Shift

by Sidney Bristol

  * * *

  Emery stared at his screen, tapping keys at random. The gibberish on his screen couldn’t pass for any known language. He couldn’t focus past the noise of Tori moving through the house. Her presence felt like a constant pulse against his skin. He’d always been aware of her presence, but this was getting ridiculous. He could work under any circumstances, anywhere, anytime. Except right now.

  Tori stepped out of the bathroom, a paper bag tucked under her arm. He watched her in his peripheral vision while he continued to pretend to work. She glanced left, then right before opting for one of the guest bedrooms for whatever task she was about to perform.

  The Boca bungalow was a mostly open concept design. From the dining area he’d taken over as his workstation he could see into almost every room. More importantly, he had a clear view of the three entrances to the house, the street out front, and the driveway. The rear of the house was more or less protected by the neighbor, a canine cop for Miami-Dade, who kept several big German shepherds loose in his backyard. The neighbors on either side were an elderly couple and a white-collar jackass, respectively. All they needed to know was that Emery and Tori were another set of renters in a long line of faces.

  The house wasn’t an FBI asset, though.

  It belonged to Emery. He’d taken it for payment for a side job and set it up as a vacation property for out-of-towners to rent, though he left it vacant more often than he let it out. One of the consequences of his deep cover was performing the duties he was renowned for. He’d accumulated a small wealth of assets, but right now the house was the most valuable of all. On paper, it was owned by an alias Emery had used on occasion. It was as untraceable as he could make it.

  Tori paced from one bedroom into another, carrying the paper bag from the hardware store with her. He needed to get her clothes, toiletries besides what they’d scrounged together at a gas station, and more supplies. The stops were unavoidable. They couldn’t go backward. Their homes were potentially compromised. They could only move on, but each time Tori showed her face created another opportunity for the hit team to find her, be that by their digital footprint or a sighting.

  The thought spurred him to action. He brought up the sites where Matvei’s flunkies had checked in and also the dispatch log of police officers at the Miami airport. According to flight records, Matvei Kozlov’s plane had landed almost an hour ago. From the TSA logs he could see that the security agents had acted better than Emery hoped, and taken the Russians into custody. It wouldn’t last. Chances were, they’d already been released, but it still meant Emery and Tori had a head start. He’d love to log into the NSA’s tracking capabilities, and were he operating under the FBI’s sanctioning he could. But he wasn’t. They were on their own.

  He had no way of tracking the Russians in real time unless one of them used their social media accounts. It was the best he could do without a tracking device or tricking the hit team into downloading a GPS app. Even they couldn’t be that stupid. Last he’d been able to identify, the Russians were in the airport, on the road, or already hunting.

  Emery brought up the app he used to keep tabs on the crew on his new phone. The image zoomed out until he could see most of Florida. There were several dots on the screen clustered to the north, which would be the group with Aiden. The others were in relative proximity to Miami. He zoomed in until he could see the spread of locations. CJ might not realize Emery’s defection quite yet.

  “Any developments?” Tori dropped into the chair across the table from him, one arm draped over the back, her legs crossed.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is that the only word you know?”

  “No.” Emery inhaled. Growing up he’d been the unwanted second child. His input was never wanted and the opportunity to be involved was rarely provided within their family unit. He knew his conversational skills left something to be desired, especially considering how chatty Tori could be. For her, he’d make an effort. “It looks like Roni and the others should be getting to their hotel soon.”

  “What about the necklace tracker? Is it working?” Tori leaned forward, her hand lifting to her neck.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She pushed to her feet and turned a circle. “I’m going to get a drink. Want something?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She muttered something as she strode into the kitchen. He was acutely aware of her movements, the way she made almost no sound when she walked, the sway of her ponytail and how she avoided touching any surface, probably to avoid leaving fingerprints.

  He had to snap out of this. They had a big problem on their hands and too few resources. If he couldn’t solve the matter of the Russians, he could work on something else to clear his mind for a bit. Like figuring out what was going on with the rest of Michael Evers’s operation.

  Before he’d been tasked with the jewel thieves, he’d been following a new lead.

  Michael Evers had dozens of front companies they hadn’t known about. Many of them were completely separate operations from his primary drug trade, the people operating them totally cut off from the rest of the organization. It was how he’d hidden his import-export businesses from the FBI for so long. They could thank Madison for pointing them in a new direction to investigate how the drugs and goods came into the country. But how was Evers’s operation still going without someone in charge?

  The most reasonable thing to figure out was where the money was coming from. People wouldn’t continue to do a job if they weren’t getting a check. So who was running the show?

  “Here. I made lemonade.” Tori set a glass of yellow liquid with ice cubes swirling in it down on the table, inches from his laptop.

  He plucked one of the napkins left over from their breakfast order and set the glass on it, an arm’s length away from the valuable electronics.

  “I guess there’s nothing much I can do. I don’t have anything with me.” Tori sipped from her glass and stared out the front window.

  Was he supposed to respond?

  It was easier to admire her from afar so he didn’t have to puzzle through what to say or do, how to act, or worry that he was out of line. Women spoke another language, as far as he was concerned. Even Tori, who was a different creature from other women, was a mystery to him.

  “You know, if you don’t talk to me I’m going to start going stir-crazy.” Tori stared at him, a slight wrinkle on her brow.

  Well, at least she was throwing him a bone.

  “There might be some tools in the garage.”

  “What am I supposed to do with them?” She rolled her eyes and sat across from him.

  “I’m sure you could find something to tinker with. Too bad we couldn’t bring the Tesla here or you could mess with that.” The car was too recognizable to keep here. Besides, they needed an escape car stashed somewhere in case of an emergency.

  She went very still, the only movement a slight widening of her eyes.

  “You’d let me mess with the Tesla?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  She was the best damn mechanic they had. Even Aiden, who’d been under the hoods of cars since he was a kid, couldn’t match her with a wrench when it came to the cars they built from rusted-out frames. It was a gift. She took something ugly and worthy of a junkyard and made something beautiful.

  “Man, I want to, but we can’t risk our only ride being out of commission.” She lifted her hand to her face, tapping her fingers on her lips. “What are you doing? Anything I can help with?”

  His knee-jerk reaction was a firm no. The laptop, his gadgets, they were his. Everything had a place, all things worked in an order, there was a process he followed.

  “Maybe.” He clicked through a few of the records he’d downloaded to leaf through. The data they’d confiscated from Evers’s many machines before the cops started collecting evidence was extensive. The man liked his records to the point Emery was star
ting to suspect the real leads were buried in a thousand useless documents intentionally.

  “What is it you’re working on? Or is there a reason you’re ignoring my question?”

  “No, just concentrating.” He sat up and met her gaze.

  “Should I leave you alone?”

  “You don’t have to.” He didn’t normally shy away from conversation, but with Tori it was always a struggle to know what to say. She didn’t fit into any neat box in his life. But she had told him to talk to her. He gestured at the screen. “I’ve categorized most of the data we took from Evers and I’m looking for the flow of money.”

  “Oh? Money talks?” Tori leaned forward, elbows on the table.

  “Exactly.” He paused, taking a second to organize his thoughts before he continued speaking. This was going to be work. Even CJ didn’t expect him to converse more than necessary. “Most of the front companies are either false or haven’t been used in so long there’s no record of them. I’m trying to determine which ones are still in operation and where the funding is coming from.”

  “Dang. What about the company that was flying into Everglades Air?”

  “Prestige Shipping. They closed shop the day after. Completely shut the operation down. Haven’t been able to track them. Whoever is running the import-export business is good.”

  “That sucks. What do we know about the rest of these shell companies?”

  “Almost nothing right now. There’s too many of them.” He grimaced.

  “What do you think is going on?”

  “Nothing for sure, but I’m starting to think it’s intentional.” And that worried him. What if this mountain of information was specially designed to slow down the Feds—him—while Evers implemented some kind of getaway plan?

  “How long have you worked for them?” She turned her glass, drawing in the condensation.

  “Seven, almost eight years.”

  She didn’t reply immediately, and he was fine with that. It gave him the chance to simply look at her. She’d dressed for a day at the garage, wearing a charcoal-gray tank top and jeans over steel-toed boots. She’d let her hair down in the last ten minutes, which was unusual, but she had an elastic band around her wrist, ready to solve that problem. He liked her hair down. It had a gentle wave to it and framed her face in a manner that softened her features.

  “Can I ask you a question?” She didn’t look at him.

  Christ, she could ask anything of him and he’d do it, but that was probably something best kept to himself.

  “Depends.”

  Her gaze flicked to his face and she frowned. “You could speak in complete sentences.”

  “Ask me the question.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it.

  What bomb did she have to drop on him now? He waited, muscles tensing while she seemed to gather her thoughts.

  “Why do you limp sometimes?”

  His knee didn’t hurt so much as ache in remembered pain. He shoved the memories down before they could whack him senseless.

  Damn. He should have seen that coming.

  Emery sat back in his seat. How much to tell her?

  “I had an injury. There was substantial damage to the joint. The limp is more muscle memory than anything else.” The shrink at Quantico had told him when he was ready to let go of his past, the limp would probably fade away. The only problem with the doctor’s theory was that Emery had already let his past go.

  She balled up a napkin and threw it at him.

  “I can tell that, jackass. I mean, how did it happen?”

  He’d deliberately misunderstood her question, postponing this answer. It wasn’t a secret, but it was tied to his shame. The necessary people knew his history, but beyond that he didn’t bother to share it, allowing people to come to their own conclusions. But this was Tori. For some crazy reason he wanted her to understand, even if he hated telling her. He propped his elbows on the armrests as he sifted through the threads of events that led up to his injuries, trying to pick the best place to begin.

  He gathered his thoughts, busying his hands by flipping through several tabs, refreshing as he went. “You’re aware we were all selected for this operation because we could fit the roles Julian wanted.”

  “Yeah.”

  Opening those memories was akin to slicing his wrist just for the fun of watching it bleed. He might tell himself he was over it, that it was all history, but it was a lie. The residual ache was gone, but the betrayal was still there.

  “My brother got mixed up with some guys he met at South Beach and came to me for help. I helped him. And he skipped town after taking out a loan from the same guys, in my name. I couldn’t repay them so they took their due out of my hide.” Those were the exact words. They’d played on repeat in Emery’s head all through the extensive recovery and rebuilding of his knee, not to mention how long it had taken all the other injuries to heal.

  “Your brother?” Tori gaped at him, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  “Not all siblings are like Roni.”

  She shook her head. He could feel her automatic denial, but it was the truth. His brother, the wanted child, was a scumbag.

  “What . . . What was he doing? How did you get involved? Why?”

  Though her questions didn’t follow a logical order, he’d expected Tori to ask. Usually Emery didn’t share the story at all, much less answer the first question, but it was Tori. And he’d just spent the morning ripping into her family history. It was only fair. He inhaled slowly and leaned back farther, glancing at the front of the house at the same moment a neighbor strolled by with her fluffy purse pooch on a leash. Thing looked more like a stuffed animal than a real dog.

  “How could your brother do that to you?” Tori leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands in her hair.

  She was truly distressed on his account. He hadn’t expected that. The knowledge dislodged something within him that went knocking about in his chest while the muscles contracted slightly as warmth spread through his torso.

  He pushed the emotions aside, refusing to feel anything when it came to his brother or family.

  “My brother was always the favored child. He probably thought I could handle whatever they threw at me, because up until then I had.”

  “What did he say after?”

  Emery stared at her a moment. “He hasn’t said anything.”

  “What? Is he . . . is he dead?”

  “No, last I looked in on him he’d moved into our parents’ garage out in Deerfield, so he’s very much alive.”

  “Wait—so you’re saying he’s never spoken to you after all that went down? Even now?”

  “Correct.” Anger was a hot, dangerous thing that felt as though it wrapped around him, showering him with the toxic rage that had for a time threatened to make him go too far.

  “Emery. Whole sentences. Please?”

  It went against his nature to talk about himself. His parents had made sure to impart the knowledge to him, from a young age, that no one cared about his story, and though intellectually he knew that wasn’t the case, the little boy inside of him still clammed up in moments like these, expecting nothing more than the sharp tongue of his mother or the backhand from his father. But Tori wasn’t either of those people, and she was nothing like his brother.

  “Helping my brother meant getting involved with some bad people. My brother skipped town, down to the Keys, holed up, and let me take the fall for the skimming he’d been doing. He knew he was about to get caught, so he got a loan in my name, to shift the blame, and left. These guys, they knew it was my brother, but they still held me responsible. They made sure to tell him what they did. I know the cops talked to him at some point, but that’s it, really. I haven’t spoken to my brother since then.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “My parents called a couple of times. They believe it’s my fault, that I led him down a dark path. He was always their favorite. I was the accident.” The echo of his mother
’s voice flitted through his mind. Her words had long since lost the ability to cut.

  “Emery.” Tori had one hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide. Maybe he’d spoken too much, shared more than he should have, but he wouldn’t take the words back. They were the truth of his history. Someone might as well know.

  Chapter Five

  Tori wanted to jump across the table and wrap Emery in a tight hug. He wasn’t exactly the hugging sort, so she remained in her seat, hands clasped tightly together.

  Not only had his brother betrayed him—but his family blamed him? She couldn’t fathom such an awful thing. Sure, it wasn’t as if she’d had a perfect family. Her mother was out of the picture before Tori could remember, and her father had subjected Roni and her to a torturous upbringing that had left scars on her soul. But that was her weird life. Emery, the others, they should have what she didn’t. Warm, loving families who worried about them.

  “It was a long time ago,” Emery said quietly.

  “But still, that sucks.”

  He simply shrugged.

  Her heart hurt for him, for what kind of life made him accept the betrayal so easily. Her father might have been a cold son of a bitch, but he’d provided for his daughters. Not always in the expected manner, but they’d had food, a home, and they hadn’t died. He’d given them the tools to survive, and survive they had.

  Emery’s laptop chimed. He sat up, peering at the screen, and started clicking away. She let it go, not wanting to force him to talk. Though she might chat away with her imaginary Emery, the real one was far more closed off and silent. She couldn’t imagine why he’d actually answered her, but she treasured the fact that he’d been willing to share.

  “Something happen?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.” He sat back, frowning at the screen.

  “Not exactly what?” She didn’t think it could be anything to do with her sister, but her heart beat a little faster and she tugged on her hair. The sitting and doing nothing wasn’t her style, but she didn’t want to abandon the crew that had become her family.

  Emery’s gaze rose to her face, and though he didn’t smile, there was a fleeting sense of humor in the way the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Whole sentences?”