part0116

Stevens wasn't the kind of man who was all that selective about the work that came his way. His firm was relatively new, anyway, and he wasn't in a position to be persnickety about who wanted his services. He had left the military and had more than a few years in the private sector to his name. People had told him he would make more money if he branched out and worked for himself.

They had all been the kind of people who were interested in having him on the payroll themselves. Considering the obscene amount of cash he had made working for private security companies, that was saying something.

And damned if they hadn't been right. Three years after he cut away from the business and started out on his own, he cleared more than he had as an employee to the tune of six figures. He could look into selling his firm and retiring in another couple of years.

It helped that he had connections from his time working as an employee. It was important to cultivate relationships with the people you worked with as well as those you worked for, even while an employee. When he had parted ways with the company that had employed him, it had been with the assurances that they would send any freelancer work they had his way, which was really all he needed to hear from them.

They were good people—solid people—and kept their commitment to send all the freelancing recommendations his way. That had certainly helped with his retirement ambitions.

Molina had been one of those who hadn't even needed to be recommended to him. The ultra-billionaire liked to do her own research and find the people who worked out best for her. He wasn't surprised or even arrogant in saying that if she wanted work done in the Midwest and western areas of the US, he was the man for the job.

He had the best people working for his firm, and when they weren't enough, he had enough connections with the freelancers in the area to be able to supplement his resources.

There had been a mission from her not that long before that he had thankfully turned down. For one thing, it hadn't been from her directly—which meant she might not even be involved—merely someone who worked for her. Secondly, they had to capture a small civilian family.

While Stevens would never claim to have much in the way of morals, there were certain things he didn't do. Involving families in a capture-not-kill situation would always be a problem since it involved people he didn't know much about. Those who weren't civilians tended to have enough of a history that he could get a good picture of what they were capable of.

Prolonged involvement with civilians meant that there was more time for something to go wrong. You always knew what professionals would do but not what amateurs would do. For one thing, they tended to call the police, while pros disliked having law enforcement involved.

He felt safe in saying that he had made the correct decision in leaving that bounty for someone else. They had ended up annihilated by a pro who protected the family and who went on to destroy the other team that had tried it. Word on the street was that the man who had laid the bounty out for Molina had been dealt with as well to take the money off the table. Further intelligence had told him that it was a team that had gone after Banks, although not much was known about that yet.

His connections were mostly situated on the west coast, while the attack had happened on the east. Still, the fact that the money had been withdrawn without any paydays processed said all it needed to.

Thankfully, she was involved this time. She had already paid his upfront fee, ready to shell out more if it was needed. He would definitely not overcharge her, though. She was a good client, sent a fair amount of good, rich work his way, and it was a cash cow he fully intended to milk for as long as possible.

Of course, he had needed to bring some of his freelancers into the mission. He had enough muscle on his team already and didn't need to bring outsiders in for that, but the technical support that had been required for the operation could only be called in from the outside.

Chaos was the guy's online handle, and Stevens wasn't sure if he liked the man. They had worked together before but it had always been from a distance, far enough away to keep the human aspect out of their relationship. Admittedly, he was a one-of-a-kind talent, but he appeared to know it. To his mind, he was an arrogant little shit who couldn't be older than twenty-five but acted like the whole world owed him everything.

He would make sure they wouldn't need to work with him in person again. Without a doubt, he wanted to have those skills on his side instead of with the competition and would be willing to pay for it too. The kid looked like he was more comfortable on his own ground anyway and was simply made up for it by being an asshole.

"Christ, lurk much?" Chaos asked and glared at Stevens. In fairness, he had peered over the kid's shoulder, but he was entitled to at least have a basic idea of what he was doing.

Or at least make him think he had a basic idea. The asshat worked on three screens and a laptop and Stevens honestly couldn't tell what was happening on any of them.

In fairness, he wasn't great with all the IT crap. It was why he had hired the kid in the first place. Next time, he would be hired to stay in his room and work from there.

"Sorry, I’m simply wondering what the fuck you're doing here," he said. "And wondering if you've moved past the twenties, using lines like that."

"Hey, man, no need to hate," Chaos responded. "You need my skills so let me talk however the fuck I want. Do you have any complaints about the use of said skills?"

"Then don't hate," the younger man cut in and shrugged. He hadn’t bothered to turn his attention away from the screens in front of him for the full exchange. "Let the C-man do his work."

"You have to know how that sounds, right?" he asked and shook his head.

"Of course, I do," Chaos said, laughing. "Why the hell do you think I use it?"

Stevens opened his mouth to say something, but he blinked and shook his head. He had no idea why he spent so much time with this, and frankly, it didn't matter.

There was no point in antagonizing the glorified technical support—which they needed to track the burglar, of course, but still merely support. He wouldn’t go out there and put his life on the line for the team. Once they had the man located, he wouldn't be used for more than simply making sure that whoever ran interference for the burglar wasn't on their back as well.

It had all the makings for one frustratingly long night. The man had disappeared after the footage had come up, but Chaos had decided he would try to track them using the footage from the traffic cams in the area. Someone in the position of the man they were hunting wouldn’t run any red lights as he needed to remain as unseen as possible, but he would still be in the area.

And with the city as abandoned as it was at this time of night, there was a reduced number of cars they actually needed to track.

Four dozen, from the looks of the screens, Stevens noted. Given that they were talking about a city with over a million occupants, it wasn't that much, but it was still enough to cause a headache. Chaos didn't look like the stress was telling on him, though. He had programs running the tracking of the cars, and all he needed to do was select which of the people needed to be ruled out from their little search.

"Something tells me our guy doesn't work at a Seven-Eleven, so I guess that rules him out," the tech said, having narrated everything in order to impress his employer. "He probably doesn't live in the suburbs either, so we can rule him out too. We're down to about three dozen cars. Easy, right?"

"What the hell do you want us to do about it?" one of Stevens' muscle men asked. They had begun to get annoyed, not only at the youngster’s attitude but the fact that they waited for him to give them a target.

Stevens could see why that was infuriating since he felt it himself, but there was no need for animosity to build in his team.

"I don't know…maybe stand there, slack-jawed, and watch me do the impossible?" Chaos asked and glanced at the rest of the muscle. "Or stand there and not understand. See, that's why IT guys think anyone who doesn't at least have a decent grip on Java is merely a Neanderthal."

He knew he’d have to step in. The idiot had to know that as skilled as he was with his computers, being an asshole would get him torn to pieces by the people he antagonized.

If word got out that the IT folks who worked for him were killed, no one would work with him again. That was the most annoying part of freelancing, of course. Reputation was everything, not only for his clients but for the people who would work with him.

Having to kowtow to people like Chaos was one of the downsides. There were a few, but the upsides more than made up for it—mostly with zeroes added to his bank account, but that was neither here nor there. Right now, he needed to step in as his people had begun to surround the kid, who merely stared infuriatingly at his screens with a small smile on his face.

"Okay guys, back the fuck off. Go check your weapons again," Stevens ordered and the men nodded, eased away, and headed toward where they had their weapons stashed. He remained with the younger man. "You need to start rethinking your business strategy, kid."

"Why is that?" Chaos asked and looked at him. "I'm the best in the business and you know that. You need me on this operation."

"You're obviously not the best in the business," he retorted. "The best in the business is the person who's covering for our burglar since they're running you in a merry circle. There are other people in the business too—those who might not be as skilled as you but charge far better rates and are less antagonistic to the people they're working with."

The IT man clearly didn't like having his flaws pointed out to him. He also didn't like that the person on the other side of the computer had blocked all the ways to find the burglars, and he knew that he'd been lucky to intercept the footage from the patrol car attack before his nemesis had.

But, as Stevens well knew, he had a point. Chaos had more than only a paycheck on the line here. He was up against one of the best, and that meant he needed to bring his A-game. It explained why he was being such an ass, but the man could work without being an asshole.

He didn't want to say his survival depended on him acting a little more like a civilized human being, but given the dirty looks his boys still directed at the hacker, there was really no telling what might happen.

"Now sit there and give us someone to follow. And for your own safety, shut the fuck up," Stevens said.

Chaos didn't reply. Maybe he knew he was right, or maybe he had a lead he needed to work on. The hacker did shut up, however, which meant that he no longer needed to play nice. He moved away to the corner where his laptop was open, still playing the only footage they had of the burglar.

"Hey, Jackson, get over here," he called to his second in command, a tall, bald bastard who was nearly a foot taller than he was. "Help me out and look at this guy. What are you seeing here?"

Jackson narrowed his eyes and studied the footage intently while the lean man dealt with the cops. "He's fast. He was ready for a fight almost before the cops pulled up. He had every step of the fight played out in his head before the cop even approached him. He could have killed those guys if he wanted to, but he didn’t. Instead, he left them alive for some reason. That’s a nice little custom piece he has there too. I'll bet that's not even on the market yet."

"Conclusion?" Stevens asked.

The man shrugged. "The guy's a pro. Maybe he's working with an agenda, which is why he didn't kill the cops. He's slick, though, and he has the right skillset. I'd say special forces, probably American from that particular style, although definitely not Marines."

"How do you think we'll be able to defeat him?" he asked and rubbed his chin in thought.

"Change the rules of the game—put him on his back foot and force him to ad-lib," Jackson said and folded his arms in front of his chest. "Once he doesn't know what he'll do next, we'll have a split second to pin him down somewhere and make him suffer. It'll only be a second, though."

"A second's all we need, honestly," he said as a car pulled into the warehouse they used as a base.

They would definitely never run an operation like this from his firm's headquarters, not when they would do shit that was this illegal. Especially when they brought people in from the outside.

The man who stepped out of the car was the sixth member of their team—not counting Chaos aside—and he had worked from the police front and tried to get everything that had been passed along to them back to the team.

"Jesse," he said in greeting to the smaller, stouter man. "What do you have for us?"

"Honestly, the cops are fairly lost about it," the man replied and shook his head. "I needed to feed info to my contacts to get them to connect the two wounded cops to the break-in. After that, all they really had was a sketch and witness reports from the folks who were there when he broke in."

"Let's see the sketch." He took the tablet from his man's hand and compared the two.

"It looks nothing like him," Jackson muttered and narrowed his eyes.

"No wonder these cops are completely fucking clueless." Stevens shook his head in disgust. "Oh, well, their incompetence is our gain. At least we won't need to work our way around the boys in blue this time."