Escaping Death

Chapter 2

For those of you who read the prologue and chapter 1 after Flames, this is officially new content!

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Ace

"T, are we all set for tonight's meeting? Did we get a location yet?"

Tate doesn't bother to look up from his phone when he responds to me, his focus remains intently on his screen. "Yes and no. No to the first, yes to the second."

Always with the word games making my fucking head spin. He knows I hate the riddles, it wastes time I don't have and only leaves me agitated and with a migraine.

"Tate," I bark at him to snap his focus off of his device for five seconds, "English, please."

Tate begrudgingly turns his head in my direction, peeling his eyes away from his phone at the last possible second. "We got a location for the meeting you're referring to. They want to meet out by the mill."

I probe him with an arched brow because I know there's a 'but' punctuating his sentence.

"But, we just received a request from another client. The notes were that it was an urgent matter, money is no object — meeting needs to happen tonight."

"Location?"

Tate scrolls through his phone, tabbing in and out of spreadsheets and other files to find what he's looking for. "Caligo. It's a club here in the city. I think Dean and Eli have been there before." A smirk creeps at the corners of his mouth as he says this but whatever private joke he's grinning about he doesn't share it with me.

I inhale a deep breath, heating the air with my inner flames before blowing the smoke out of my nose as I think about how I want to handle this. Dean jumps over the back of the couch and lands next to Tate, giving him a small bounce that momentarily jostles his grip on his phone, earning Dean a death glare from Tate. Eli follows in behind him coughing dramatically as he fans the air to dissipate the smoke.

"We'll need to split up. I can't blow off this meeting, it's been set for weeks. And this new one has me intrigued." I can't put my finger on why, but my wolf agrees with me that this isn't a meeting we will want to miss.

"You take Dean and Eli to Caligo, H and I can handle the mill."

"Oh fuck yes!" Eli cheers obnoxiously and fist bumps Dean victoriously.

Tate's eyes are still focused on the screen as he scrolls through making his notes but the tension in his jaw doesn't escape my notice.

"You don't approve?" I challenge him to argue with me.

"It's not that." He turns his body and perches himself on the armrest of the couch, now facing me directly and awarding me his full, undivided attention. "If this were a regular assignment it wouldn't be an issue. But these are both extremely guarded clients, on whom I can gather next to no information even despite my probes in the Underdark. I would prefer to be at both meetings, but if you insist on us making both then we have no choice but to split."

He may be rightfully concerned, we look to him to organize and assess the jobs we take on, he researches and vets all the clients before we meet so we never have to walk in to a meeting completely blind – and now I'm asking him to do just that with not one but two prospective clients.

Ultimately, though, it's not his decision. It's mine. And I say we hit both.

"Good. We're heading out now then. Text me with problems." Turning my back on them to walk away I shout one final command over my shoulder, "Dean's in charge and remember you're at the club for a job not to fuck around."