Page 27 of Eyes in the Shadows

I climb into the nondescript rental car—dark blue Toyota Corolla, small for me, but just old enough to evade notice—and navigate the roads that have gotten slippery as the daily highs have started hovering around 28?. The city gets worse as I drive, with more and more condemned row-homes and potholes, until suddenly the landscape opens up. Businesses become only one story and have parking lots. Trees line the sides of the roads. Large chain superstores become the tallest things around. The abrupt change from poorest-part-of-town to suburbs is almost jarring.

A few more minutes, and I’m turning onto roads that have names like Wisteria Drive and Normandy Lane. Houses space further apart, yards widen, fences go up. I keep driving. Soon, the houses disappear altogether behind long curving driveways flanked by young trees and walls of evergreen hedges for privacy. Our rental is the last house at the top of a cul-de-sac.

I punch my code into the keypad on the pillar and press my thumb to the print scanner Wes installed. The gate slowly swings outwards towards me. It’s part of a 12’ wrought iron fence that encircles the whole property, of which the mega-mansion sits smack dab in the middle.

That thing is a monstrosity of stone, glass and wood–four floors with an elevator, ten bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, full gym with steam bath/sauna and hot tub, mini movie theater with a projector and recliners, chef’s kitchen, sun room full of plants, two-story library with a grand piano, game room… Whoever built it gave themselves no reason to ever leave.

I like a big house, but I’d never even think to do all this with my money. And I’ll admit that it’s well designed, but loudly decorated. The people who live here clearly like to surround themselves with things that remind them of just how much money they have. I think I remember Wes saying they’re “wintering” in the Caymans.

I set down my bag at the base of one of the sets of stairs that flanks the foyer. I never got the two staircases thing—is one for going up and one for going down?

I head for the kitchen because I’m starved. Wes is sitting at the glass table against the wall of windows with his laptop and an energy drink. He doesn’t look up when I enter the room, just continues moving his fingers across the keys almost faster than I can track. “Hey,” he greets distractedly.

“Hey, Wes,” I say, going to the fridge. It’s cavernous, but far from empty. The only trouble is, almost everything in here needs to be cooked to be edible and I don’t have that kind of patience. I peruse the shelves and pull out someone’s leftovers. “This yours?”

He doesn’t answer, so I peel back the lid and give it a sniff and it makes me wish I had any other option. But I don’t, so I eat the soggy broccoli and unseasoned chicken cold, just to fill the void. Then I move to the coffee machine so I can wash it down.

“What are you doing here?”

I don’t need to turn around to know exactly whose angry, Russian voice that is. But I do, because I’m not afraid of his ire. “I needed a workout and a change of clothes.”

I also need a cup of coffee from this ridiculous Italian machine. I’d knocked it, then I’d tried it. And even though Wes had to translate and then print instructions for us, I don’t even care. Hotel coffee tastes like dishwater and this thing makes real espresso.

Dimitri’s frown hardly ever wavers, but it deepens now as he eyes the mug in my hand. The Bear was his code name when I first met him, and it’s damn fitting. His size alone would be intimidating enough—topping out at about 6’8” in boots, bulky muscles, long limbs—but add the scar that curls back from his forehead and through his short buzzed black hair, and the icy blue of his eyes that mirrors the coldness in the expression he always wears… he’s one hell of a war machine.

But he’s not infallible. He crosses his arms over his barrel chest, bringing my attention to the bullet wound near his shoulder—the gauze is gone, so it must be healing well.

“No, you need to fix this situation and find out where they are moving the guns.”

“Relax,” I say, bringing up a map on my phone. I send the pin to our secure group chat, then repocket it. “That’s the new place. They moved it quickly.”

The new storage location is a literal storage unit. It’s past where I can see from my hotel room, on the other side of the city, so I’ve been away from my room with a view more than I like. But I did my due diligence and surveilled long enough to confirm that it’s definitely where they moved it all.

“And it’s not going to stay there very long,” Wes adds. He jerks his head to the side, cracking his neck and giving us a flash of the ink below his neckline, then pushes his laptop forward and drains the rest of the can next to him. “He got nervous, sold the whole thing for half.”

“Half?” Dimitri repeats, nonplussed.

Wes’s eyes cut to the left, thinking. “57% of the original asking price.”

I whistle. Both at the human calculator and his calculations. “He got really nervous. One buyer?”

Wes nods, then pushes away from the table to make his way to the fridge. He grabs another energy drink.

“Do we know when is pickup?” Dimitri asks. His grammar always slips when he’s deep in problem-solving mode.

“Not yet. I’ve got my spiders on it, so we should know when they set up the details.”

I smirk. Wesley’s spiders. Spiders. On the web. Internet folk that he trades with in expertise and secrets. He scoffed when I told him he should call them spy-ders, since they’re basically sending him intel acquired through dubious means. He said adding a second layer to a pun is overkill.

“Who’s the lucky buyer that got the deal of the century?”

Wes shrugs. “Haven’t pulled to the end of that thread yet; I’ll let you know when I get through the chain of encryptions and dummy accounts.”

Dimitri nods, then turns to me. “James, stay on the new location. I want to know who goes in and out, when, what kind of security measures, any movements—“

“The usual,” I nod. Normally it chafes at me a little when he acts like he’s our commander. But he’s injured, his cover is blown, and he’s clearly antsy about notbeing out there. Plus, there’s a kind of unspoken agreement between us that Big D calls the shots when he’s the one sticking his neck out there.

He sighs, a pained look crossing his face. “I will assist Wesley in monitoring the audio feeds.”

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