Blindsided (Sentinel Securities) (15 page)

“Sir? Do you want me to inform the Sentinel people?”

“No. I’m going to handle this alone. I’m beginning to wonder about the integrity of that company, but that can wait. Right now my immediate concern is in retrieving that formula. We will deal with Sentinel later.”  

  He disconnected the call and looked back through the window at the steady flow of taillights weaving their way along the busy Surfers Paradise esplanade. If there was one thing he could not abide it was people stealing from him. Declan stole from him. That formula was going to make him a fortune—it would revolutionise the way he could manufacture and supply his steadily growing clientele of drug suppliers. With an endless string of nightlife and the influx of school leavers due within a few months—he was set to make more money in the space of a few weeks than his legitimate businesses made in a year.

    As for Sentinel Securities—he would be getting to the bottom of that as soon as he dealt with Declan. The other thing he would not abide was people who backed out on a deal. He’d been counting on the professionalism of this company to perform a service—he had a strange feeling they had developed some kind of annoying conscience at some point and were dragging their heels over completing this job. If he discovered they had betrayed him—they would also be feeling the true extent of his wrath.

****

  Brie came back downstairs to bring the guys lunch. It kept her hands busy if not her mind. She’d given up trying to watch a movie upstairs after breakfast, it was no use, nothing could take her mind off the fact that she’d somehow gotten mixed up in a whole mess of trouble. Casper and Gracie were absent and she had no idea where they’d gone to. The others spent most of the time between the office in discussions and hanging around, monitoring the radio. It seemed there was always something to be done—despite the fact there seemed to be a lot of downtime around the place. The men were always busy—be it cleaning a rather impressive, if not nasty, array of weaponry, working on machinery or tinkering with cars and bikes. No one ever seemed to be without something to do.

“Boss, we’ve got trouble,” Casper’s voice came over the radio later that afternoon, bringing the men from the office.

Mac strode across the garage floor and snatched up the handset. “What’s going on?”

“You’re never gonna’ believe who just arrived at the Three of Swords club house.”

“Who?” Mac frowned, his voice little more than a wary growl. 

“Demetriou.”

Mac let out a long string of profanities. “What the hell is
he
doing there?” he demanded sending a dark glance up at the other members of his team. “Stay on it—I wanna know what the hell’s going on, Casper,” he snapped into the mic.

“Well, this pretty much confirms Demetriou isn’t buying into our delaying tactics,” Stone put in.

“The bastard’s been keeping tabs on us with his own men,” Mac snarled.

“Why would he even bother hiring anyone to do this if he had his own men? Especially since he had to be aware that you’d find out what was on that memory stick?” Brie asked with a confused frown.

“Because he didn’t want any of this connected to him if something went wrong. It would all be on us,” Nick answered in an irritated tone. “I knew this guy was bad news. Damn it Mac! This isn’t what we signed up for. I’m not goin’ to work for criminals,” he snapped, pushing away from the table angrily.

“Just calm the hell down, Stone.”

“Calm down? We’re caught in the middle of a bloody crime syndicate!”

“Bikers just loaded Cruz into the back of Demetriou’s limo,” Casper’s voice came over the radio cutting through the tension in the garage.

“Sonofabitch!” Mac swore loudly, making Brie jump as he thumped his fist down on the bench violently. A quick glance around at the others saw that no one else seemed to bat an eyelid at his outburst—apparently this was not an unusual reaction to bad news! “Follow them. I want to know what he’s up to.”

“Roger.”

Brie sent a worried glance Jason’s way and he looked up sensing her anxiety. “What will this mean for Declan?”

“Nothing good, I’m afraid. The Swords were brutal—but they needed him alive. Demetriou is a lot smarter. He knows we were on to them and that by now we probably know more than we’re letting on. He won’t waste his time keeping him alive if he can’t give him what he needs.” 

“You can’t just let them kill him…hand over the stupid memory stick and call the police.”

“You want to risk them manufacturing that stuff and putting it out on the streets?” Nick asked quietly.

“Well of course not…but is it worth a person’s life? Hand it over to the police…there has to be something you can do.”

“Demetriou’s got connections—
lots
of connections. The guy just made some kind of deal with a bunch of bikers…do you have any idea how much clout he must have to be able to make an offer big enough for them to agree to something like that?” Mac snapped.

“You can’t just let them kill him. You
have the formula; trade it for Declan."

"Why would we trade anything for that piece of scum?”

"Because it's the right thing to do."

“Are you forgetting that the guy gave you and his kid up to those bikers? He was more than willing to sacrifice you and your daughter’s safety to save his own hide."

“You’re preachin’ to the choir, pal. I know exactly what a lowlife, arsehole he is—but he’s still a human being.”

“You just have to trust us on this, Brie,” Jason said from beside her, quietly.

“
Trust you?
If you stand by and let your
client
kill someone, how can I trust you? How can you even be considering options here
?
There’s nothing to think about! It’s money over a life.”

“It’s business,” Mac barked.

“It’s bullshit!” Nick muttered, walking out of the garage, leaving the others to continue their standoff. 

****

As the elevator doors slid open, Jason saw Brie pacing the lounge room floor upstairs in his apartment.  She wasn’t happy—and he couldn’t blame her. If he’d had a choice he’d have rather kept her away from this side of the business. He understood how difficult it was for a civilian to come to terms with the ugly side of human nature. Mac sometimes forgot that not everyone had built up the certain level of detachment they’d been trained for in the military. He didn’t like to believe they’d become
indifferent
to human suffering, but you had to keep a personal distance, emotionally, from the situation or you’d go insane. When you were trained to do what they did, there was no place for philosophy. There had been times when he’d disagreed with decisions someone higher up the food chain had made, but he did his job despite his personal views because that’s what they were trained to do.

“I thought you might like to call Lucy,” he said placing his phone down and leaning against the kitchen bench. When she didn’t meet his gaze, he gave a small sigh. “Look, I know you’re upset—” he started and she sent him a glare. He braced his arms behind him on the counter as he watched her continue to pace. “But to a certain extent, Mac’s right. It is business. Yeah, I know,” he added as he caught the lethal glower she threw at him, “It’s gonna’ sting like a bastard to hear, but in our line of work sometimes we have to accept there’s gonna’ be casualties.”

“This isn’t a war, Jason,” she snapped.

“Isn’t it?” he counted. “I hate to tell you sweetheart, but the streets out there, are more violent than any war zone overseas at the moment. Drugs are big business—there’s a lot at stake. Control over production, distribution, territories…it’s not run by a handful of street dealers and backyard chemists…it’s highly organised and it’s makin’ a lot of people,
a lot
of money. And whenever you have this much money and power at stake—there’s going to be violence. Cruz played these guys off each other. He knew the risks—he had too. He got greedy and stupid. This is no innocent we’re talkin’ about here Brie—you have to know that,” he accused gently.

“Of course I know that,” she spoke sharply, coming to a stop at the glass windows. “But you and I are from two very different worlds. You think nothing of taking a life while I can’t turn my back on trying to save one.”

“I do my job—but don’t mistake that for taking it lightly. I do what has to be done. There were times when it was a very fine line between right and wrong…and sometimes when you work for the government it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad. But I did what I was trained to do. Now we work for ourselves, we get to pick and choose our jobs and we
try to be the good guys
.” He didn’t like that look she was beginning to form. He never explained himself to anyone—ever. People either accepted what he was or they didn’t. But for some reason he felt a need to explain himself…he wanted her to understand how sometimes he’d struggled with orders…not often—most of the time the objective was clear and he had no problem doing his bit for the world by eradicating terrorists who had no qualms and very few principles about who they took out or how. Nope, for the most part he slept easily at night with his past. There were times though that his past did come back to haunt him—but he could deal with all that too…he didn’t buy into all this crap about sitting around and talking about his emotional state. He dealt with life in his own way. If the good points outweighed the bad—then he could live with that. But he hated seeing that look of betrayal…or something else…disgust maybe?

“And when that line gets blurred? You justify that as an acceptable casualty of your war?”

He held her accusing gaze and shrugged. “Life isn’t a movie. Sometimes it goes wrong and we just have to make the most practical choice based on what we’ve got to work with.”

“I guess that’s the fundamental difference between you and me,” she said quietly. “I can’t turn my emotions on and off based on what happens to be
practical
.”

“There’s no place for emotion when you need to keep a clear head and make decisions.”

****

“Keep telling yourself that, Jason. Maybe that’ll make all this okay.” She turned away from him and blinked back hot tears. She had feeling this conversation had been about more than just the right and wrong of Sentinels stand on the whole Demetriou/ Declan issue. Why would she have even thought a man like Jason Nash could be remotely interested in more than a brief fling? She wasn’t expecting him to fall head over heels in love with her—but she also wasn’t used to being a one night stand either—and maybe that’s where all this hurt feelings thing was coming from. Still it stung more than she’d expected to hear his lightly veiled warning that he wasn’t a man who allowed emotions to get in the way of things.

Her heart felt heavy as she heard his soft sigh, followed by the sound of his retreating footsteps and the soft whoosh of the elevator doors sliding shut as he left the apartment. 

Maybe she needed to take a leaf out of his book—at least then she wouldn’t be taking his silent rejection to heart the way she was now.
Toughen up Princess,
she told herself firmly.
You don’t need the complication anyway! This is a good thing!
She ignored the little voice inside that called her a liar—clearly
that one
was crazy!

She put the call through to Gladys and waited as it rang a few times before being picked up. Hearing Gladys’s voice she could almost imagine things were back to normal—except for the fact they weren’t!  She tried to focus on chit chat for a little while, but she really wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all the woman who somehow always knew exactly when she was trying to hide something from her.

“She’s fine. She’s having an absolute ball here with the other kids—they’re inseparable. Just concentrate on yourself and do what those lovely young men tell you. How’s that nice, Jason boy doing?” Only Gladys could get away with calling a man as rugged as Jason Nash, a
nice
boy!

“They’re all being very
professional,
” she said firmly. She didn’t need any helpful matchmaking taking place on the sidelines.

She spoke to Lucy for a few minutes but she seemed more interested in watching the cartoons that were playing on the television that Brie could hear in the background. She tried not to feel too disappointed by her daughter’s obvious lack of interest in talking to her. At least she was happy and that was much better than had she been crying to come home on the end of the phone. But was it really so hard to at least get a few moments of meaningful conversation before being handed back to Gladys when she’d obviously taken up enough of her TV time?

Disconnecting the call, she turned to put the phone back on the bench when it started to ring. Hoping it was somehow Gladys calling back to tell her something she’d forgotten and not an awkward invasion of Jason’s private life, she answered the phone cautiously.

“Hello, Briella. It’s a relief to know Lucy is happy and settled isn’t it?” came a strangers voice over the phone, sending a trickle of dread through her entire body.

“Who is this?”

“I want you to listen to me.
Very carefully.
I know exactly where your daughter is.”