Page 1 of Duality (The Archers #1)
EVELYN
T he fire escape creaked dangerously underneath me as the body next to me shifted.
“If you don’t stop your damn fidgeting, I’m going to push you off this fire escape,” I hissed softly under my breath.
“I think that would defeat the purpose of stealth,” a low voice chuckled through my ear comm. “Although I agree. Danny, every time you move, you’re sending up a bat signal that you two are up there.”
Danny huffed next to me. His bulky frame shifted on the fire escape again, sending an ominous creak through the air. “I’m sorry. Not everyone was in the military like you, Grace. It’s hard to turn a living, breathing human into a statue if you’re not in a fairy tale.”
“Mmhmm.” Grace, one of my lieutenants, hummed through the comms. “Eve’s never been in the military.”
“Why don’t you two leave me out of this and focus?” I rolled my eyes at my cousin and Grace’s arguing. If they could do us all a favor and fuck already, that would be amazing. “They’re going to be out any minute.”
I desperately wanted to shift positions myself, but I didn’t dare.
This op had taken months to pull together, and I wasn’t about to jeopardize it, even if my legs were falling asleep.
Exhaustion burned the back of my eyes, every blink feeling like sandpaper as I fought to stay awake.
I was ‘burning the candle at both ends’ as Izzy would say, but I could sleep when I was dead.
As if reading my thoughts, Izzy’s voice came through the comms. “You know you didn’t have to join us tonight, right, boss? We could have handled it so you could have gotten some sleep.”
“You know that would never happen,” Danny huffed.
I could practically hear him rolling his eyes next to me.
My cousin—well, all my lieutenants, really—were starting to get huffy about the permanent bags under my eyes.
It didn’t matter. I was the leader. The responsibility fell on my shoulders. Especially with missions like these.
We were staking out a popular new nightclub that had quickly garnered the reputation of being the hottest spot in town.
That wasn’t the only thing it had a reputation for, however.
We had been tipped off that the manager was drugging women and supplying them to rich pricks, no questions asked.
We found out because one of the girls reported it to the police.
The police brushed it off because of who the rich pricks were, but our contact in the department flagged it and reached out to us.
We tracked down the girl, and after hearing her story, my blood had boiled.
No one deserved what she and her friends had gone through.
The owner made threats about coming after Brittany after she reported it to the police, so we had her safely ensconced at one of our safe houses while we prepared for this op.
After months of careful infiltration and information gathering, we were ready to make our move.
The manager was careful; I would give him that.
He didn’t do it too often, but we managed to work out a pattern.
Izzy was parked out front, taking pictures of every person who entered the club and feeding them back to Liam, who was back at HQ running his facial identification software.
He had flagged three of the rich pricks who had been involved in previous assaults as being here tonight.
I had protested it, but we ended up sending three Archers undercover as party girls to get close to the pricks.
Those were the jobs that I used to do, but now the risk of someone recognizing me was too high.
If word got around to my other job… Well, that would cost us in ways I didn’t want to imagine yet.
So I gritted my teeth as Grace confirmed from inside that Angela had made contact with one of the pricks and was sitting on his lap.
Izzy continued her gentle nagging like we weren’t trying to run a full-blown stakeout. “How long do you think you’ll be able to balance both lives before something happens?” Before you make a mistake is what she meant.
I rolled my eyes. This argument with them was a familiar one. Was I only averaging about three hours of sleep a night? Yes. But was the information I was gathering from my day job valuable? Also yes. I was careful, and after six years, I was very good at keeping my two lives separate.
“As long as I need to. When we cut the last of the rot out of the city, then have this discussion with me.”
Izzy’s rebuttal was cut off by Grace’s words. “He’s taking her outside. Fuck, I didn’t see her get drugged. He must have slipped something in her drink rather than having the manager do it.”
“Fuck.” I prayed to whatever deity was listening that Angela would be okay. “Maya, are you in position?”
A shadow moved on the club’s roof. Maya—the last of my lieutenants and our…PR person probably best described what they did—replied, “In position.”
Maya didn’t usually get involved in the action, but there were no cameras in the alley and no time to install them when we intercepted a message from the manager to one of the pricks this morning. The camera in their hands was going to capture the proof we needed to hang these assholes.
The door to the club slammed open, and three figures stepped out.
One of them held up another slight figure.
When my eyes adjusted, I gritted my teeth as I recognized Angela.
She was clearly drugged, her head lolling listlessly against the man’s shoulder.
I recognized him as Cory Parker, the son of a corrupt judge in the city.
We had been watching his dad for a while but only recently realized that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The other two men were his private school buddies, Edwin Baker and Devin Brown.
Liam’s deep dive into their background showed a laundry list of charges swept under the rug; the girls and their families paid off by their wealthy parents.
Cory propped Angela up against the wall and muttered something that had Edwin and Devin laughing.
Flashes of memories had my muscles stiffening as I forced myself to be still.
We wouldn’t let them hurt Angela, but we had to get proof.
Luckily, Cory and his buddies were either so sure no one would disturb them or so confident in their ability to get off without any charges that they started loudly discussing what they wanted to do to Angela and how much she looked like the other girls.
Danny’s body stiffened and his arms trembled.
I could practically feel the rage pouring off Danny, and I bumped my hip into his slightly to focus him.
Cory forced Angela to her knees and unbuckled his pants. When his hands reached for her, I called it. “Now!”
Danny and I rolled off the fire escape with a clang, landing on the balls of our feet but still making enough noise to draw their attention.
I let my hand drift to my face once to make sure the Halloween mask was secure, then I charged at them.
The sight of two masked figures wearing scary Halloween masks had Cory shoving Angela away and scrambling back towards the club door.
I winced as her head hit the wall behind her. We needed to get her out of here.
“Retrieve the package,” I said through the comms.
“On it.” Tires screeched over the comms as Izzy peeled away from the front of the club.
I focused on the pricks in front of me who were still trying to run away.
Grace stepped through the club door and stood in front of it. Arms folded in front of her, she was dressed in all black and wore a similar mask to Danny and I did. She was like an unmovable mountain, and Cory and his friends came up short, their avenue of escape blocked.
“Who the fuck are you?” Cory demanded. “What do you want? Don’t you know who I am?”
Danny once described my evil chuckle as ‘hair raising’, and I took great pride in watching Cory’s and his friends’ faces pale when I laughed.
“We’re what happens to naughty boys,” I taunted, dragging the crowbar in my hand against the concrete. The screeching sound vibrated off the alley walls in a menacing taunt. “And as far as who you are…” I lifted the crowbar and pointed it at Cory. “Well, I’m afraid we don’t give a shit about that.”
Cory’s shoulders squared, and that cocky grin crawled back across his face the instant he realized I was a woman. “You’ll give a shit when my father gets ahold of you.”
I wanted to laugh again but kept it in, then looked around dramatically. “Well, I don’t see him anywhere? Do you?”
Cory’s retort died halfway to his lips. A vein jumped at his temple, and he charged at me with a yell. I sidestepped his charge and swung the crowbar, hitting him in the gut. The wheezing gasp he sucked in was music to my ears. He staggered, then crumpled to the ground.
Devin rushed me next, but Danny pushed past me. “Can’t let you have all the fun,” he shot over his shoulder. I rolled my eyes but smiled. Growing up together, we were more like siblings than cousins. If it were up to Danny, he would have locked me in an ivory tower years ago.
Edwin turned to Grace and held up his hands. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“Turn around,” Grace barked. He obeyed, and she shoved him into the wall. His head hit the brick with a rewarding smack.
Tires squealed to a stop behind me, and I dropped into a defensive crouch. Izzy leapt from the vehicle, and I rose. Confident that Angela was taken care of, I turned my attention back to the problems before me.
Cory was still groaning on the ground in front of me, but making no movements to get up.
I frowned. I’d been sure he was going to be more of a fight so I could work out some of this tension, but all rich assholes were the same.
The second someone bigger and badder came along, they turned into whimpering messes.
Danny laughed, standing over an unconscious Devin. “Don’t pout. I’ll spar with you this weekend if you’re itching for a fight.”
I huffed. “I would rather spar with Grace. At least she won’t take it easy on me.”
“Never,” Grace promised, expertly tying Edwin’s hand behind him. “Now, what did you want to do with these three?”
“I believe Maya had some ideas.” I smirked.
“You bet I do,” Maya said, scrambling down the fire escape.
Fifteen minutes later, Maya was barely holding in their laughter as we posed the men in the alleyway.
Danny had been kind enough to retrieve a can of spray paint from the SUV, then wrote “I like to drug and rape women” above their prone forms. All three men were bound, gagged, and completely naked.
Rage burned in Cory’s and Devin’s eyes while Edwin just cried.
The dumpster the staff used was in the alley on the other side of the building, and with the overwhelming noise from the club, the three shit-stains would be lucky to be found by morning.
By then, the pictures, videos, and other evidence we had collected would be posted on the web, courtesy of Liam’s bot accounts, and their lives would be ruined.
We would also be turning the evidence over to the DA, who we had confirmed was a good egg.
Since Cory’s father was a prominent judge, the reality was the case might not ever go anywhere.
But the evidence we were blasting over the internet? Well, that was forever.
It’s not the justice the women deserved, but it was something. It was more than most, including myself, ever got.
“One of these days, we’ll be able to make them disappear, permanently,” Danny muttered.
I shrugged. I felt the same, but killing them and disposing of their bodies well enough that it couldn’t be traced back to us required resources that the Archers didn’t have. But never say never.
“You need to get going if you want to get a few hours of sleep.” Grace walked up next to me.
I looked down at my watch and groaned. 1:30 a.m. If I was lucky, I was going to get three hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready for my other life.
And I couldn’t afford for my bosses to think anything was amiss.
Not when the work I did there directly affected the success and failures of our missions to cut the rot out of our city.