“You didn’t need to.”
“I’m saying she’s fucking attractive and she has a good personality. That’s not the same as?—”
“North,” I say. “You’re in.”
He throws his arms up. “I haven’t been close enough to her to know for sure.”
Ace turns back to the screens and pulls something up on the left monitor, zooming in. I sit forward.
“Now,” I say. “Let’s talk about the real problem. What’s going on with Adelaide, and who the fuck is after her?”
Ace doesn’t move, but his whole focus changes. The beach, the scent, the fact that Adelaide is resting near our house… all of that gets shoved aside for the thing that mattered the second I investigated her van at the garage.
“She’s being watched. That’s for sure,” North says.
Ace’s jaw clenches. “The question is, who sent those assholes on the beach after her? They were just goons, not the brains.”
“Earlier at the garage, I found a small black tracker tucked under the side panel of her van. She had no idea it was there.”
“What the fuck!” His face goes blank in a way I know too well.
North leans in. “Shit!”
I glance at him. “I dumped it on the way here. Storm drain off the bypass. Anyone tracking it is now having a very boring afternoon.”
North’s mouth thins. “Nice, but it means she’s in more trouble than she realizes.”
“I asked Koa at the garage to keep an eye out for anybody unfamiliar hanging around, anybody asking questions, and to let me know,” I explain. I think of Adelaide standing in that van, telling me she was fine in that flat little voice that meant the exact opposite.
“She has to know more than she’s letting on,” I add. “She came into the ocean for protection against those guys, plus she’s acting way too calm for someone being followed, you know? And she easily accepted to move in with us temporarily because, deep down, I bet she’s really scared.”
Ace’s eyes grow colder, hands curled into fists. “Someone who wants her has found her now,” he says. “And they either want to scare her or take her for someone.” He looks towardthe screen showing the shack exterior. “This didn’t start here. I remember she was a bit jumpy back in Seattle, but I made nothing of it. I think she’s on the run.”
“What has she gotten herself into?” North adds.
I reach into my pocket, pull out my phone, and bring up the photo I took of the tracker at the garage before I got rid of the thing. Then I set it on the table between us. “That’s it there, and it looks way too familiar.”
Ace leans forward first. North doesn’t touch the phone, just studies the screen with that still, hard focus.
The tracker is small, black, clean build, no cheap casing, no amateur bullshit.
He nods once. “Professional grade. Not something some jealous asshole orders online after two beers and a bad idea.”
Ace hands the phone back to me. “We’ve seen these before.”
“Yeah.” I pocket the phone again. The room goes quiet for a beat.
Ace takes a second before he answers. “Back at The Breakers.”
I straighten up. I knew it.
North nods. “Used to run those before a pickup. Keep tabs on anyone before anyone makes a move.”
So this is really fucking bad for Adelaide.
The Breakers are a gang with money, reach, and enough fronts to keep their work out of sight. When jobs came up that were too risky, they brought in men like us. Contracts, outside muscle. We did the work nobody else wanted to touch and got paid well enough not to ask too many questions.
That was the trade—quick money for filthy contracts. Surveillance, pickups, cleanup, pressure, elimination. The kind of work that sticks to you afterward. But after a while, it was affecting us, nightmares and all that shit, so we walked out. Told the chief who leads The Breakers that we were done.
