large, neon sign that read "Bathrooms."

"Aha," laughed Robin, "Thanks. Oh god, I'm so sorry," he said, pointing at the number pad. "If you're anything like me and my cashpoint pin number I'll have made you forget the code!" he said, grinning. He stared into the eyes of the agent as the numbers 301184 were almost read out in front of him.

"No sir," snapped the security guard, his "leave immediately" expression now clearer than ever. "Is there anything else we can help you with?"

"No thanks, gentlemen, you've both been more than helpful already," said Robin, walking past them, taking particular care not to look back. He knew that the staff would be waiting until he was fully out of sight before they even considered touching the door panel now, so he slunk off into the bathrooms as quickly as he could.

Clara stared down at the cards in front of her, eyes transfixed on the pictures and numbers. She was aware that what she was holding was not a bad hand. It was in fact, to most poker players a good hand, but Clara was by this point two hands into the game and struggling to focus, and thanks to a cocksure first hand gamble, was a considerable number of chips down. She took in a large breath of air and shuffled in her seat, gazing up at her competition, all staring back at her.

"Madam," said the dealer. Clara looked over, the dealer's impatience successfully masked by her polite questioning.

'Uh, fold," said Clara, dropping the cards on to the table. She sighed, and watched as yet another hand went against her, Jepsom taking the spoils with a humble but fake smile. Clara looked to Bill, who was doing only marginally better than her, the grin on his face clearly demonstrating his lack of emotional interest in the game.

"Not our night, hey?" he said.

"I guess not," replied Clara, taking a sip of her drink and fighting her instincts to wring her hands nervously. She was choking, and she knew it. She looked back up at the table, flitting her eyes around to each player, reading them instantly, a barrage of information flying back at her, nothing tangible enough to help her. She knew she had to focus, something she was finding more difficult with each losing hand.

"So, uh, when do you start playing?" A hand appeared gently on her right shoulder, Robin whispering sarcastically into her ear.

"Easy for you to say," she whispered back. "See lots of nice things on your walk?"

"Sure. I saw the door they're going to use to kick us out of here if anyone thinks we're up to something. Now, how about you try winning a few hands?"

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, Clara's angry expression not changing even for a second. The dealer checked that everyone was ready before beginning the next hand.

Robin moved himself into the crowd, away from the table and along with all of the other spectators and friends of players. A bit of "good luck" communication was allowed between hands, but anything more than that would look suspicious, and he was confident that Clara's "opening night" nerves would disappear soon enough. He sipped his drink, half-focused on the game and half surveying the room, when a figure approached his left side.

"I'm guessing a career in professional poker isn't on the cards for her?"

Robin looked to his left, the tall and beautiful wife of Bill Sanderson looking right into his eyes, her tedium at her husband's bravado and flashiness apparent to him.

"I'm sorry?" asked Robin. She pointed, drink still in hand, in the direction of Clara.

"Hardly cleaning up, is she?"

"Ah. No, I guess not. Your husband, does he play much poker?"

"Bill? No, as you can probably tell. Truth be told, he was never that good at anything, not even business, but his father left him the company, and he likes any excuse to play with the big boys, whatever the sport."

She sipped her drink, before glancing over at her husband. "It'll be a good story for his golf buddies, I suppose. What about your wife? Don't take this the wrong way, but she doesn't look the type for poker."

"You'd be surprised," replied Robin. The pair continued talking, Robin's attention being split between the conversation and the game, more specifically Clara, who he was finding it increasingly difficult to take his eyes off.

"You two make a lovely couple," said Mrs. Sanderson.

"Really!?" Robin's response was excited, more excited than you would expect from a married man when commenting on the woman he'd, in theory, spent the last 10 years of his life with. Robin realized this, correcting himself.

"I mean, thank you, it's nice to hear someone say something so, well, nice."

Robin smiled at Mrs. Sanderson and sipped his drink, his eyes being caught by movement behind her. He switched his attention on a part of the casino he'd spotted earlier, but not really logged, a series of windows, what looked like a second floor, but positioned almost completely in the center of the room, a kind of "crows-nest." He'd figured they were just offices, something swanky for the casino manager to relax in, but the hurried movement had alerted him. The windows were tinted, but he could make out two figures looking through, one in a suit and the other wearing the same uniform as the security staff he'd bumped into earlier. They were hard to make out, certainly facial expressions or lip-reading were off the card, as was eye contact, but there was one thing Robin could read loud and clear. As the security agent pointed down to the casino table and picked up a walkie-talkie, Robin felt his stomach flip.

"Excuse me," he said to Mrs. Sanderson, moving in the direction of the eye in the sky control room.

Chapter 08

Robin made it about halfway across the floor before he could really, fully make out what was going on in any kind of detail. He was still unable to make eye contact with anyone in the control room, but he figured this wasn't such a bad thing. He was intent on seeing what was happening, but also knew there was a slim chance that the commotion happening above him might not be anything to do with him and Clara, and his erratic behavior down on the ground wasn't going to help matters either way. He knew he had to stay calm and decided to hold for a few moments, perched near a game of roulette, giving him a clear vantage point of what was happening in the room above.

A crowd of six or seven people were watching as an elderly man took turns throwing the dice, the occasional cheer as he'd win or a collective group sigh if he'd lose, and Robin decided this was as good a place as any to scope things out. Although he couldn't see a huge amount of detail in the room above him, he could see the white glow of LED screens, which he assumed were CCTV camera feeds, and the shadows moving about toward the back of the room indicated there were a number of people in there now, and that they were all moving around with some kind of purpose. Robin knew he needed to get close enough to find out what was happening, or at the very least rule out the notion of them being in trouble. He switched his vision to the security door he'd been standing at earlier on, closed and locked, with nobody anywhere near it, the noise of the slot machines nearby making it an ideal entrance to the security function of the casino provided there was nothing too dangerous immediately on the other side.

For a few moments, Robin batted the idea of going through the door about in his head. He ran a couple of potential scenarios through, good and bad although mainly bad. If anyone caught him trying to break into the secure area in a place like this, he'd be in trouble, but he also knew that places like this had countless service corridors and staff entrances, and they couldn't all be monitored with the level of intensity that the movies would have people believe. He wasn't convinced either way, but by the time he'd worked a couple of potential outcomes through his mind, he found himself moving toward the thing anyway, his subconscious forcing him on a mission that his conscious didn't want to be a part of. The door was now only feet away from him, and as he lifted his right arm up, ready and waiting to key in the access code, it flew open, two security staff walking out, not yet spotting the man moving directly toward them, arm outstretched. Robin changed his direction immediately, bolting left, not entirely sure what his next move would be, until he reached the slot machines, instinctively pulling out a stool and sitting in front of one, pushing the buttons and fumbling around in his pocket looking for change that he knew wasn't there. He knew that if he'd been seen, he'd probably raised enough eyebrows to at least get thrown out of the place, and breathed a huge sigh of relief as he spotted the security guards still standing by the door talking to one another, but not looking at him. He stood up, pushing away from the stool, and headed for the bathrooms on the other side. He knew he couldn't afford the eye contact this time, that he'd already been seen acting suspiciously by too many of the casino's staff, and wondered if a bit of good old-fashioned detective work might do the trick instead. He moved quickly, deliberately not looking at the pair, but getting as close to them as he could without risking raising the alarm. As he moved just inches by them, he listened intently to a brief snippet of their conversation.

"Yeah, it's her, can you believe it?" one of them said. "Apparently she's the one who's been jacking the tables for the past six months, got something like $800,000 from us! And now the silly bitch has the nerve to sign herself up for the Jepsom game!"

As Robin slinked into the bathrooms, his heart racing, his mouth dry and hands shaking, he stared into the mirror, looking at his reflection, his eyes transfixed, as if he was trying to read himself, trying to capture a subconscious thought that might help them out of this mess. He stood quietly, his mind churning over his limited options, looking desperately for a solution. Finding no better options, he slammed his hand against the towel dispenser and yelled loudly before storming out of the bathrooms and walking in the direction of the poker table.

Chapter 09

"Looks like your case of 'beginners bad luck' has well and truly cleared up," sneered Shaun, losing yet another hand to Clara, the fourth in a row. After a shaky start, her ability to focus her attention on the individual players had improved drastically, the weeks of training finally paying off. She was far from being at her most comfortable, and the task of reading each player individually while still keeping a close enough eye on the game had given her a stress headache, but she was finally relaxing into the game and had won enough chips back to start being taken seriously. Her tactic had been simple enough; once she'd been able to hone in on an individual player, she'd read them and spot the honesty or deception in their action, instantly deciphering their poker face and instantly allowing her to make a safe decision. She just had to act the part of the "lucky winner" as much as possible, which so far she'd felt pretty confident she was doing.

"What can I say, I guess Vegas brings out the best in me," she grinned, stacking her winning chips into neat little piles.

"I'm pleased for you, Miss," said Sanderson, having just casually ordered another drink. "But if you feel like sending any luck my way, it would be greatly appreciated."

Clara smiled, still surprised at the sincerity of the man, before switching her attention back to the game. She glanced at Jepsom, who wore a face like thunder as he fumed at the prospect of losing yet another hand to Clara, before looking across to the dealer, who had paused for longer than usual. The dealer glanced around, smiled at a colleague walking over, before addressing the table.

"That's the end of my shift! It's been a pleasure playing with you all."

A small, quiet round of applause went around the spectators as the two dealers made their speedy switchover, a move so well timed it was clear they'd all done this a thousand times before. As the first dealer lifted herself off of her stool, brushing past the new dealer, the pair spoke quietly to one another, no more than a few words, and as the dealer who was leaving the table spun around to look at Clara as she left, a feeling of absolute panic began stirring up in Clara's stomach, as if she'd swallowed a pin, and it was scraping around inside of her. As she stared back at the pair of dealers, having read their thoughts, painfully aware of the conversation they'd been having, movement caught her eye behind them, as three men in smart black suits began making a beeline for the table. She turned to her left, spotting one more in that direction, and a further two heading over from the right.

"Whoa, looks like something's going down," whispered Shaun, leaning over to speak to Clara. "Someone's sending in the heavies!'

He laughed to himself, unaware that they were headed to the very table he was playing at, blissfully unaware that he wouldn't be playing any more hands with Clara this evening. She smiled a nervous smile, before running over the situation in her mind, wondering how she was going to alert the agency to her situation, and wishing she knew exactly how many of the agents were outside ready to help them.

Robin moved toward the table with more purpose than he'd had in a long time. With each step he was coming closer to frantic, bumping into stools and almost knocking over a waitress as he flew across the casino floor. His plan of keeping his actions subdued in a vain attempt to avoid making a scene had been thrown into chaos, with even Robin realizing that avoiding a scene was now impossible. He'd actually wondered whether creating a scene might be his best means of making their exit and fumbled around in his jacket pocket as he walked looking for his phone, his quick-fire plan being to convince Clara and those around her that an emergency family call had come through, perhaps that someone had been in a horrific car accident, and the hospital were on the phone, and they were so sorry, but they'd have to go immediately, and that they'd wished they could stay, but the family had to take priority or something along those lines anyway. He found his phone, snatching it out of his pocket and playing with the screen to bring it to life, thumbing his way through the contacts list, ending on Boal as he toyed with the idea of just admitting defeat, just dialing out and asking Boal to come and collect them, like a couple of fifteen-year-olds at the police station waiting for their parents to arrive, but he knew deep down that they'd be in far greater trouble if Boal deemed them unsuitable for the program. As much as he wanted to just bail out now, he decided it would be better to try to redeem something from this awful evening, to claw back some sense of achievement. He held the phone in his right hand, the poker table in plain sight, as were the team of security staff in front of him, closing in on Clara.

The hand that landed on Clara's shoulder caught her by surprise, mainly due to the fact that it belonged to the sole security guard who had approached the table from behind and not from the front or side. The situation was worrying, but Clara couldn't help but be impressed with the speed and efficiency with which these guys had moved in on her. This clearly hadn't been their first "grab and exit' maneuver. She jerked in her chair, sweeping her head around to see the security guard, who by now had one hand on her shoulder, his other hand gripping a clump of her dress and using it to forcibly pull her out of her seat, trying to mask his actions so as to keep the fuss to a minimum. Clara, still playing innocent, a feeble hope that acting as though she was totally unaware of why this was happening might save her, squealed out an angry,

"Excuse me, what do you think you are doing?!"

"You need to come with me, ma'am," said the security guard, by now pulling her aggressively away from the table, making it obvious that there wasn't going to be any time to stop and talk about the situation. Clara looked at the other players on the table, all wearing identical faces, the pose of a "deer in the headlights" that we'd all like to think we don't do in situations like this, then spotted Robin about 10 meters away from the table, not moving, just staring back at her.

She read him; I'll get you out of this, he thought.

Then a stinging feeling in her right abdomen, then nothing.

Chapter 10

Clara's eyelids flickered, her eyes straining to focus, as if someone had just pushed the reset button on a computer and she was having to reboot from scratch. Her vision jerked around the room, trying to pick a spot to fixate on for a moment, to give her some idea of where she was or how she'd gotten there. Her head pounded with a headache the likes of which she couldn't ever remember experiencing, and her torso, around the appendix, stung as if she'd been attacked by a particularly angry bee. She established that she was in a room, cold and grey but not at all run-down, in fact fairly modern. In front of her was a desk, a few papers and other bits scattered across them, with another desk further in front of her and to the right, a computer and phone as well as the usual office bits and pieces sat on top of it. A wall-planner hung from the wall, initials and circles across the days, looking as if it was mapping out a rotation of some description, and various documents were pinned to a noticeboard, including codes of conduct and a white A4 document entitled "Spotting a Roulette Cheater." Clara tilted her head, switching her view to the left of the desk in front of her. A range of security equipment was scattered randomly across the table, a pair of handcuffs, a billy club and a tazer. Her mind wondered, as if a segment of her memory had just been unlocked, deleted footage that had just been rediscovered, feeling the pinching, burning sting in the side of her body, realizing that she'd been tazered back out in the casino room. She surmised therefore that this must be the back room of the casino, the part that patrons hope to God they don't ever see, the part that you come to when the casino think you're trying to screw them over, and the part that you hope you walk out of in police custody for your own safety.

The door to the office, a basic wooden one with no window, swung open and a man about 6 ft 2 in height walked in. He had short, cropped hair, wore a smart shirt and trousers, and had tattoos across the top side of his hands. He stopped as soon as he crossed the threshold of the room and unbuttoned his cufflinks, rolling his shirt sleeves up past the elbow, not making eye contact with Clara at all. As he finished altering his shirt, he gently pushed the door shut behind him before bounding over to Clara, and hitting her with an open-palmed slap, the full weight of his swing behind it, across her face. She winced and yelped, partly the shock of being hit, partly the outpouring of fear as the desperation of her situation became evermore apparent. Her head reeled sideways with the force of the hit, her ear thumping as her hearing vanished. She yelled out angrily, as if trying to intimidate her captor, who waited until she was sat fully upright before hitting her again, just as hard as before. Clara felt a tear roll down her nose, dripping onto her knees and the floor below her, the occasional droplet of blood joining the pool of moisture on the cold, hard concrete. She glanced up just in time to see the man raise his hand again, before another voice bellowed, just distinguishable even with her battered hearing.

"Enough!"

And just like that, the man paused, before gently lowering his hand. Clara looked across slowly, tilting her head with caution in case another strike was headed in her direction, and saw a second man had entered the room. He was a similar height and build, maybe a touch shorter, but just as sharply dressed wearing a designer suit. He had long grey hair, immaculately kept, and a neat grey beard. His eyes were dark and cold, his brow wrinkled and aged, his hands adorned with the same style of tattoos as Clara had seen far too many times recently. He patted the first man gently on the shoulder and whispered something into his ear, before the thug left the room without looking back, closing the door as he left.

The old man pulled out a chair, brushing down his trousers before taking a seat and crossing his legs. He sat by the desk with the phone, pushing a button on its front and speaking into the hands-free mic.

"Coffee," he uttered, in a deep Russian accent. He paused and looked at Clara, his eyes burying deep into her mind, the hatred, anger and violent character that she saw feeling almost as hard-hitting as the punches.

"You want anything?" he asked.

Clara froze, unable to hold his gaze any longer, her eyes glued to the floor in front of her. He leant back toward the microphone.

"And a water."

He let go of the button and sat back in his chair, sitting quietly for what felt like an eternity before the door opened, and a female entered, placing a small espresso and a glass of water in front of the man, leaving the room as quickly as she arrived. The old man lifted the dainty cup and took a long sip, emptying the contents and putting the cup back on the table.

"I love espresso," he said. "But you fucking Americans can't make good espresso. Your coffee shops. Bullshit. Only place where you get good espresso is Little Italy." He paused. "You ever been to New York?"

"Sure," mumbled Clara quietly, her voice broken and her spirit in tatters.

"Shit hole," replied the man. "Only good thing about New York is good espresso and Brighton Beach. You know Brighton Beach?"

He waited for a response, almost as if he knew everything there was to know about her, as if he was teasing an answer from her, filling in the blanks of a story he already knew the majority of. Clara hesitated to answer, the old man thankfully answering his own question.

"I know Brighton Beach. I have lot of friends and family there. Is good town, good people. My friends and I, we arrived in New York when I was just a boy. We couldn't get work, nobody wanted to know. My mother was a cleaner, my father worked on ships, and my brothers and sisters and I were always hungry. My father told me to work hard and I would be rewarded, but the American dream is only for Americans. I am no American."

He pushed the glass toward Clara. "You want drink?" he asked. Clara remained still, head down. "We try to carve out little bit of life for ourselves. We work hard, we buy land, we build." The man stood up, walking calmly over to Clara, his right hand lifting her head up by her chin to face him, her eyes bolting away from making contact with his.

"So tell me, what makes you think you have right to come to my casino and rob me?"

Clara stuttered, trying to remain calm and confident as she answered.

"I've barely even won a hand tonight, I was just—."

"Tonight?! Screw tonight! Tonight, we got the better of you, you clever bitch. Tonight, who knows what you walk out with, but we stopped you. We got you. But what about all the other times? You must have known we would catch you sooner or later!"

"Other times?" Clara asked in genuine confusion. "What other times?"

"It's no problem, you play stupid little girl," said the man. "We know all about you. The roulette tables last month, the slot machines the month before that. How big is your team? We know it takes more than one person to take as much as you've taken."

"Hold on," said Clara, her realization that they'd gotten the wrong person restoring some confidence in her voice. "This is the first time I've even stepped foot in your casino, I swear to God. I don't know about any other times, and I've not taken anything today."

"You are lying, fucking rat. But is ok, my men are very good at making liars tell the truth. You know who I am?"

"No," whimpered Clara, her voice broken and filled with panic, desperate to keep pleading her innocence, but deciding it might be safer to let the man speak.

"The Russians in New York. They work for me. All the Russians in this country, they work for me. This is my casino, my casino that you think you can come and steal from. You think is OK and you think you don't tell me who you work with, but we will find out."

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a cigarette, lighting it and blowing a drag of smoke into the air. "So who you work for? Who's your team?"

"I don't have a team. I know you think I'm just saying this to make you let me go, but I swear to god this is the first time I've ever been in this casino. I've not been ripping you off I—."

Before she was able to finish her sentence, Clara heard a gentle thud on the table in front of her. She lifted her head to see black and white photos, surveillance style, taken from a distance. They were taken outside the casino, around the entrance, and showed Clara in various different clothes, clearly entering and leaving the casino. Clara's eyes widened, her mind racing as she desperately tried to work out what was going on. She knew this was the first time she'd been to this casino, but the photos were crystal clear, 100% "her." She scanned the images with her eyes, absorbing as much detail as she could. She noticed a sweater she was wearing in one of the photos, a favorite of hers, one that she'd been wearing only three or four days before. The images looked so real she was even beginning to question her own memory.

"These are bullshit!," she protested. "Someone's photoshopped them."

The old man tapped his finger on the monochrome image of her.

"This, you?" he asked.

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean it's me, but it's not me at this casino. Someone's taken a picture of me and made it look like I was here."

Again, the man tapped on the photo.

"This is you," he said, this time more a statement than a question. "Photographic evidence that you have been to my casino many times before, stealing from me many times before."

Clara was frozen in her seat, unable to explain the images she could see before her, but desperately trying to think of a way of convincing him that they were doctored that didn't involve admitting her real reason for being there. She looked up suddenly, a moment of realization hitting her like a bullet.

"CCTV!," she shouted.

"What are you talking about?"

"CCTV! This is a casino, you record everything right, so check the CCTV for those days, you won't see me entering the building. I swear I don't know why, but someone's trying to frame me, get the CCTV and you'll—."

The man laughed, stopping Clara dead in her tracks.

"Screw you. You think we haven't already looked at CCTV?" He scooped up a pile of papers from the table, a printout of a spreadsheet of some description. He slid it in her direction, tapping his finger on one of the columns. The sheet contained a list of dates, and the column he was referring to was called the "status" column. On several dates, the column read "OK," but on others, the column read "Deleted." Clara studied the sheet for a moment, her mouth open, eyes wide, struggling to understand the man's point.

"I don't know what I'm looking at," she admitted.

"This is CCTV log for last 12 months. Every date that matches photographs, CCTV has been deleted. Our computer system hacked into, files gone."

The man pointed his finger at Clara.

"Your people, they are trying to cover your tracks for you. They knew that if we caught you, they would need to destroy evidence."

He tapped again on the photographs.

"But these photographs that the Scottish man sent us, this is evidence."

Clara heard those words, "Scottish man" and felt her heart lift up into her mouth.

"Scottish man?"

"Yes, Scottish man," he replied. "Made anonymous phone call tonight to one of my team. Said he used to be in your team of thieves and that you threw him out."

The man took another drag of his cigarette, leaning back in his seat as he blew the smoke away. "Guess he had score to settle. Whoever he is, you shouldn't have messed with him. He has screwed things up for you pretty bad now."

Clara wriggled uncomfortably in her seat, her shoulders slouched and her face showing her signs of desperation. She knew Boal was behind this, but didn't know why, and knew that explaining her way out of her current predicament wasn't going to be easy. Figuring she had no other options, she gave it a try.

"I know you're not going to believe this," she said, "but this isn't what you think. Those photos have been doctored, and if that CCTV footage was still on your network you'd see I wasn't there."

She paused, as if she knew that the next sentence she was about to utter would sound so ridiculous, that somehow pausing would make it more feasible.

"I'm a psychic. I got approached by this government agency about a month ago, and they've trained me to be good at what I do. This was my first mission, to beat the other people at poker and show that I'm ready for bigger missions. They told me that this was just a test, I thought the money would go back to you or something, I wasn't trying to rip you off, I swear."

Clara stopped talking and looked at the man, making eye contact for a brief moment, confirmation of his disbelief. He said nothing, didn't laugh, didn't make a sound. After a moment, he stubbed out his cigarette and stood up.

"Wow," he said, "you really are desperate aren't you? Like rat in trap, knowing what's coming but somehow trying to gnaw its way out."

He turned around, opened the door and began to walk out.

"I'll be back soon," he said, closing the door as he left, leaving Clara alone, frightened and in disbelief.

Chapter 11

Outside the casino, standing in a far-flung corner of the expansive parking lot, Robin's fingers weren't working quickly and accurately enough for his liking, as his thumbs scrambled across the screen of his smartphone, desperately scrolling through the list of names and numbers, looking for the entry: "Boal, Joseph."

"Why aren't they here already!?" Robin questioned out loud, in the vain hope that the SWAT team he'd been promised might be hiding around the corner, hear his displeasure and come charging to their rescue. The air was warm and still, too hot for comfort, and Robin was fast losing patience for the sticky Nevada afternoon and the apparent lack of interest by the Agency. He finally found Boal on his phone and hit dial, holding the phone to his ear and pacing angrily.

"Robin," Boal said calmly.

"Where are you? What's going on?!? Clara's been taken!"

A pause. . . .

Then. . . .

"We know," replied Boal. "We're monitoring the situation."

"You're monitoring the situation?! If you're monitoring the situation, then why isn't a Navy Seals team here getting her out of there?!"

"Robin, you need to calm down. You need to trust that we've got this all under control."

"Under control?!" shouted Robin angrily. "Have you any idea what they might be doing to her in there? Did you see the size of those thugs?"

"Robin, I really need you to calm down," replied Boal.

"How can you keep telling me to calm down? You lied to us, you piece of shit, you told us that you wouldn't let us get in to trouble!"

"I didn't lie to you Robin."

"Oh really?! Then why is Clara having to deal with some bullshit casino security staff, doing God knows what to her? And you're not going to help? Screw you, I need to get back in there."

Robin pulled the phone away from his ear, ready to charge back through the front door, only to hear Boal shouting loud from the other end of the phone.

"Robin! Robin, I need you to speak to me!" Robin picked the phone back up to his ear.

"This had better be good, Boal," he replied.

"Look, I wasn't supposed to let you in on this, but we really don't need you storming back in there and messing things up for her."

"Messing things up for her? What are you talking about?"

Boal paused, an awkward silence wedging itself firmly between the pair. Robin rolled his eyes angrily, waiting impatiently for Boal's response.

"Clara was always meant to be taken," replied Boal eventually.

"I–What? I don't understand."

"Clara was always meant to be taken. This was part of the plan right from the get-go. This is part of her test. You've been with us a bit longer, Robin, and you've proven yourself to be solid throughout training. But we still have doubts about Clara. She still has a lot to prove, to me and to my superiors."

"Your superiors?!" snapped Robin.

"Yeah, that's right, my superiors. That swanky lifestyle you kids have become accustomed to the last month doesn't come for free, ya know! This is work, this is where you pay it back, and right now Clara isn't mission-ready. This is her chance to prove us wrong."

"I still don't understand," replied Robin. "How does Clara's situation help her prove herself?"

"The guys in there are actors," replied Boal. "Hollywood, stuntmen types. Just actors, paid to, ya know, shit her up a bit. Give her a scare. We need to see that she can cope under extreme pressure. We need her to really believe that she's in trouble, to see if she can talk her way out of the situation when things go wrong."

"By roughing her up?!"  
No! Absolutely not, these guys are not permitted to hurt her, just scare her. They won't touch her Robin, you have my word. But you mustn't go back in, or you'll mess it all up, and then Clara fails. And my superiors don't like people failing these tests."

Robin stood quietly for a moment, not taking the phone away from his ear, neither one of them saying a word. He pondered what he'd heard, mulling it over in his head, as if he was scanning a recording of Boal's words, looking for some kind of sign to tell him whether or not to believe him. He eventually reached his conclusion.

"Boal," said Robin.

"Yes?"

"Die."

Robin clicked the hangup button on his phone, slipped it into his pocket, and stormed back across the parking lot and toward the casino.

Chapter 12

Robin's spur-of-the-moment dash for the casino's front entrance had been cut short, admittedly by him, when he realized that getting in without a fight wasn't going to be easy. He'd been able to slip out relatively undetected when all of the attention was on removing Clara from the main floor, but he knew that security staff would be wise to him by now. The best-case scenario would be that Clara hadn't mentioned him, and the worst-case scenario would be that they'd already beaten a name out of her, but he figured that either way his face was going to be on every security smartphone and CCTV screen by now, and he knew he had to find another way into the building.

The casino was a sprawling complex of metal and concrete, the majority of the "theming' being focused on the front entrance, the sides and rear of the building away from the eyes of the majority of the public, housing the parking lot and not much else. Security cameras ran along every wall, and Robin had taken care to not wander too conspicuously around the parked cars for fear of alerting a particularly keen-eyed security guard, sticking to the perimeters instead. He'd surveyed a delivery entrance and a guardhouse with an electronic gate opening to let the odd food truck or garbage disposal vehicle in, but knew he needed a good plan to make that work. Even if he could spot a delivery truck making its way into the compound, he'd either have to sneak into the vehicle somehow or convince the driver to let him in, and even with his powers of reasoning, he wasn't sure he was up to the task. Hitching a ride without being spotted wasn't happening either, Robin being only too aware that diving under a truck and hoisting yourself up onto the chassis without so much as a scratch was the preserve of Hollywood fiction, not real life.

Robin walked around to the side of the building furthest from the main entrance and spotted an additional parking lot with the words "Staff Parking" emblazoned on a sign at the front. As he walked towards it, he scanned the wall, noticing that the volume of security cameras was considerably less here, and figured this would be as good a place as any to try to find a way in. He walked along the side of the building, heading toward a large, unmarked metal door with a small electronic keypad on the side of it. Robin ran his fingers across the keypad, moving his face close to the buttons in a vein attempt to see if any of the keys looked more worn than others, wondering if he could somehow string together a combination, or try and work out if the owners had put some predictable 4-digit code in. Then came a loud "click" from the opposite side of the door, which swung open, catching Robin totally off guard and bringing him face-to-face with a young woman, maybe early twenties, wearing a bartender's uniform, a lit cigarette hanging from her mouth.

She froze, the cigarette dangling precariously, ash spilling down onto her uniform. The pair locked eyes, Robin even more terrified than she was, convinced that the game was up and wondering how far he would be able to run before security picked him up.

Oh shit, she thought, Who is this guy? He must be a manager. I hope he doesn't tell my boss he caught me smoking.

Robin read the thought in a flash and acted on it almost as quickly.

"What do you think you're doing?!" snapped Robin, his training on quickly controlling a situation using deceit coming in handy.

"I, uh, I was just uh" said the girl, fumbling over her words and throwing the almost full cigarette onto the ground.

"Have you any idea how big today is for this casino, and you're out here stealing time and money from the company?! Who's your line manager? Ya know what, never mind, take me to him, right now!"

The girl slouched her shoulders, turning and holding the staff door open for Robin, walking a couple of paces in front of him. The pair remained silent as they paced down the dull grey corridors, passing the kitchens and a staff recreation room, in the direction of huge double-doors that would lead them out of the staff area and into the main lounge.

"So are you like, one of the main bosses around here?," asked the girl, turning to see Robin's response before stopping dead in her tracks, the corridor empty except for her. She glanced around, unaware of when they'd become separated, but figured it was a blessing, and moved quickly to the lounge, hoping to find her boss first.

Chapter 13

"You got any idea how this thing fucking works?"

The question came from one of the Russian thugs kneeling down next to the chair Clara was tied to, her right hand now tied onto the table to her right, the man fumbling with a set of dirty old thumb-screws, not having much joy in working out how to use them.

"Not mine," replied the second thug in his broad Russian accent, sitting in a chair at the other end of the room, smoking. "Lebedev, he's into this weird shit. Just tell me when you break her fingers, I don't want to hear that shit."

Clara grimaced, already aware of what they were planning on doing to her, but the sound of someone discussing it so openly still made her stomach turn.

"Look, I already told you I'm not the person who turned over your casino," she said.

"And I already tell you this is bullshit," said the Russian mobster, still transfixed on hooking Clara up to his torture device.

"'You start talking, you give us names!"

"I swear to God if I had names I'd give you them," Clara wailed, a tear falling from her cheek.

"I thought you said you weren't person who rob casino, now you're saying you'd give us names if you had them. Which is it lady? Ah, got it!" he proclaimed, standing up, the metal contraption fastened loosely around Clara's right thumb and index finger.

"Your lies make you forgetful."

He grinned and tapped on the thumb screws, "But this make you remember. This make your memory clear as day."

He pulled up a chair, rolling up his sleeves and looking Clara in the eye. They sat quietly for a moment, Clara reading his thoughts. She saw a man un-fazed by what he was about to do, feeling almost a sick enjoyment at the prospect of hearing her bones breaking and flesh tearing. He reached across the table, took hold of one of the screws, and turned it an entire turn clockwise. Clara screamed out, bursting into tears.

"Calm down lady, it not even touching," he said, using his little finger to point out the space between the dirty, sharp metal screw and her shaking finger and thumb. "You cry like this now, what you going to sound like in few minutes? Now, I ask you again, who do you work for? Give me names."

Clara gritted her teeth, her entire body tensing up, desperately willing for something or someone to save her from the inevitable excruciating pain she was about to experience. Ideas raced through her mind as she tried desperately to think up a plan of escape.

"'Boal," she shouted out. "You want a name, there you go, Joseph Boal."

"OK, we're getting somewhere," replied the thug. "Who is Joseph Boal?"

"He's the director of the agency I work for. It's a government agency, highly classified. I'm here on a mission and I—."

The thug didn't let her finish her sentence.

"'More of the games," he sighed, twisting the screws, this time several turns at once. Clara screamed and cried, begging for him to stop, watching as the screw hovered millimeters above her fingernails, seconds away from inflicting total agony. She turned to the man at the back of the room, who was trying to cover his ears, wincing at the sheer prospect of what was happening. She read his thoughts quickly, saw her opportunity, and shouted out at him.

"I remind you of your sister, don't I?"

The man stopped turning the screws, freezing and looking around at his comrade, who sat mouth wide open, taking a moment to digest what he'd just been asked.

"What did you say?"

"Claudette. I remind you of Claudette, that's why you can't bear to hear me scream, to hear me suffer. Because it reminds you of the pain she suffered when she was raped and murdered."

The men stared at her, occasionally breaking their gaze to look at each other in disbelief. The man at the back of the room eventually spoke first.

"How do you know about Claudette?" he asked, an expression of unprecedented anger emblazoning his face. Clara thought quickly.

"'I was a friend of hers, I was there the night she died."

"Bullshit!" he screamed, standing to his feet. "Fucking liar! How do you know about Claudette?"

"I told you I was there!" she insisted. "Ask me where they found her," she said, gazing into his eyes, knowing the response she wanted would appear in front of her eyes in a matter of seconds, the unsuspecting thug giving her all of the ammunition she needed.

"It was near Red Rock, wasn't it," asked Clara, already aware that she'd got her answer spot-on. "Dumped, naked and beaten, like a rag doll." She used her head to signal to the other man in the room. "I knew I recognized this son of a bitch from somewhere. He did it. He raped your sister and murdered her. He tried to kill me too, but I got away, and he shouted to me that he'd find me and kill me. He must have seen my name on the list tonight and figured it was his chance to get his revenge, to quietly kill me with the say-so of his boss. The one witness gone."

The thug closest to her laughed in disbelief at what he was hearing, his tone clearly assuming that his comrade would realize it was all nonsense.

"You tell a good story girl," he said, bending down and twisting the thumb-screw slowly.

"Good story, Jesus Christ, I need to learn to tell story like—."

Click-click.

The thug stopped what he was doing and turned to see the second mobster standing with his gun pointed straight at him. Clara read the gunman and found he'd bought into her story 100% and was ready to unload the contents of his firearm into his colleagues' brain.

"You always had an eye for the women, Alexi," he said. "But Claudette? My sister, my flesh and blood? You were like my brother!" he shouted.

"Nico!" the man pleaded, standing up, trying to reason with him. "We are brothers, always. You believe this bitch? She's been reading police reports or something, trying to find out information about us, use it against us, pollute our minds."

"She knows a lot," replied the gunman, still holding his pose. "You were so comforting to me when she died. Told me you were there for me. You shed tears with me, all bullshit!"

"Bullshit!? This is bullshit!" screamed the first mobster. "You think I would do that to you? To Claudette?"

The two mobsters stared at one another, a long, awkward silence, the tension in the room as thick as smog. The gunman, still holding his weapon in place, glanced at Clara.

"How long you know Claudette?" he quizzed.

"A long time," she replied.

"So you tell me, who was her first boyfriend? Her first true love? Way back in high school?"

The second mobster grinned, convinced that Clara's lies had caught up with her, that there could be no mention on any police report of the boyfriend Claudette had fallen madly in love with ten years earlier.

"Genaddy," she replied.

The gunman pulled his trigger, unloading four or five rounds into the second mobster before he hit the ground, Clara screeching and screwing her face up as the shots rang out. She looked into his eyes, coming face-to-face with the misery and sorrow the man had felt for his sister. She saw her window of opportunity.

"Please help me," she said. "Untie me, get me out of her and I'll tell you all you need to know about her last moments."

The thug whimpered, putting a hand over his mouth to hide his emotion. He dropped his gun, walked over and began to untie Clara's left hand and torso, removing the thumb-screw and helping her to his feet. He pulled her by the arm, leading her toward the door, Clara sliding her left hand along the nearby table and scooping up his firearm as she did so.

"I'm so sorry," she said, looking into the man's eyes as she pointed the weapon down to his left leg and fired. He screamed, falling to the floor and grabbing his bloodied limb. Clara bolted for the door, making her exit.

Chapter 14

The security control room hadn't been desperately difficult to find, once Robin had navigated his way away from the unsuspecting bar worker who led him quite literally in through the back door. His instincts had told him to head upwards, and his instincts had proven right, so when the first opportunity to ascend some stairs came along he'd taken it. He'd bumped into one additional member of staff along the way, a well-dressed man who looked at him suspiciously, clearly unable to place the man whom he felt he should know, but by this point Robin had become a pro at catching people off guard and talking them into doing whatever he wanted them to do. He was astonished at how compliant people were when he spoke to them with enough confidence and authority.

The control room was situated at the top of a set of stairs, nowhere else to go than in through the large metal door leading into the room itself. It was a kind of half crow's-nest, a huge glass semi-circle looking out over a huge area of the casino, the other side full of banks of monitors covering every inch of every game in vivid, high-definition detail. The door was closed with no windows to see through, only a fingerprint scanner attached to the wall to Robin's left, and as he didn't think he was physically suited to beating someone half to death and using their finger to get in, he decided to think up a more suitable plan.

Robin leaned back on one leg, turning slightly to begin scouting the long stairwell for some kind of inspiration, when the huge security door clicked. Robin froze, realizing there was not enough time to run without being seen and nowhere to hide. He knew that whatever came out of the door, he'd have to face it. A security guard, maybe 6 ft tall stood in the doorway, more interested in the website he was looking at on his smartphone than anything else, and almost knocked Robin off of his feet as he moved onto the stairs.

"Whoa!" the guy shouted, "who are you?"

Robin froze, reading the man's thoughts.

"This guy's broke in, I need to tell Mr. West."

"West sent me," replied Robin.

"What?"

"West sent me to get you; there's a guy going crazy down by the blackjack table."

The man paused.

"Why didn't he just radio me," he quizzed, picking his radio up to his ear, moments away from pressing the button.

"He's got a gun down there, would you go and help!?"

"Jesus, umm, wait here, don't move!" shouted the young security guard, dashing down the stairs, waving his arm behind him, signaling Robin to stay where he was. Robin waited a moment, then turned to see the door to the security office open. He peered his head inside, astounded at the huge array of monitors and controllers, cameras covering every card being dealt, every spin of the roulette wheel, every facial tick on some unfortunate deciding to risk cheating the house. He moved cautiously into the room, looking around for any sign of movement, walking carefully toward the enormous glass overlooking the casino floor below, the gullible security guard he just fooled now about halfway toward who he assumed was "Mr. West," who was of course standing quite unassumingly at the other end of the casino. Robin knew he didn't have long before they realized he was back in. He walked behind a huge control desk, looking at a bank of 12 monitors covering different areas of the casino floor. In front of his hands was a controller, not dissimilar to the kind you'd get on a video-games machine, and a bank of electronic buttons with digital displays reading things like "Roulette01' and "Poker03." He pressed a few, noticing as the views on the monitors changed each time. He glanced up to the top of the dial, a separate button reading "Page Left' and "Page Right'; he pressed Page Right, realizing that he was now looking at a bank of buttons for the dining area. He pressed the button again, now looking at the back office area, an image of himself, looking at an image of himself appearing on the screen.

"Lunatics even have cameras in here," he said, smiling and looking up at where he'd now established there was a security camera. He started punching buttons.

"Staff Entrance," nothing there.

"Break Room," nothing there.

"Kitchen."

And just like that, there she was. Robin watched as a bloodied and bruised Clara, overpowered by three Russian thugs as startled kitchen staff looked on, was scooped up, screaming and kicking her legs, and dragged out through a side kitchen door. Robin frantically pushed more buttons, desperately trying to work out where they were taking her, trying to follow their path. He pushed the button for "Internal Parking," and saw the group once more, a black van being reversed to the doors, a bag being placed over Clara's head as she was hurled into the back of the van. By the time the van doors had been shut, Robin had already left the control room.

Chapter 15

Robin ran down the mess of dull, grey corridors, trying desperately to remember the way that he came in, reversing the route in his head as he moved. He knew that the main casino floor was absolutely out of action, and figured that so long as he only ran into non-security personnel along the maze of hallways leading to the staff entrance, he'd probably be all right. He wasn't sure what his plan was, like the dog that chases cars all day and wouldn't know what to do with one if it did ever catch it, but he knew that he couldn't stay and do nothing. Perhaps if he could catch a license plate, maybe even sneak his way on to the van, at least he'd be able to track them down. God knows what they were planning on doing to her.

Robin flew through a door, appearing in the staff break room, an unimpressed bartender slouched on a sofa watching the TV, turning for a brief moment to look at Robin before switching back to his original pose, unconcerned about what was going on.

"Sorry," announced Robin, realizing he'd made a mistake, turning and bolting back out. He moved quickly through corridor after corridor, looking for anything familiar from his last race through, something that might indicate he was at least heading the right way. A noticeboard with various staff signs, an announcement about a car for sale.

This was good, he thought. Progress, he knew he'd passed that on the way in.

And then eventually, the thrust of the large metal bar handle, the door swinging open, and the bright lights of the parking lot bathing his face. He was outside, back in the lot, back at the empty staff entrance, and needed to find his way to the indoor parking lot. Before he could really get his bearings, a "screeching" noise came from his right as the black van appeared out of a huge metal garage door, turning left and speeding past him.

Robin shouted, waving his hands angrily, as if speaking sternly to the van driver would make him stop. But it was too late, the van had already passed him, the precious cargo on its way to "who knows where," the smell of burning rubber lingering in the air. Robin felt his heart jump and became nauseous and stood for a moment, his hands resting on his knees, spine bent as he gasped for much-needed oxygen. He'd seen the license plate and reached quickly for his smartphone, flicking to the "Notes" tab and jotting it down, hitting the delete key over and over again as his thumbs struggled to type accurately in his panic-riddled state. They'd got her. And if these guys weren't going to hurt her, why was she bloodied, why were they taking her somewhere else? This had all gone wrong, so desperately wrong, and now these people had got her. Robin felt the vomit before it arrived, relieving himself quickly on the tarmac, his head pounding, fear and panic setting in.

Not knowing what else to do, he pulled out his phone and flicked straight to "Last Dialed." Boal, Joseph.

Chapter 16

Joseph Boal's contact details gleamed back at him from the bright Smartphone screen, a number and an email address that he'd never sent or received an email to or from respectively. Underneath his name was a space for "Job Title," the phrase "Agency Director' sitting in its place. Robin thought for a moment, wondering how well he knew Joseph after all. The job title may as well have read "Psychic Overlord' or "Puppet Master' for all Robin knew, pondering for a moment about how one becomes "Director of the Agency" anyway. After all, it's not like they stick an advertisement on the job boards or the local papers. And who were "they" anyway? Boal had always made it clear that as far as Robin and Clara were concerned, he was the "Top Brass," the "Big Cheese." Robin's panic worsened, his mind beginning to race as he questioned quite what he'd gotten himself into, exactly who they were dealing with. His train of thought was interrupted as Boal's name flashed up on the screen, the words "Incoming Call" above his name. Robin slid his finger across the screen and answered.

"They took her," Robin said.

"I know," replied Boal.

"Why am I not surprised?" asked Robin, clearly not expecting an answer. "Yet another lie. How did you know?" He looked around, half-expecting Boal to appear or to spot an Agency sniper, rifle pointed at him off in the distance.

"'I need to be straight with you," said Boal. "The test has gone wrong. Really, badly wrong."

"No shit, Sherlock," snapped Robin. "How about you give me some new information, you piece of shit?"

Boal paused, took a deep breath.

"The men inside weren't actors," he replied. "They're Russian mobsters, the real deal. Colleagues of ours in the Security Service have been scoping these guys for a while now, and we struck a deal with them. You were both planted in there and this entire situation was orchestrated by us."

Robin stood dumbfounded, his face screwed up in angry disbelief, his hand tensing around his phone.

"Why? What deal?"

"We get to, borrow, the Russians. We get access to put you in that situation. In exchange, we hand over any incriminating evidence to the Feds."

"Evidence? How were you going to get. . . ." Robin stopped himself mid-sentence, pulling the phone away from his ear, looking at it with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment, disappointment that he'd not seen it coming. "Motherfuckers," he snapped, a sarcastic grin across his face. "Wearing a wire without wearing a wire, huh? Both of us?"

"Yes, both of you. That's how we knew Clara was in trouble."

Robin laughed, holding the phone away from his face. He pulled it back to his ear, shouting. "You listen to me, you piece of shit, you're going to help me find her, or I'm going to find you and kill you, do you understand me?"

Boal waited, silent, before speaking calmly.

"Robin, I know you're upset. But that's not going to happen, we both know that. Here's what I can do. I'm in contact with our friends in the Security Service, and they've tracked the van to a Russian safe-house not far from here. It's a bar that Gorshkov owns."

"Who is Gorshkov?" demanded Robin.

"'It's probably better you don't know. You just need to get to the bar. I'm sending the coordinates to your phone now. Clara's inside, but I don't know how long for."

"And what, I bust in there Action Man style and rescue her?" snapped Robin.

"You get inside, you find out what's going on, you report back. I can have an armed unit there soon, but they need more information before they'll go inside."

"This is the same bullshit armed unit you promised me was outside the casino, I assume?"

"I know you're angry," replied Boal. "I know you don't want to trust me, but you are going to have to trust me on this one."

Robin stood quietly, the warm evening air resting gently on his face, calming his mood, albeit only momentarily. He took a deep breath, a mixture of fear and anger welling up inside of him, the thoughts of Clara being hurt filling his head, the nauseous feeling back in his stomach. He put the phone back to his ear.

"I'm on my way."

Chapter 17

The Russian safe-house was about an hour away by cab, with an additional ten-minute walk as Robin was dropped early by an apprehensive cab driver who wouldn't venture too far into this particular part of town, too far from his customary easy fares from tourists on the strip. The bar was somewhere in North Las Vegas, a huge sprawling expanse of small buildings with enormous, empty parking lots, a sad indication of the tarnished hopes of the proprietors of the establishments. Each parking lot was surrounded by chain fence, and the bar that Robin was about to set foot in was a large two-story building made of dull grey concrete with no real visible signs that a bar was contained inside. Yellow light from the streetlights rained down on the parking lot as Robin walked toward the building. The windows were either boarded up with damp looking plywood or shuttered over with metal bars, a large metal door the only visible way in. Robin figured there wasn't going to be any need for subtlety or shadowy deception this time around; he was going straight through the front door.

Robin pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Boal.

"I'm here," he said.

"Good," replied Boal. "Now look, I'm not going to feed you some bullshit story about this being safe or easy because it's not, but I got you the backup this time. You've got friends with guns ready to bust in and help when you need it."

"Prove it," snapped Robin.

"Turn around, your six o clock. Black car about 400 feet from you." In the distance, a black car flashed its headlights twice. "Happy now?," asked Boal. "And there's more around the corner, so when you find her, we can extract the both of you."

Robin paused for a moment. "Why do I think there's something you're not telling me?" he asked.

Boal took a deep breath, audible from the other end of the phone. "I, uh, I had to pull some strings to get this kind of access."

"Access?"

'The Agency have got all the firepower we need, but you don't just storm into the safe-house of a major Russian mobster and shoot the place up, not without good reason. We're in Andrei Gorshkov's turf now, and needless to say he didn't send us an invitation."

"Pardon me for being so blunt, but how does this affect me exactly?" asked Robin.

"Because I can't mess up years worth of Federal investigation for one girl, if you'll pardon ME for being so blunt," snapped Boal. "You've got your escape route, but I need you to do something for me before I can give them permission to go in through the front door."

Robin shook his head, running his hand through his hair.

"What 'something'?'" he asked.

"You remember the Helen Berghaus murder last year?" asked Boal. "The mayoral candidate found dead in her home?"

"It may surprise you to know I don't live in a cave," sniped Robin. "Yes, I've heard of the Berghaus murder."

"Helen had a lot of friends in very high places, but she also had a lot of enemies in high places. She planned taxations to push out dirty industry and pull in the clean high-tech companies, and she pissed off a lot of wealthy people in the process. We know that Gorshkov was responsible for her death, and we're pretty sure it was the owner of a foreign conglomerate with a heavy emphasis on US production and manufacturing who paid for the hit. This guy's wealthy enough to buy off everyone in the USA, so there's no way we're putting him behind bars, but Helen was well liked in the FBI, she did good things for Police and law enforcement in this country—."

"Let me guess," said Robin, interrupting, "you want a confession."

"Between you and Clara, you've got the necessary skills to make this fat Russian piece of shit spill his guts. We don't care how you do it, and to be honest we don't even care how clean the confession is, I've got some of the best audio editors in the world at my disposal. Provided we hear the words 'Helen, Berghaus and contract murder,' we can put this guy behind bars and take his whole crew down with him."

Robin stopped for a moment, struggling to take in the gravity of his situation.

"Think about this, Robin: You save Clara, but you also put one of the most disgusting criminals in jail at the same time. This is your chance to do something great."

"How do you get the confession?," asked Robin. "I mean, how will you hear the record. . . ." He stopped himself halfway through his own question, holding the phone away from his ear to look at it again, a knowing grin on his face. "The spy phone, of course."

"It will be constantly recording," said Boal. "It's also our way of knowing when to send in the cavalry, so make sure it's out of your pocket and somewhere where we can hear everything."

"Would you like me to see if Gorshkov wouldn't mind having a little chat with you while I'm in there?" asked Robin sarcastically.

"How you get the confession is up to you," said Boal. "Be quick, we don't want this to get any messier than it already is." Robin heard a click as Boal ended the call. He tucked the phone into his jacket pocket, took one last glance around at the warm Las Vegas night, and stepped in through the huge metal front door.

Chapter 18

The sheets were filthy, and it was the first thing that Clara noticed when she was left on her own inside the Russian safe-house–not the mold on the ceiling, although she had noticed that, not the stench coming from the rotten carpet on the floor, but the filth of the bed sheets she was lying on. Throughout Clara's troubled existence, even during her days and nights on the street, her personal cleanliness had been of the utmost importance to her, leading her into breaking into people's homes while they were out at work to use their shower or convincing staff in department stores that she was a new member of staff so that she could use the company washroom. She would wash her sheets with an almost "OCD" level of scheduling, a minimum of once each week, never letting it go any longer wherever she was. She'd been tied to a chair and beaten to a bloody pulp in the last twelve hours, but this, this feeling of unclean as she lay spread eagled, tied from each limb to a festering bed, was the absolute low point of her day.

To her right was a small bedside table, the kind that the average family would use to house a nice lamp, maybe an alarm-clock, the stereotypical glass with dentures for the more mature owner. This particular bedside table, though it looked no different from any ordinary bedside table, held on its surface a spoon, several pieces of tinfoil and two filthy syringes, along with several blood spots. They weren't huge blood spots, but they were everywhere, and as Clara began to examine as much of the bed as she could see from her imprisoned position, she realized the bed was littered with them too. She tilted her head, looking back to the handcuffs that had been used to tie her down, noticing that they'd been welded shut at the bed end, the same with the ones by her feet. Clara surmised that they clearly hadn't been installed just for her visit, and she figured that the drug paraphernalia probably hadn't been either. This room had one purpose, and she knew that her current run of luck meant that she would probably be experiencing that purpose in the not-too-distant future.

The door opened, and the same well-dressed old Russian man from the casino walked in, followed closely by one of his thugs, who was carrying a wooden chair. The thug placed the chair down by Clara's bed before leaving the room and shutting the door behind him. The elderly Russian sat down, pulling a cigarette from out of his jacket.

"You don't mind if I smoke, I trust?" he asked.

A defeated Clara shook her head, and the old man pulled an expensive lighter from his pocket, lit his cigarette and blew the first drag up into the air.

"I feel as though you and I got off to a uh, bad start," he said in his strong Russian accent. "I was thinking about it in car on the way over, that we've perhaps not had enough time to talk, just the two of us. And as it would appear that I have now got your attention, let's talk."

The man leaned back in his chair, staring at Clara, her eyes fixed on his. She read him, his head full of angry thoughts, bottled up with a level of calm she found almost impressive. He genuinely believed she was responsible for the thefts from his casino, and she knew she wasn't going to convince him otherwise without a fight.

"My name is Andrei Gorshkov," he said. "I came to America when I was a young child, to New York City. The American dream is what my father told me we would be living. But you Americans, you didn't want Russians to succeed. Polish, Lithuanians, all immigrants, all destined to work in laundry stores, to pump fucking gas to you rich American pigs."

He took another drag of his cigarette.

"So I made the American dream that my father was too scared to chase. I did it for my friends, for my family. Created jobs, put food on the table of my friends, clothes on their children's backs. Not everything I have ever done is legal, but the most powerful Americans in the world didn't become powerful by living, uh, how you say, clean life."

Gorshkov leant forward a little, lowering his voice.

"I have a big family. Brothers who would take a bullet for me. Brothers who would slay an entire family of people in the street in broad daylight, with no idea of why, only because I tell them to do it."

He leaned back again in his chair.

"You're probably wondering why I am telling you this. I am telling you this, so that you truly understand why it's important for you to tell me what I need to know. Why you must tell me who you work for, give me the names I want. You, and your friends, you take 3.2 million dollars from my casino this year. Yes, 3.2 million dollars! You think I was just going to sit back and let you steal food from our babies, clothes from our children?"

Gorshkov rose to his feet slowly, pacing the room for a moment, walking over to the bedside table, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and using it to pick up one of the syringes, placing it gently on Clara's chest, the needle not touching her skin.

"Most of the time, when we send women to Russia or Eastern Europe to work in our whore houses, they are already dead inside. Pathetic, worthless bodies, their souls gone many years before. Like babies hungry for a feed, they just want their drugs, and they will do anything so long as you keep feeding their addiction. And you know, I look at the healthy, happy women in this country, living their lives with their husbands, with their families, spending their money in my casinos, in my restaurants, and I wonder to myself, 'How many needles would it take to transform them? How many needles before they're willing to go anywhere, to do things to men they don't know, just to feed their addiction?' What do you think?"

Gorshkov leant forward again, staring into Clara's eyes, his threats 100% genuine.

"How many needles would it take to make you give yourself over and over again, day in, and day out?"

Gorshkov stood up and moved toward the door.

"I wonder how many it would take." He turned the handle, opening the door. "You have thirty minutes to decide what you would like to do. If you give me the information I want, you go free tonight. If you continue to lie to me, we will find out how many needles it takes for you to sell your soul."

He left, closing the door on his way out, Clara remaining still on the rank bed, a tear rolling slowly down her face.

Chapter 19

"A beer, please," Robin asked of the waiter, a surly looking man with a shaved head and the almost mandatory scribble of tattoos across his torso, arms and hands. The man stared at him in what Robin assumed was disbelief, a disbelief that he empathized with entirely, as he was at this moment in time sharing that exact same disbelief. What on earth was he doing in this bar, a scrawny white Caucasian dressed in a tuxedo, in a "back-end of nowhere" Russian bar. The barman, either trying to avoid the trouble he knew he could so easily create, or just impressed with Robin's bravado, turned slowly, walked to the run of waist-high refrigerators behind the bar and pulled out a bottle of beer. Not dropping eye contact with Robin, he bit the cap off the top, spat it in Robin's direction, and placed the bottle gently in front of him.

"10 dollars," said the man in a thick Russian accent.

"10 dollars for a beer?!" asked Robin, not having to read the man's mind to realize he was being exploited.

"Sorry, my mistake," said the bartender. "20 dollars."

Robin sighed, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled two 10s, throwing them down on the table before picking up the beer and walking to a small table in the corner, away from the majority of the bar's patrons. He figured his best course of action was to try to remove some of the attention he'd gathered, before scoping the place out a little and seeing if he could find a way into the back rooms or the upstairs or wherever Clara was being held. He looked around, taking the place in as best he could. The bar was fairly large, but not particularly well stocked, with hygiene and customer service being pretty low on the list of priorities. To Robin's left, near the door he came in through, were a few more tables, all empty, and a jukebox that looked as though it hadn't played a song for the last couple of decades. To his right, alongside the longest section of the bar, were more tables, a mish-mash of "old' and "really old," some indoor furniture and some that were clearly designed to be outside, but had been brought in anyway, probably stolen from outside of a neighboring bar in the dead of night. At one of the tables sat three Russian men, all wearing dark-colored sports tracksuits and a lot of gold jewelry, their skin riddled with tattoos and scars, dead eyes staring at Robin.

They think I'm crazy, he thought to himself as he read them individually.

Better than thinking I'm a cop, I guess. Robin took a sip from his beer, trying to avoid eye contact with the barman or any of the customers, all of whom seemed fascinated with the strange, tuxedo-wearing man who'd called in a for a quiet drink, and he soon realized that the quiet approach wasn't going to work. He needed to be a bit more direct, and placing his drink gently on the table, he stood up and walked toward the back of the bar, past the three men at the table, and toward a door with a Russian sign that he hoped, prayed, was Russian for "Restroom."

Robin found himself in a small, dark room with four more doors, including the one he'd just walked through. Two of the doors weren't locked, and as he pushed the doors gently open, he found them to contain a toilet and a sink each, both rooms vying for the position of most disgusting toilet in the bar, both standing a good chance of winning. Covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve, trying not to breathe in the stench, Robin noticed a filthy, decent-sized window directly above the toilet, and jimmied it open, the yellow streetlights from the outside world now able to shine in through the gap. He pushed his head through, took a deep breath of the fresh night air and headed back into the corridor. Robin looked at the third door, a large metal door with a lock and space for a key, which he assumed would probably lead into the back area of the bar. He stared at the door for a moment, wondering what or who might be on the other side, whether he would be able to physically challenge whomever he might run into, and started to wonder whether there was another option, a better way of getting in. Perhaps he could pretend to leave the bar and climb in through an upstairs window on the outside. Perhaps he should have tried that in the first place. Maybe he should climb through the window in the restroom so he'd not need to be seen back in the bar at all. As his mind began to race, he heard loud voices from back in the bar, along with footsteps moving in his general direction. Deciding that a chance encounter with one of the Russians here would be far worse than one out in the bar, he decided to chance his luck with the third door, and as he began to think about how he could quickly pick the lock, the door gave as he twisted the handle, not locked at all, and Robin quickly ducked inside. He swung the door shut behind him, twisting the lock handle, shutting himself in but stopping anyone who didn't have a key from being able to get through as well. The handle turned, and Robin realized that one of the Russians was on the other side, no doubt looking for him. He heard both of the restroom doors open, then the sound of a window being slammed shut, and a man walking back through into the bar, shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Coward jump out of the window!" followed by uproarous laughter as the small crowd back in the bar joked about the ridiculousness of the situation that they now assumed was over. Robin sighed with relief and turned to look at where he was. The room was dark, and he was unable to make out much at all until he found a light switch.

With the overhead light on, Robin realized he was in the garage, a large metal shutter door at one end, and several boxes of alcohol stacked all the way to the ceiling. There were also huge boxes containing cartons of cigarettes and several clothes racks with fur coats of various styles. In the middle of the room sat a Rolls Royce Phantom limousine, a stunning-looking custom vehicle, stretched to give even more room in the back, with tinted windows and custom wheels. Directly in front of him were three small steps leading down into the garage itself, and directly in front of those steps, about six feet further along, was a full flight of stairs, a single wooden door at the top. Robin quietly began to ascend the stairs, moving in a crouched position, treading carefully, trying to keep one eye in front of him, the other eye on the driver's seat of the car to his right, until he was far enough up to see that the front of the car at least was empty. Assuming that whoever was wealthy enough to own a car like that wouldn't be skulking around in the back seat, he braved his way to the top of the stairs, quietly twisting the door handle and moving through.

Robin found himself in a corridor, an open door at the far end, and several doors along each side. The walls and floors were bare and dirty, and light bulbs hung from the ceiling with no lampshades. Robin knew he was probably close, and the loud voices from the room at the far end forced him to move slowly and quietly, keeping as low to the ground as he could, even though he knew that his tuxedo would provide little camouflage should someone decide to come looking for him. He shimmied along the corridor, stopping at the first door on his right, propping his head up against it, trying as hard as he could to listen through, trying to decipher if anyone was inside. He couldn't hear anything, certainly not over the noise coming from the room at the far end of the corridor, and used his left index finger to plug his left ear, trying to focus. As he did so, a door about five feet in front of him on the right swung open. Robin jolted, felt his heart jump up into his mouth, fighting every urge in his body to not fall over or scream or run, as a large Russian man entered the corridor, turned right and walked to the room at the end, completely oblivious that Robin was there. Robin gasped quietly for air, knowing how close he'd just come to being shot or stabbed or beaten to death, or possibly worse, when he spotted the shadow of someone in far room moving toward the corridor. Robin knew that someone entering the corridor would see him in an instant, and knowing he had no other options, twisted the door handle to his right and fell in, closing the door quietly behind him.

Chapter 20

Clara lay on the bed, cold, tired and alone. She found it ironic that throughout a life where she found comfort in solitude, a life where she was desperate to avoid human contact, now all she wanted to do was be with someone. She'd found a weird sense of belonging, an almost "family' element to the Agency, and Boal had betrayed her, hung her out to dry for reasons that she still couldn't completely understand.

It had to be personal, she thought, unable to pin any kind of political agenda on the situation. Perhaps Boal had decided she wasn't right for the Agency after all and decided that a killing by Russian gangsters would be easier, "cleaner' for him.

As she lay in her bed, she thought about her childhood. Camping out in the forest or fishing with her father, Clara had become something of a tomboy after her brother died, and voluntarily tried to fill the void in her father's life after Nick's death. As she got older and her abilities made it harder to live with her grieving parents, the arguments became worse, the house becoming an unbearable boiling pot of emotions every day, but as she lay spread eagled, awaiting her cruel fate, Clara knew she would give almost anything to go back to those days. She'd walk for miles, travel for weeks if she had to, just to be able to see her parents again and tell them she was sorry, sorry for being so awkward, sorry that their daughter was always so angry, for a reason that they didn't know and wouldn't understand or believe even if they did. She thought about some of the people she'd hurt in her life, the strangers, the random people in the street with money, or cars, or something that she needed or wanted. She'd always convinced herself that it was all about survival, that she'd been dealt a bad hand and that these people were luckier than her, and they'd be able to earn it all back anyway. Still, she'd never truly stopped and thought about the psychological damage, the pain and hurt she'd caused. She cried, not for the first time recently, and wished that Robin was there to hold her and comfort her, also not for the first time recently.

As quickly as the thought of him entered her mind, Robin bowled through the door, ungracefully dropping with a thud, closing the door quietly behind him, gazing around the room with an expression that suggested his entrance wasn't entirely deliberate. They made eye contact, Clara ignoring their unwritten rule about each other's privacy, reading his thoughts and hearing his message loud and clear: Please stay quiet. She complied, flashed him a pained smile, and sobbed quietly.

Robin waited a moment, then rose to his feet, rushing over to Clara, stroking her hair and hugging her close.

"It's OK," he assured her. "I'm going to get you out of here."

"Boal–." began Clara, Robin cutting her off mid sentence.

"I know, he didn't tell us the whole plan," said Robin. "But I've spoken with him and he's got men outside ready to get us out of here, there's just something I need to do first, then—."

"The whole plan?" Clara asked, puzzled. "That son of a bitch set me up."

Robin, who'd been struggling around his pocket looking for his phone, stopped, taken aback by the severity of Clara's statement.

"Set you up?" he asked. "I know he intended from the start for you to be taken, but he's helping me get you out of here."

"He made the call, Robin," said Clara. "The casino knew about me because Boal called them. He told them I've been ripping them off for months, and when they find you in here trying to save me, they're going to think you're part of it as well."

"Are you sure?" asked Robin, beginning to doubt everything Boal had told him. "He's got a car outside with Agency guys in, ready to pick us up."

"So what?" asked Clara. "How do you know they're Agency guys? How do you know they care about saving us? How do you know they're even still there?"

Robin stood up and moved to the window, the large metal bars on the outside making it hard to see outside. He peered through, tilting his head to get a better view. In the distance, at the far end of the street near an intersection, the same black car sat exactly where it had been before. He squinted, trying to catch a view of the men inside, and the mobile phone in his pocket vibrated as he scrambled to answer it quickly and quietly. It was Boal.

"What?" whispered Robin.

"You're in?" asked Boal.

"You know I'm in. You're listening, right?"

"Right. Let me speak to Clara. Put the phone to her ear."

Robin moved quietly across the room and held the phone to Clara's ear.

"Screw you," said Clara. "You set me up, why?"

"This is going to be hard for you to understand," said Boal, "but this has all been necessary, and I'm still on your side. Gorshkov is a brutal, vicious murderer, a monster, and we need you to get a confession from him. He ordered a hit on Helen Berghaus last year, and we want justice for her. That's what this mission has been about Clara. This is why you're there."

"You're lying," snapped Clara. "Why not just tell us that in the first place? Why put us in this situation?"

"Because this situation was the only way you were going to get close enough to him. You think you just call up and make a fucking appointment to meet Andrei Gorshkov? This was necessary, but it's controlled. We won't let him hurt you, but we need this confession, Clara."

The trio all paused, Robin and Clara looking at one another, Robin shrugging his shoulders.

"I don't see that we have any other option," he said. Boal continued.

"The phone that Robin's holding will capture the confession and we're recording it at our end, Clara. All you need to do is get him to talk. Our guys will be in seconds later, and you're both home and dry. After a success like this, you can take your pick of Agency missions."

"With all due respect," snapped Clara, "the Agency can go screw itself after this!" She waited a moment. "We have your word?"

"You have my word."

Robin put the phone back to his ear. "You'd better not be lying, Boal," sneered Robin. "You'll get your confession."

Robin hung the phone up, slipping it back into his pocket. He leaned down toward Clara, pushing her knotted hair gently away from her eyes, tucking it delicately behind her ears, wiping her moist, bloodshot eyes with his thumbs. He smiled sweetly at her.

"I know you can do this," he said. "And I won't be far away. You'll be safe."

He kissed her softly on the forehead, then on the lips, their moment rudely interrupted by the thud of footsteps in the corridor outside. Robin squeezed Clara's handcuffed hand and slid under the bed out of view.

Chapter 21

Robin saw a pair of sneakers first, dirty and scruffy, well-worn, followed closely by a smart pair of dress shoes. He could see the bottom of trousers, nothing more to tell him who each pair of the very different shoes belonged to, although from his previous conversations with Boal he was pretty confident that the dress shoes belonged to Gorshkov. He didn't know much about Gorshkov, hadn't really been briefed on his modus operandi, but he knew he was the top man in a large Russian crime syndicate and figured that realistically, that told him all that he needed to know. After all, he didn't know much about Al Capone, but knew enough to know that he'd never want to mess with him. He was the kind of guy that, had you asked him six months ago, Robin would have told you he was never destined to meet, never destined to simply "bump into" the head of a Russian crime syndicate. Sure, weird circumstance in everyday life might, potentially, just possibly, put you in the same place at the same time, but for most law-abiding citizens, trouble doesn't find them–they go looking for it. As he lay on the dirt and blood-encrusted floor, the vile bed above him, two incredibly dangerous men mere inches away from him, Robin couldn't help but be a little astonished at quite how drastically life had changed for him of late. He thought about it for a quiet moment, before his mind raced back to the situation at hand, and he froze, listening intently to the words the Russians were speaking, and just as intently to the sound of his own breathing. He watched as the familiar legs of one of the chairs in the room pulled up alongside the bed, the smarter dressed of the two men sitting down.

"So, you are ready to tell me who you work for? Enough of the games and, uh, the bullshit. You will start by telling me who this man is."

Gorshkov help up a black and white surveillance shot of a man Clara didn't recognize.

"My security men went through tapes," he said. "These men were there the days we got cheated, these are the men you work with. You think we weren't able to get images from the footage, but here you go. So you tell me, who is this man?"

Clara's face welled up, unable to even fake a name.

"I don't know," she said. "They cheated you and your casino, whoever they are, but not me, I swear. I know you don't believe me, but the reason you don't see me on the footage is cos I wasn't there, and I—."

"We don't see you on footage because you thought you were clever and removed footage first," Gorshkov snapped. He stood up, tossing a pile of black and white images over Clara, turning his back and walking toward the door. He turned, tapping his associate on the shoulder.

"It is shame, pretty thing like you," he said, walking out of the room, "but you will make me a lot of money when I put you out to work."

"Shit," thought Robin, realizing that not only had Gorshkov gone, but their confession had gone with him. He spun round under the bed, looking at the feet of the other man, who had by this point moved to the head of the bed, pausing for a moment.

"Hold still if you don't want this to hurt so much," he said, needle in his right hand. Clara shrieked, straining her entire body to her left, trying harder than she thought possible to move away, the restraints locking her firmly in place. Robin balled his hands into fists, screaming inside but utterly silent outside, aware that one false move would give the game up for both of them, powerless to help. He stared at the Adidas tracksuit bottoms of the man, thoughts racing through his mind about what he could do. Perhaps he could wrestle him to the ground, snatch the needle from him and jab it through his eye, or somehow break his neck. He needed to think fast, and while he couldn't see what was happening on the bed above him while and couldn't read Clara's thoughts, he knew she was seconds away from disaster.

The needle was inches away from her skin when Clara screamed out.

"I have money, millions of dollars, I'll transfer you all of it!'

The thug stopped, as if he was half-expecting her to say something, but wasn't necessarily expecting her to say that. He started to stick her with the needle again before thinking better of it, deciding to spare a moment to follow the conversation a little further.

"What money?" he asked in his broken English.

"My Father is a wealthy businessman, a billionaire. I started robbing casinos as a way of getting his attention, and it just kind of escalated. I haven't spoken with him in years, and he'd pay you, he'd pay you millions if he knew I was safe, I swear!'

Robin waited under the bed, poised and ready to strike, to grab the man and take him down by his ankles, punching, kicking, biting if he needed to. But he wanted to see how this panned out first, and willed the thug to believe her story. The five or ten seconds without movement felt like a lifetime. Then, without saying anything, the thug dropped the syringe and left the room, saying something in Russian, out loud. And just like that, the pair were alone again, silent and still, together but separated by the bed, waiting to work out their next move.

Chapter 22

Gorshkov entered, his pace decidedly more hurried than before, stopping near the bed, the other man immediately behind him. They spoke Russian with one another, the tracksuit-wearing thug occasionally shrugging his shoulders and pointing in Clara's direction. Robin didn't need to speak Russian to know that Gorshkov was not amused.

"Money? You expect me to believe that you have money? A rich Father? Why rob my casino if Daddy can give you everything you ever wanted?" he demanded.

"It was the only way to get his attention," insisted Clara. "You think a man like that comes home and spends time with his kids? He was too busy signing merger contracts in China or screwing his whore secretary to spend time with us. I just wanted to make him notice me," she said, shedding real tears, albeit tears for a different situation to the one she was describing. Gorshkov paused, as if he'd already made his mind up about her, but her story had caught him off-guard. He seemed to be almost pondering her situation, weighing up the pros and cons. After all, it was probably worth at least an attempt at extortion, even if he had no intention of letting her go. She read him and could see that, to an extent, he believed her, or at least he wanted to. She felt a rush of relief, knowing that how she played the next moment would be crucial. She started to speak, but was cut off by Gorshkov, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his cellphone.

"Number," he demanded.

"Number?" Clara quizzed.

"Father. What is number? I will talk to him. Arrange deal with him."

Clara froze. A fake number would throw him into a rage, but all she had were fake numbers, and nobody to answer the call and play along.

"I, uh, I don't know it. But if you just let me go, I could go and speak to—."

Gorshkov flew into a fit of rage, hurling his phone against the wall and shrieking an almost animal roar at the top of his lungs, the sudden crescendo of sounds making Robin jump so hard and so high, he worried that he might have knocked Clara in the bed above. Gorshkov lunged to the bedside table, grabbing the needle and plunging it into Clara's side, pushing down on the syringe. Clara screamed, a loud, deafening, tragic scream that became more somber and defeated as he yanked out the needle, tossing it to the floor. Robin, realizing he'd missed his opportunity to save Clara, balled his face up into his hands and cried. He watched as the pair headed for the door, the thug first, being berated by Gorshkov as they left.

Then Clara spoke the crucial words, as she lay broken, drifting slowly into unconsciousness on the bed above.

"I know about Helen Berghaus.'

The two men reacted very differently to the words. The tracksuit-wearing thug, perhaps unaware of his boss' involvement in the murder, continued babbling on in Russian, only falling silent when he noticed Gorshkov, a look of cold, pure hatred across his face, staring at Clara. He tried to say something to Gorshkov, who shoved him hard, knocking him off his feet and out into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind him. Gorshkov moved slowly, quietly back to the chair, calmly taking a seat. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and began to speak.

"I knew something not quite right about you," he said. "I didn't know what. I feel as though I still don't. But something about you, something told me you were more trouble to me than just a rat who steals money from me."

Clara writhed on the bed above, trying desperately hard to keep her eyes open, the drugs in her system fighting hard against her, dragging her down into a cold, icy darkness of unconsciousness. Gorshkov leant forward and slapped her hard, grabbing a glass of dirty water from the side-table and throwing it over her face, neither having much effect.

"What you think you know about Helen Berghaus?" he asked, his tone becoming less patient.

Clara, struggling to focus her eyes, her head awash with noise and blurred vision, forced herself to respond, Robin under the bed, his phone held out of sight, but close enough to record everything. He pushed the red record button just in time to catch the entire conversation above.

"You . . . you killed her," she said.

"Pig American! What are you, a spy? FBI? CIA?!" He yanked up Clara's dress aggressively, running his hand from her groin up to her chest and out the other end, her back as well, looking desperately for a wire, some kind of recording device. "You Americans think you know everything!" he shouted. "Well, let me ask you this? What would Russian businessman like me want with Helen Berghaus dead?"

Clara heard the words, but couldn't even piece together a sentence to respond. She just stared, dead-eyed back at Gorshkov.

"You think I kill her?" he asked. "You think I ordered my men to kill her?" giving the skilled Agency audio workers more than enough ammunition to piece a confession together. "There is no blood on my hands, my dear," he said, brushing her greasy, knotted hair away from her sweat-covered face. "That was James Friedman's murder. He may not have got his hands dirty, but it was his money that paid for Helen Berghaus to die."

Robin lay under the bed, his body numb with shock, unaware that his disbelief at the situation could hit him any harder than it already had. "Mayor Friedman," he thought, his mind darting back to the day he joined the Agency, Boal taking him on the same bullshit "induction tour" he took every new recruit on, the almost "shrine-like" photos of Mayor Friedman, Chief Commissioner of the Agency. His stomach flipped, the realization that this had all been one huge setup. That Boal wanted his confession, not in some noble act of kindness to a fallen comrade, but as an insurance policy for his boss. He felt himself sink into the filthy carpet as he realized that they both knew far too much now to ever be rescued by the Agency, that the men with guns wouldn't be bursting through the windows anytime soon. He clung onto the one, minuscule, microscopic glimmer of hope that he had left; that nothing would alert Gorshkov to him being under the bed, allowing him the chance to make good his escape and try to somehow take Clara with him.

Then, just as he finished his thought, his phone rang in his hand.

Loud.

Chapter 23

There was no name or number on the screen, just the words "Remote Activated," and a screeching noise, both unlike any ringtone he'd heard before and louder than any ringtone he'd heard before. This wasn't designed to get his attention–it was designed to get the attention of every thug in the building. Robin panicked, hopelessly attempting to muffle the noise, as if the goons, as if Gorshkov hadn't heard enough. Before Robin had even been able to fully understand what was happening, he was being dragged out by his feet, two of Gorshkov's men laying into him with a savage attack. Fists punching his face, feet stamping on his head and ribs, Robin curled himself up into a ball and tried desperately to limit the damage, aware that if he was lucky, he'd die right now and not face a more painful end when Gorshkov had calmed down.

'Motherfucking, FBI rat, Police snitch informant!" Gorshkov screamed, storming out of the room, returning seconds later with a claw hammer in his hand. "Hold him, hold him down!" he screamed, the two thugs making easy work of Robin, prying his bloodied arms to his side, his head dangling as he tried to focus on the scene playing out in front of him. Gorshkov spat in Robin's face before lifting the hammer, ready to swing.

Bang!

Shot fired.

Bang! Bang!

Two more.

Gorshkov froze, his arm, hammer in his hand, still in mid-air, turning slowly to the door.

Then came a flash of dazzling white and an explosion so loud Robin lost all ability to hear anything. As he slowly lifted up his head, a man in all black military fatigues, with a gas mask and a silenced weapon, put down the two thugs before walking casually over to Gorshkov, who'd been knocked a few feet away by the force of the Flashbang's blast and was by now returning to his feet.

'Do you know who you're messing with?!" he asked one last time as the masked man raised his weapon to the side of Gorshkov's temple and pulled the trigger, emptying half of Gorshkov's head onto the floor below.

Robin stared on in disbelief, his mouth open, eyes dull and worn, as much from the beating and the explosion as anything else. He watched the man walk over to Clara, unconscious on the bed, checking for a pulse, before heading back over in his direction.

"Who are you?" mumbled Robin, his words abruptly ended by the butt of the man's weapon knocking him quickly and cleanly unconscious.

Chapter 24

As Clara's eyes slowly began to open, as her vision began to come back to her between the bouts of vomiting and the unbearably painful headaches, she tried to make some sense of where she was, how she'd got there, and whether or not she was actually alive. Her instinct, of course, was to assume that she was, and when she first woke up, she had no real reason to believe she wasn't. But as the memories began rushing back with the image of Gorshkov furiously lunging at her, syringe in hand, the feelings of the putrid drugs taking over her system, Clara became aware that she may actually have died, and that this may be something more than just waking up somewhere unfamiliar. After all, she'd never died before, nor had she ever met anyone who had, so how was she to know?

She twitched, moving her head as much as she could, the darkness of the room making the task of getting her bearings near impossible. She pulled her right hand toward her face, but made it a mere inch or so before it was stopped, handcuffed to something solid. Nothing new there, Clara thought as she began to remember the diseased bed Gorshkov held her prisoner on at the Russian safe-house. But as Clara began to feel around her surroundings with her left hand, she realized she was sitting upright, not laid down, but instead locked to a large metal radiator. She looked for a way to remove the cuffs, failing to find one, but ultimately feeling some light relief that she was no longer in Gorshkov's place, although for all she knew it could have been somewhere far worse. There was little to hear, but the room had an overwhelming smell of damp, as if the place she was being held hadn't been used for anything for a considerable amount of time.

Then suddenly came a "clicking" sound in the distance, followed by footsteps. Clara, beaten mentally and physically from the events of the last 24 hours, did her best to curl up into a ball as the shadowy figure approached her, leaning over her and speaking.

"Hello, Clara."

Clara stared up, her mouth wide open, gasping for breath. The face she could see was almost unrecognizable to her, but as she stared into the man's eyes, those same beautiful eyes she'd seen before, there was no mistaking who she was speaking to. She began to cry heavy-hearted tears and reached out with her left hand, the pair holding hands for a moment.

"Nick," she gasped. "My beautiful brother! Is it really you?"

"Easy now, little sister," said Nick, leaning down and gently stroking her hair. "You need your rest. I swear I won't let anyone hurt you now."

"Am I dead?" mumbled Clara, her eyes as wide as Nick had ever seen them, tears rolling down her face.

He laughed gently. "No, you're not dead," he replied.

"Although you came close a couple of hours back," said Robin, appearing from the darkness behind Nick's left shoulder, a mug of coffee in his hands. Nick smiled softly.

"There's a lot of shit in your system," he said, "if you'll pardon the expression, ya know, the drugs. We need to get it out of you. Luckily it was one injection, so it's not like you're an addict coming off cold turkey, but the down is going to pretty much suck. Which reminds me," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a key, unlocking Clara's cuffs. "I'm sure you understand, I couldn't risk you waking up and freaking out on me."

Clara mustered up a smile, and Nick leaned forward, holding her close for a moment.

"I was told you'd died," said Clara.

"I know," replied Nick. "I promise I'll explain everything, but you need your rest." As he pulled back from the embrace, Clara had already lapsed back into a deep sleep. Nick grabbed some blankets and laid her out gently, as Clara's aggressive detoxification continued.

Chapter 25

As Clara slept in the bed that Nick had prepared for her, her eyelids flickered and twitched as a dream played over inside her head, a dream that involved her brother, something that hadn't happened since she'd been falsely informed of his death so many years before. The dream played over a situation that she'd often remembered during her waking hours, when she'd drift off for a while and allow her mind to wander. She was young, not even in her teens, on a particularly cold winter's morning in New York. Her father had taken her and her brother out to buy groceries, and Clara had managed to cause an argument with a store detective whom she'd read, a guy convinced she was planning on stealing something from the candy aisle. Clara, with the attitude of a sixteen-year old despite her young age, had launched into a verbal attack, a crowd of shoppers stopping what they were doing to watch the young girl and the burly store detective trade blows with one another. Clara's father, despairing at his daughter's seemingly uncontrollable attitude and lack of respect, tried to diffuse the situation by pulling both his kids outside of the store, the altercation loud enough that a passing police officer had stopped to intervene, making an already embarrassing situation for her Dad even worse. To most, it would be a story they'd sooner forget, and Clara had often regretted her naive aggression, nothing more than the result of a young person's inability to cope with their extraordinary gift. But as her father yanked on her arm, as he dragged her out of the store, Clara locked eyes with her brother, and saw him think something that she never forgot.

I know what you're going through–they'll never understand us.

At the time, she'd chalked it up to a silly but well-meant comment, and even the sweetest of words from her beloved brother wouldn't have quelled her bad temper on that particular day, but as the days, months and years went by, the words held more stature. She'd often lie in her bed at night, looking for alternative meanings, trying to "tick off' the options, almost hoping that her brother hadn't had to experience what she'd experienced in his short life. And then she'd wonder, what if he had still been alive, would my life have been different with him there to help me cope? Clara never got her opportunity to ask Nick what he meant, as she would find out later that same day that Nick had been kidnapped and eventually murdered. The dream played through in her head almost as vividly as the day it originally happened, and as she lay in the midst of her dream, she reached out to the young Nick and grasped his hand, smiling back at him.

"It's OK, Clara, you're safe," he said. And as she woke, a much older, much more real Nick was sitting over her bed, and Clara smiled.

'I don't know where to begin," said Clara, holding a cup of coffee in her hands, the reassuring warmth from the cup seeping through to her palms. The trio were together properly for the first time, Clara still groggy from the near-overdose that had been plunged into her body, and Robin had been trying to put some of the pieces together with Nick. Nick sat on a chair, near the window of the dirty old factory they were sat in, close enough to see out but instinctively tucked out of sight. Nick had grown up considerably since Clara last saw him. The Nick Clara saw now was about 6 feet 1, with thick brown hair and a muzzle of dark stubble and piercing brown eyes. He had the same olive-like skin complexion as Clara, and as she'd held his hand earlier that night, she'd noticed they were rough and choppy, the kind of hands that belonged to a man who used them in his line of work. He was still dressed in his military-style blackout gear, although he'd taken the stab-proof vest and jacket off, wearing a tank-top that highlighted an impressive physique that looked more like it had been picked up through years of grueling labor than a few weeks of stomach crunches and pushups. Clara stared at him for a few moments, not reading him, instead using her new-found self control skills to allow him to do the speaking.

"What happened to you?," Clara asked.

Nick smiled, leaning forward in his chair, wringing his hands together nervously.

"Essentially, the Agency got me," replied Nick.

"Boal?" asked Robin, a question that earned him a dark look from Clara, clearly not finished with her time with her brother and not grateful for Robin's interjection.

"Not Boal," replied Nick. "I know Boal, but he came later. I've seen a few."

The pair both looked at him, uncertain of what "few" he was referring to.

"Agency Directors," said Nick, the pair nodding understandingly. "Boal was far from the first, and however much he's told you about the Agency, even if what he told you was true, you probably know only a tiny percentage of the actual truth."

As Nick talked of Boal and the Agency, her eyes fixed on his, she decided to delve into his mind for a moment, her eyes widening at what she saw.

"You have the ability too," she whispered, her eyes welling up with tears.

"We both have," replied Nick reassuringly. "Growing up, I always hoped you didn't. I hoped I was some kind of freak in the family and that you'd have been spared." He paused for a moment, glancing out of the window, as if unsure of what he wanted to say. "I just hope life hasn't been too rough for you," he said. "Well, present situation not-withstanding." The trio chuckled over the much-needed, lighthearted moment.

"So, have you been following me? All my life?" asked Clara.

"No. The Agency essentially kidnapped me. It was traumatic at first. They threatened to hurt me, and if that didn't scare me enough they threatened to hurt you or Mom and Dad. But then after a while, with all of the education, getting to do things I never would have been able to do in a normal school, being around people who knew exactly who I was, what I was capable of, and didn't judge me for it. Even though I knew I'd been taken. . . ." He waited a moment. "I kind of didn't want to come back."

Clara's eyes flicked away to another corner of the room, a deflated look on her face. Nick quickly jumped in.

"I don't mean that I ever stopped caring, or ever stopped thinking about you. I just mean that, life was more livable in the Agency when I was young."

"Could you not have come and found us?" asked Clara. "We thought you were dead."

"For the first few years they just threatened me. They were always nice about it, they never hurt me or did anything bad to me, but they were really clear; if you break out, if you contact your family, we'll find you and kill all of you. That was enough to keep me away from you guys. And then as I got older, and when I broke away from the Agency, I didn't think you'd ever forgive me."

"Broke away?" Clara said, leaning forward. "So you're not in the Agency any more?"

"Not for a long time," replied Nick. Clara gazed at him, then glanced out of the window, Nick snapping his head around instinctively to look too, on the off-chance that Clara might have seen something.

"You've gone Rogue," said Clara, a sudden moment of realization. "You're paranoid. Shit, brother, what have they done to you?"

Nick winced at his sister's affection. "It's better this way. I know it may not look like it, but you have to believe me, this is better." He looked around at the dirty, run-down mess he was squatting in, a deserted factory, almost as if he wasn't even convincing himself. There was a long moment of silence before Clara jumped in and broke it.

"How did you know where we were today? How did you find us?"

Nick stood up for a moment, walking to a far corner of the room and grabbing two black rucksacks, moving a laptop out of each one, powering them up. The screens shone bright with various pieces of software, things Clara or Robin had never really seen before, dials and charts flashing out from the LEDs. He typed away at the keyboard for a moment, glancing at the pair as if they should know what he was referring to. As they looked at each other, unsure of what to make of what was being demonstrated to them, they heard their own voices begin playing out of the speakers, clear as day, a conversation they'd been having with Boal some afternoon. Clara, dumbstruck, leant closer toward the screen.

"You were using surveillance against the agency? How?"

"I learned a lot with those guys," replied Nick, "unfortunately for them. Nothing quite like learning the tricks of the trade and using it against the people who taught you."

"So you were monitoring them before they recruited me? Why?"

Nick stopped typing and leaned back, looking Clara dead in the eye. She'd read his thoughts before he even had the chance to speak.

"They want you dead," she said. Nick scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

"Yeah, pretty much. The Agency doesn't take kindly to people who defect. You kind of reach a point where you know far too much about far too much." Nick looked at Clara, waiting for the penny to drop.

"Kind of like when you find out that the head of the Agency organized for a mayoral candidate to be murdered in a contract killing?" asked Clara.

"Yeah. Pretty much," replied Nick. Clara glanced across at Robin, who'd been sat listening in quietly. "So they basically used us as a way of framing Gorshkov?" said Clara.

"The political heat was mounting on Friedman," said Nick, referring to the Agency boss. "He was good at hiding it on camera, but behind the scenes questions were being asked, fingers were being pointed. They could never link Friedman directly to the murder because he never committed it, but Gorshkov knew he had Friedman in his debt, and he wasn't afraid to exploit it. Gorshkov and his goons were running around New York like they owned the place, because they basically did. Friedman needed a way of getting rid of Gorshkov. Friedman has one of the country's top judges on his payroll, and all he needed was a confession, even if it had to be 'altered.' Gorshkov goes to jail, Friedman can officially distance himself from the crime, and the only two other people who know the truth. . . . ."

"Disappear?" asked Clara.

Nick's look was enough, she didn't need to hear it. She sighed and looked over at Robin, a rush of despair crashing into her.

"Did they choose us deliberately?" asked Clara. "I mean, why me and Robin for this mission? Was that deliberate?"

"You're both good at what you do," replied Nick reluctantly. "I'd like to think they wouldn't use my own sister as bait, but I know them better than that. So yes, you probably were. At least you were, Clara. You were just collateral damage, my friend," said Nick, looking at Robin. "Don't take it personally."

Clara fidgeted in her seat, motioning left to right, looking for a comfortable spot while she thought, but seemingly unable to find one. Her head was clearly full of questions, and she almost felt unable to control which ones were verbalized, spilling out of her mouth almost accidentally.

"We were told you were murdered," she said slowly, and with some determination. "The Police caught your killer. John Harrelson is inside right now, serving a sentence for a murder that he quite clearly didn't commit. Was he even . . . .? I mean, did he even, ya know? Hurt you?"

Nick's shoulders slumped, his head dropping along with his mood. His eyes told a painful story, and he deliberately kept them away from Clara's gaze, choosing to recount the tale himself.

"He was some homeless guy, as far as I know. Nice enough, no harm to anyone. I know I keep saying this, but it wasn't personal. He was the wrong guy, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the agency made him suffer to give them an alibi. They had enough of my DNA on file, hair and blood and that kind of thing. What they couldn't obtain illegally, they either faked or bought. This is what they do. So long as I was in the Agency, where they could keep an eye on me, I was no trouble. And the best thing about someone who the world believes is already dead is that when you kill them for real, nobody comes looking."

Clara looked stunned at the news, the reality of everything she'd grown up believing being a lie. She looked physically sick, as if the magnitude of everything was finally catching up with her. She gazed over at Nick. "Whatever's happened, I'm so happy you're here," she said.

Chapter 26

"'So, uh, you think your brother would be offended if I told him his apartment was a piece of shit?" asked Robin, managing to muster a grin out of Clara.

"It's not his apartment," replied Clara. "Or at least, I hope it's not." She surveyed her surroundings, the damp and mold forming around the ceiling beams, the constant feeling of cold despite the weather outside being warm, and the pair were convinced they'd seen a rat at some point. But Clara didn't care, feeling strangely more at home here in this dank, abandoned warehouse than she'd felt in a long time.

"You must be pleased to have him back," said Robin.

"Uh huh," Clara said, nodding gently. "I mean, yeah, absolutely. . . ." She paused, Robin leaning back momentarily, as if stunned by her negativity. "Yeah," she finally said. "It's just . . . one minute he's dead. Gone. And in my memory, he's a kid. Someone I've not seen since I was tiny. Sure, there was the heartbreak and the pain and the years where I couldn't understand it, but we dealt with it, ya know? As a family, we made our peace with what had happened. And then . . . . Now he's here." Nick was a fair distance away from the pair, his attention focused on the view outside, perched by one of the factory's many filthy windows.

"It's amazing, don't get me wrong," Clara said, almost trying to reassure herself more than Robin. "It's just tough, ya know? I mean, we're like, 'people' now, ya know? Our own lives and backstories and histories and everything."

"Yes," nodded Robin, an ironic smile on his face, "we are definitely "like' people."

Clara punched him playfully on the arm, pouting and turning away from him. "You don't understand me," she declared. Robin waited for a moment.

"I understand you more than you think," he finally said. "You have this person who you love, and then you lose that person. And every day you wonder what they'd be like if you met them now. And because you can never know for certain, you make something up. And it's always the best possible outcome, ya know, the hero or the compassionate person or the person who loves you back. And then when you get to meet that person, no matter what they're like, they're not what you expected." He stopped and looked at Clara. "And that's tough."

"Yeah," she replied, looking over at Nick. "I'm sure he's a great guy. I just hope the Agency hasn't messed him up too much."

"He'll be ok," said Robin. "He seems tough." He gazed at Clara, her eyes looking down in front of her. "What about us?" he asked, Clara looking up at him.

"Us? What about us?" she replied.

"The Agency. I hope they haven't messed us up too much."

"Oh. Yeah, of course. For a moment there, I thought you meant us, as in, ya know, us!"

Robin didn't flinch at Clara's statement, staring straight back at her.

"Would that be so bad?" he asked.

"No! Of course not. Come on, Robin, you know that's not what I meant!" The pair stared at one another, minds blocked off, their eyes scanning each other's for what felt like an eternity. Clara smiled first, leaning forward and kissing Robin delicately on the lips, gently stroking his face with her hands. She lifted herself up on to her feet, stroking his hair playfully as she walked away.

"That's all you're getting," she said. "Besides, we're practically married!" Robin laughed as he watched Clara's exit, playing with the fake wedding ring on her finger as she went.

Chapter 27

It was dark outside, and the lack of lighting meant that the inside of the old deserted factory they were temporarily squatting in wasn't much lighter. Clara had fallen asleep, Robin perched nearby, awake but stuck in a quiet moment of contemplation. Nick had barely moved from his position near one of the main windows for the last few hours, his head pressed against the old brick wall, refusing to approach the window "head-on," for fear of who might see him or what they might do. Robin, stirring from his meditative state, watched him for a few moments, before calmly asking him, "Where are we, exactly?"

Nick, not taking his gaze away from the window even for a second, replied. "Not far from the Russian bar, maybe a few blocks. When I found out about their plans for you tonight I staked the place out, I've been here a couple days."

"Shouldn't we get moving?" asked Robin. "I mean, I don't know about you, but the last place I'd want to be right now is this close to the scene of a major shooting involving Russian mobsters. A shooting that we caused."

"Sometimes the best place to be is the place that's close," replied Nick. "Nobody would ever expect us to be here, they'd assume we were miles away by now. Besides, this place is secure, nobody's going to come looking."

"Then why won't you take your eyes away from the window?" asked Robin.

Nick turned his head to face Robin for a moment.

"I don't know," he replied. "Something just doesn't seem right." He turned and moved across the room, walking straight over to Clara, giving her a firm but gentle nudge to wake her up. "Come on," he said. "We're going to use the remaining darkness of night to get going. If anyone went looking for us, they'd be well away from here by now, and anyone who's not already looking for us won't be planning on starting any time soon." Nick grabbed his rucksack, packing up his various belongings, his laptops and the few items of clothes he had lying around. Clara got to her feet, walking to Robin, who put his arms around her, kissing the top of her head gently. "Time to move you two," said Nick, slinging the rucksack over his shoulders and leading them to a large metal door at the far end of the warehouse, a particularly dark part they'd not ventured into during their short stay. Nick grabbed a rusty old bolt-lock, twisting it to pull it out of position, and quietly rolled up the shutter just enough for the trio to escape, moving off into the darkness outside.

The streets were eerily quiet, the yellow of the street lights bathing the sidewalk, the night air still warm considering the time, somewhere around 3a.m. The trio walked about 200 yards away from the factory, arriving near the same road that lead to the Russian bar, albeit a fair distance further away. There were no cars, no people, no nothing, which Clara found to be both comforting and terrifying at the same time.

"What's the plan?" she whispered to Nick.

"We need a car," said Nick, changing his black flack jacket for a brown sports coat and baseball cap he had in his rucksack, in the hopes that a passing motorist might not be completely terrified by his appearance. Across the other side of the sidewalk was a petrol station, illuminated but empty of customers, with only a guy working the nightshift behind the plexiglass window, bored and watching something on a small portable TV. Still crouched out of sight, Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone, more rugged and with a much larger aerial than the smartphones Clara and Robin were used to.

"Nice phone, bro," joked Clara.

"It may not be as fancy as yours, but it does something that yours can't," he said, keying in a six-digit number, the phone beeping a few times before a green light flashed three times. "This is a totally secure line," he said. "Nobody can listen in; I'd trust my life with this phone." He thumbed a few numbers, then put the phone to his ear.

"Hi, uh yeah, could I get a cab, please?" Clara and Robin looked at one another, bemused by Nick's arrogance, the very idea that he would just "call them a cab" to escape, while her brother continued. "The JetStream Gas Station. We're just outside it, as soon as you can, please." He clicked to put the phone down, then turned to look at his puzzled friends. "Trust me," he said. "We need to stay legal for as long as we can, we need to keep our noses clean. There's a place I know back in the city where we can steal a car and use it to get a little bit cross-country. So long as we're always moving, and we're always jumping into a different car, we'll be fine."

The three waited for fifteen minutes or so, talking quietly, nervously, anticipating the journey ahead. They'd planned to head East, back over toward New York. All of them knew people there whom they could call on for support, whether in the form of a couch to sleep on for the night or a wedge of cash they could borrow, and they knew it was about as good as they were going to get while they figured out what life after the Agency was going to look like. Clara looked over at the JetStream gas station on the other side of the street.

"I'm gonna use the ladies' room," she said, half-pointing at the gas station.

"Do you have to?" asked Nick.

"What do you mean, do I have to? As in, do I need to go? Cos why else would—."

"No," snapped Nick, "I mean do you HAVE to go over there right now? We're trying to keep a low profile here."

Clara's look turned from passive to confrontational, of noncompliance. She puffed, a kind of "screw you" sound that a teenager would have been proud of and walked across the street in the direction of the gas station.

"Well, don't get into trouble," shouted Nick, his request falling on deaf ears.

The automatic glass doors of the gas station slid quietly open as Clara approached, the air conditioning hitting her face, clashing with the sweat from the warm night air, a shiver shooting across her body. In front of her was a relatively sprawling MiniMart, especially for a small gas station in a quiet part of town, stocking every snack and junk-food product a local junkie or alcoholic could possibly desire. The strip-lighting from the ceiling was bright, and Clara had to squint her eyes for a moment as she walked in, following the signs toward the restrooms at the back of the store. A loud Asian voice shouted out from near the cash-registers, "You buy something!" the store owner angry at Clara's liberty-taking attitude.

"Sure, on my way back!" she shouted, heading into the restroom undeterred, being as quick as she could.

As she exited moments later, heading back toward the exit, Clara looked around the aisles, products stacked up high, and noticed that she was no longer alone. Two women, wearing evening dresses, but untidy looking, were talking quietly to one another as they eyed various bags of potato chips. One of the two, the younger looking woman, maybe in her late 20s, looked at Clara. She had thick, dark hair, knotted and dirty, and wore far too much makeup on her prematurely aged skin. Clara smiled, but the woman didn't smile back, and although Clara struggled to make sense of what the woman was thinking, the cold shiver hit her again, only harder. Something felt not quite right, an uneasy sensation. Clara walked briskly toward the door, ignoring the cries of the shopkeeper, furious at being lied to, and began to jog, still in her high-heels, toward Nick and Robin.

As she approached the pair, she noticed the lights of an oncoming car illuminate the street where they were standing, the reassuring orange glow of the cab box atop its roof. Clara breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she realized her ride to at least relative safety was here. Nick had moved toward the driver, sticking his head down to the window, confirming they were who they said they were, before opening the door for Robin, who gladly hopped in.

"Wait there, sis," chirped Nick, running around the cab to grab the door for his sister. Clara got to the cab, ready to throw herself in, as more light bathed the trio, more headlights, a car leaving the JetStream station. Nick kept his head facing away, lifting his left hand up to Clara's chin, an attempt to tilt her head away in the same manner, but Clara was transfixed on the passenger of the vehicle, the same young woman she'd seen in the gas station. Clara smiled again, aware she probably wouldn't receive a smile back, before turning her attention momentarily to the driver. She sighed, her stomach balling itself up into a knot as it had done so many times lately, as the all-too familiar face of Mikhail Lebedev stared back at her, his eyes wide with shock, shouting and waving from behind the driver's seat.

Despite all the training, despite the days and weeks spent honing her mind into a slick, controlled, polished surveillance and interception device, Clara's instinct as she saw Lebedev was simply to turn away, to glance back at the cab in the naive hope that he might not have seen her or that he might decide not to bother her on this particular occasion. She just looked away. As she dropped down into the seat of the cab, pulling the door shut behind her, Nick in the front passenger seat and Robin to her left, came the unmistakable, deafening sound of a bullet shattering the rear window, ripping through the middle of the back seat and tearing into the upper back of the unfortunate cab driver, who slumped motionless against the steering wheel, the car's horn blaring out loud. Robin and Nick jumped in complete unison, the bullet shocking both of them as they flinched, eyes bolting around in an effort to work out what was happening. Clara didn't spare a second, shouting "Drive Nick! Do it now!"

Nick faced back to look at Clara, his sister hitting him hard on the arm, gripping his head with her hand in an effort to force him across to the driver's side. He saw Lebedev outside the car, walking toward them quickly, gun cocked and ready to fire.

BANG! Another shot, this time burying itself low into the car, not making it far enough through to damage the passengers. Nick knew their luck was running out. He reached over the driver, yanking at the handle to his door and pushing it open, ready to force the unfortunate man out onto the sidewalk, but he was dead enough that he slid out onto the cold, unforgiving concrete. Nick jumped into his seat, jerked the gear shift into place and hit the gas, glancing in the rear-view mirror just long enough to see Lebedev fire one last shot before running back to his vehicle to take pursuit.

Chapter 28

"Where are we going Nick?!" screamed Clara for the fourth time in quick succession.

"I don't know!" he yelled back, eyes fixed on the road ahead, only breaking his gaze occasionally to confirm that the sedan belonging to Lebedev was indeed still chasing them. They flew along the desert road, past houses and stores, joining the freeway to try to shake Lebedev off, but having no luck.

"Nick!" screeched Clara.

"We're gonna have to head back into the City," he said. "The people, the crowds might help us lose him. We're sitting ducks out here."

"Just get us away from him!" yelled Clara, doing her best to stay out of sight while keeping an eye on the swerving car behind them. Lebedev wasn't the best driver in the world, but his car had the power that their cab didn't, and Nick knew that a car chase wasn't going to end especially favorably for them.

"He doesn't look like any agency guy I've ever dealt with," yelled Nick from the front seat.

"He's not Agency. He's, uh, well. He's a Russian mobster. I kind of robbed his daughter a while back, and he's not happy about it."

"So the whole 'staying legal' to keep our cover was never really going to work for you, huh?" quipped Nick. "Robin, any Mafia members you've double-crossed I should be aware of?"

Clara turned to look at Robin.

"Robin?" She reached out to gently prod him, playfully coax a response out of him as she'd done so many times before, knowing even before she'd touched him that something wasn't right. She pulled back her hand covered in blood. "Oh my God, Robin!," she shouted, pulling his head down and stretching him out on the back seat, his eyes sealed shut, blood dripping from his jacket. "He must have been hit when Lebedev was shooting," cried Clara. "What do I do?!'

"You need to find the source of the bleeding," yelled Nick, still trying desperately hard to outrun Lebedev. "Take his shirt off, find out where the bullet's gone in."

Clara yanked firmly on Robin's jacket and shirt, lifting it up toward his head, feeling around his abdomen, thumbing back the blood for long enough to see the fresh wound. "It's gone into his side," she shouted out.

"Has it come out the other side?!"

Clara gently rolled Robin over a little, looking underneath him until she saw an exit wound. "Yeah," she shouted. "Clean out the other side. That's good, right!?"

"It means we don't have to worry about getting a bullet out of him. It also means that the bullet tore right through him, and right now he's bleeding out. You need to get the bleeding under control, you need to stop the bleeding! Here, use my jacket!"

Nick shook and wriggled his way out of his jacket, reaching back into the car to hand it back to Clara, who promptly tore and pulled at the garment, wrapping the strips around Robin's waist, doing her best to stop the blood from gushing out.

"It's not great, but it should hold," said Clara. "He's not conscious, what are we going to do?"

"I know someone," replied Nick. "But we need to get rid of this prick first!'

As the bright lights of Vegas approached over the horizon, the two cars screeching and swerving across the road, Nick turned to his sister.

"We'll get through this."

Chapter 29

The cab screeched into the parking lot of one of the large, commercial casinos in Vegas, Lebedev still in hot pursuit. "I really hope you have a plan!" shouted Clara, still looking back at Lebedev, only a few feet behind them.

"I hope so too," shouted Nick, stopping the car next to the valets and hundreds of people pouring in and out of the casino's front door, launching himself out of the vehicle, shouting at the top of his lungs:

"GUN! HE'S GOT A GUN!" Nick pointed in the direction of Lebedev, who'd stopped his car and was halfway out of the driver's side, his weapon drawn and clear for all to see. A woman a couple of feet away from Nick screamed, yanking at her husband's arm as the pair dropped to the ground, alerting more people, crowd mentality and panic beginning to set in, setting people running and yelling in every direction. Three security guards from the casino standing by the main door pulled out their tasers, aiming them at Lebedev and yelling at him to drop his weapon. Lebedev turned, aiming his pistol at one of the guards and firing, catching the man in his shoulder, the guard yelling and dropping to the floor. The second guard pulled the trigger on his taser, the metallic prongs launching in Lebedev's direction, but missing the target. Then a gunshot, and Lebedev's body jolted, his eyes rolling back in his head as he dropped hard on the concrete.

Clara jumped out of the car, staring at Lebedev's bloodied body before turning to look at Nick. She locked onto his eyes, reading his thoughts: The Agency. As the screams rang out from the crowd and people fled to their cars, another throng of people running into the casino for safety mingling with more people heading out to see what was going on, Clara swore she heard the sound of helicopter blades nearby. By the time she'd formulated the thought, by the time she'd been able to comprehend whether the sound was real or not, a commercial helicopter roared into sight, hovering about 300 feet away, a man with a sniper rifle pointing out of the side.

"Run!," yelled Nick, "Now!"

"We can't leave Robin!"

Nick looked around, trying to find an escape route and spotting a busy restaurant complex just the other side of the eight-lane road, in a mass of fast-food joints and family diners. "Head to the restaurants!" shouted Nick. "We can lose him among them. He can't land here, and the second he's out of sight we can get away! We'll get Robin before we go, I promise!' The pair paused for all of a second, barely turning in the direction of the restaurant complex before another gunshot rang out, an unknown man walking out of the "Taco Shack" in front of them dropping dead on the sidewalk. The pair stared at one another in disbelief, Clara looking up at the helicopter, suddenly recognizing the man behind the rifle. "Boal?" she yelled, more in disbelief than anything else. "How did he know we were—."

"He's reading us," shouted Nick, grabbing his sister by the hand and yanking her down into cover behind the cab.

"I'm sorry, what!? He's READING us? How can he, I mean, from there, and, but he can't—."

"Come on Clara!," snapped Nick. "You think the head of a government unit like this would allow himself to be around people like you without having some tricks up his own sleeve?"

"Oh, my God!" screamed Clara, looking up and around, trying to spot the helicopter that by now was circling them, desperately trying to get a clear shot. "He's been able to read me the whole time? He knows everything there is to know about me!"

"He doesn't need super powers to be able to do that. He's had a file on you for years."

"What do we do?!"

"We're going to have to outrun him!"

Nick tugged on Clara's arm, hoisting her quickly up to her feet, opening the door of the cab and forcing her in to the back, jumping into the driver's seat immediately afterwards.

"Try to keep you and Robin low, bury into the floorboard if you need to!" Robin slammed the gear lever down hard, pulling away with more screeching and tire burning than he ever thought possible from a taxi cab. The car roared out of the main casino entrance and out onto the busy road, tearing through an intersection on a red light, narrowly avoiding a collision in the process.

"You need to get us out of here!" shouted Clara from the back. As the car shuddered and vibrated, thundering along the main road, she lifted herself up a little from the back seat, glancing cautiously out of the rear window, just as a bullet slammed into what was left of the rear windscreen, missing her by inches and burying itself into the front passenger seat. Clara screamed and dived back down.

"Stay down!" ordered Nick. "He's too quick. I don't know how to outrun him, I don't know how to–." Nick stopped mid-sentence, the cab still hurtling along the main road, the neon-bright lights of The Diamond Palace, one of Vegas' newest and busiest Casinos on the strip, glowing in the distance. He lifted his left wrist up, looked at his watch, a wry smile on his face. "I might have an idea," he said. "You're going to need to hold on." Nick pushed down on the accelerator as far as it would go, as if he were trying to reach his foot through and out the other side of the vehicle, pushing the car beyond its limits. The helicopter kept up its pursuit, Boal signaling with his hand and yelling at the pilot to turn and circle, desperate to get a better shot, glancing down the scope every couple of seconds, squeezing the odd round off here and there, each one coming painfully close to hitting them. Nick swerved across lanes of traffic, mounting the sidewalk for a second before careening back onto the tarmac, heading in the direction of The Diamond Palace. A marvel of modern architecture, a modern mess of glass and metal, the casino stood proud against its older and more established neighbors, an investment by rich Saudis looking for somewhere to play when they visited the USA. An enormous crowd of people were gathered in an enormous outdoor area, seated in a huge open-air theater, talking, laughing, drinking. Nick swerved hard on the steering wheel, the car veering off of the main road, smashing through the security barrier outside of the casino's parking lot, circling around the enormous mess of parked vehicles.

"What are you doing!?" yelled Clara from the back seat.

"Trust me," said Nick, glancing again at his watch, looking at the helicopter through the rearview mirror. "Any second now, it will be any sec—."

Just yards away to their left, on the other side of the parking lot fence, the night sky shone bright, almost popping with color, bright pinks, yellows and reds scorching the black sky. "Fireworks?!" shouted Clara, puzzled. Nick ignored her cries, slamming the brakes on the cab and turning just in time to see the helicopter carrying Boal roar to a halt, the bright lights of the greatest nightly firework show on the Las Vegas strip exploding just feet away from the chopper. They watched as Boal retreated into the main cab, the pilot clearly straining to keep the helicopter airborne, the sound of sirens and warning beeps clearly audible even from the ground. The helicopter spun and almost stalled in the air, the pilot managing to bring it under control to come down about 400 yards away from the cab, landing hard on a car lot of parked cars, but stopping safely. Nick and Clara laughed, a boisterous, laugh-out-loud kind of laugh as they watched the scene unfold in front of them, before Clara tapped Nick firmly on the shoulder. "Go, we need to help Robin," she yelled. Nick floored the gas pedal, the cab screaming back out of the broken barriers, out on to the main road, Boal nowhere to be seen, stranded back at the crash site. They drove quietly for about ten minutes before either of them uttered a word.

"Where are we going to go?" asked Clara. "We can't go to a hospital."

"I know someone," said Nick, reaching back and stroking Clara's face gently with his hand.

"It's great to see you again, sister."

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