“We’ve had intelligence come through.”
The room stilled.
“What kind of intelligence?” Indie asked calmly.
Jake hesitated. “There’s word there’ll be weapons at Magnet’s funeral tomorrow.”
Silence. Heavy and immediate. My jaw tightened automatically. Around me, I felt the shift ripple through the brothers. Fury straightening. Chaos muttering a curse under his breath. Demon lowering his phone slowly. Baz spoke first. Too quickly.
“What sort of weapons?”
The question cut across the room sharp enough that a couple of heads turned slightly towards him.
Jake’s eyes flicked sideways briefly. “Enough that firearms officers are being discussed.”
Baz nodded once, taking a slow pull from his pint like he hadn’t just jumped in ahead of our president. But I noticed the way his fingers tightened fractionally around the glass afterwards. And something else didn’t feel right. He was overly tense. Unusual for a man who’d lived this life longer than the rest of us. The tiny twitch in his jaw. It could’ve been nerves. Could’ve been anger. Could’ve been fucking anything. Still, something about it prickled at the back of my mind before slipping away again.
Indie’s expression never changed.
“What makes you think that?”
Jake gave a humourless smile. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Then why tell us?” Indie countered smoothly.
Jake’s eyes hardened slightly then. “Because things are getting critical.” Nobody interrupted him. “We’ve had Special Branch pulling airport footage for days now. Americans coming through Heathrow, Manchester, Newcastle. Different airports. Different routes. Same tattoos.” His gaze flicked briefly around the room. “Feels organised. Feels wrong.”
The Bloody Hand. The room suddenly felt tighter around us all. Jake looked back at Indie then, watching him carefully. Searching for something. A tell. A reaction. But Indie gave him absolutely fucking nothing. Just silence. Calm and unreadable.
“And then we’ve got bodies turning up. Unidentified currently. Tattooed. Single gunshots to the head. Too clean. Too professional. I only know of one person who can take a shot as cleanly as that. Even the Mafia don’t shoot as clean.”
From the corner of my eye, I caught Baz again. Quiet now. Too quiet. His gaze fixed on the floorboards while the rest of us watched Jake. Thinking hard about something.
Eventually, Indie nodded once. “Thanks for the information, Jake.”
The word hung oddly between them. Jake’s attention shifted then towards Fury.
“You know where Mam is?”
Fury frowned slightly. “Why?”
“Tried the house phone. No answer. Been round and she’s not there.” Something sharp flickered across Jake’s face then. Unease maybe. “Mam never goes away.”
Fury folded his arms slowly across his chest. “She does now.”
Jake stared at him for a second too long. And suddenly every nerve in my body lit up. Jake exhaled heavily through his nose and stepped backwards towards the door. Indie moved with him automatically. Escorting him out. Making the point clear. Jake stopped in the doorway then, looking back towards Fury one last time.
“Whatever you do,” he said quietly, “look after her better than you did our sister.”
Fury moved instantly. Chair legs screeched across the floor as he surged forward with murder written across his face, but Chaos and Carnage caught him before he reached the door while Demon shoved himself between them. Jake didn’t react. Didn’t flinch. He just looked at his brother for one long, hard second before walking back out into the night.
“What the fuck was that all about with your brother, Fury?” Barry the Blade asked accusingly.
“The fuck you asking me for? You got fucking ears?”
Indie tipped a look towards the gigantic man with the long dark hair.
“Jake always knows more than he tells us.” My voice rumbled between them. “He was telling us there is more of the Hand here than we realised. And that’s a problem.”
