7. Miles
Seven
Miles
She's been sitting at the same window table for forty minutes. I know this because I followed her. She’s sitting on the second floor, east stack, the row of reference shelves that nobody uses anymore because everything is digital and the physical books are just architecture now.
It’s a good sightline, quiet, and a corner that doesn't get foot traffic because there's nothing here anybody needs.
Why the hell does anyone even go to the library anymore, you can find everything you want from the internet?
She’s by the window. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about her; she likes to be by the window all the time.
She likes to look around at the world. Her camera comes up every few minutes.
She's not someone who shoots everything on impulse and edits later.
She waits, watches the light shift by degrees, the way it moves across the table, the way it catches the edge of her coffee cup, and the dust that floats through it if you look at the right angle.
She waits until whatever she's seeing resolves into something she wants to keep, and then she shoots.
Once, sometimes twice, then she sets the camera down and goes back to her work.
I've been watching her do this for forty minutes, and I haven't opened my laptop once. I brought it with me so I could watch her and work on my own hacking software. It’s something only I can use, not even my brothers will use it. This is mine, and I’m going to make sure it's the best system out there.
She lifts the camera again, turning it slightly, chasing something in the way the light is breaking across the window frame, and the concentration on her face is set.
The shutter clicks. She checks the screen. Whatever she sees makes something shift at the corner of her mouth; it’s not quite a smile, just a loosening, and she looks like she got exactly what she came for.
I know because I’ve had that same smile on my lips a few times. The moment you hit something you’ve been hunting for, that satisfaction is the best.
"You know there's a Starbucks on the ground floor."
Mason drops into the chair across from me with the energy of someone who’s been at the gym for too long and would rather spend it on something else.
He sets his coffee down on the table, pulls off his jacket, drapes it over the back of the chair, and opens his mouth to continue whatever he was saying.
"Did you read the Harrington brief yet because I have thoughts and most of them are complaints…"
"Mm."
"…specifically about the third section which reads like it was written by someone who’s never met a human being…"
"Right."
"…and I think Declan had a hand in it which would explain the complete absence of anything resembling logic…"
"Yeah."
A pause.
"Miles."
"Mm."
"What are you looking at?" Mason snaps his fingers to get me to look at him.
I say nothing at first, then I see Mason is about to say something else, so I get in there first. "Nothing."
He turns in his chair, takes in the second floor, the stacks, and the window tables below us. It takes him approximately three seconds to locate Sadie, with her yellow camera strap, clearly, she likes the color yellow, which I’ll change. Soon she’ll like the color purple. Just give it some time.
He turns back to face me and says nothing for a moment that goes on slightly too long for Mason.
"Hm," he says.
"Don't." I already know he’s going to be annoying about this.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to ask about the Harrington brief." He picks up his coffee, takes a long sip. "She's the one from the party. You know I’ve already helped you there. No one will ask her out, make the move."
"I don't know who you mean."
“You disappeared for forty minutes last night and came back with no explanation. I'm not a detective, but I do have eyes."
"The brief, Mason." I try to change the subject, but Mason can be a dog with a bone, it’s not easy to take his mind away from something he knows will annoy someone else.
"She's got a camera."
"I noticed."
"Of course you did." He opens the Harrington document on his laptop, scrolling it and then says. "She any good?"
"Probably," I say.
Mason makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh, then goes back to the brief. He starts typing something with more force than the document warrants, I wonder what pissed him off. “I’m sure if I open your laptop, I’ll be able to see.” He keeps his eyes on the screen, and I open my laptop.
He’s right, I hacked into her laptop the moment I got home last night, and I’ve looked through all the pictures she’s taken since she started college.
There isn’t any before that, meaning she has a brand new laptop for college.
I look through the photos and click one open and then turn the laptop so Mason can see it.
“I look good in that picture.” Mason brings my laptop closer to him and starts going through some of the other pictures. “I see she has one of you. You look ugly…”
“I look the same as you, asshole.” He laughs and turns the laptop back to me.
I look at the work she’s doing, a history paper, but the number of times she’s typed something then deleted it is crazy.
I've even lost count. I’m not sure if she has no idea what to write, or if she doesn’t want to.
But she’s back into it now and doing research on the paper she’s writing.
One thing I have noticed is that she has one too many tabs open, no wonder she’s getting confused.
She has three tabs open about the same subject.
My phone vibrates on the table.
Cain
Office. Tonight. Both of you.
I turn the phone face up on the table so Mason can read it.
He leans over reads it then sits back.
"Looks like Cain's starting to forgive us," I say.
“We didn’t fuck up,” Mason snaps, and I know he’s not happy. Fuck I wasn’t either, Hayden made a move without us, but Cain punished all of us.
"Should I be worried about tonight or just mildly concerned? He didn’t send you a message.”
Below us Sadie turns another page on the book she’s reading. Even though my mind has moved to what Cain wants, I still can’t stop looking at Sadie.
“You want to go on the sixth floor tonight after the meeting?” I don’t answer because there is only one room I want to be in tonight, and it’s not the sixth floor. “Or…” Mason stops, and I turn to face him as he looks toward Sadie. “...Are you planning on having a visit with someone else?”
“Shut up.” I look back over at Sadie who’s packing up all her stuff.
“You know, you should have some fun with a mask, she might like that shit.” Mason grabs his laptop and coffee. “I’ll meet you at the club later.” He walks away.
I lean back staring at Sadie’s work and then look through her pictures. She’s too happy and colorful to want to have fun with a mask, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun with it.
***
Usually, I meet Mason in Cain’s office, but the stubborn ass wanted to meet outside. Since Cain took us out of the family business, him and Mason have more arguments than anyone. I’m on Mason’s side, Hayden fucked up, not us.
Walking through Skyline always gives me a feeling of adrenaline. I love coming here, but since what Hayden did Cain barred us all. Mason hates Hayden a little extra for that one, because the man loves the sixth floor.
“How is you…”
“Shut up,” I tell him before he can ask where I was before coming here. Am I becoming obsessed, I think so. Am I going to stop? No.
The door opens before Mason reaches it. The bouncer nods and tells us to have a good time.
We know all the employees who work here, and they will have noticed that they haven’t seen us in a few weeks.
They might not know the reason, but they know Cain banned us.
Clearly, he’s told them to lift the ban.
The floor is half-full. A bartender runs a cloth along the counter without looking up. Two of Cain's guys are near the back wall and they track our entry.
Hayden and Declan are already here; I wasn’t sure if he called everyone or just the two of us. Whatever he has to tell us, it’s a family thing. That's good, maybe he’s finally going to let us be back in the family business.
Mason and I take the stairs, Hayden and Declan follow.
Walking into the office, Cain’s sat at his desk, but I don’t see Lincoln anywhere.
These two are normally stuck together, so that’s a little strange.
Mason walks to the window to get a better view of all the club, and I look at the cage outside the window with a dancer in it.
“How’s being back at college?” Cain asks, not looking away from the CCTV footage.
“Can’t complain, Mason’s already hitting the girl count, and I’m just enjoying myself. Declan and Trixie have the it couple label, and Lileah hates us because we won’t let any of the assholes talk to her. So, it’s going well.”
Finally, Cain looks at us, he smiles at Mason and then looks at me.
"Sit down," he says.
All four of us sit. Hayden and Declan take the chairs on the left, and Mason is beside me on the right. Cain looks at each of us. He’s taking his time, the way he always does. It’s like he's confirming something he already knew before we arrived. I hate when he does that.
"Good. College is a good place to be. The Leo situation is resolved. I want that on record between us before anything else, it's done, it's clean, and I don't expect it to come back. If it does, I'll know before any of you do." His eyes move across the four of us. "Understood."
"Understood," Hayden says.
We all nod and wait for what else he brought us all in for.
"Good." He leans back. "Now, going forward…"
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, to get back to business. The Leo situation took Cain longer than he wanted it to take to clean up, but it’s done, and I hope he’ll let us back in now.
"Hayden, you're still out. Declan, you’re back, go to the Pit this weekend, show your face." He pauses. "Mason."
Mason goes still beside me in a way that's almost imperceptible.
"Not yet," Cain says.
I feel Mason’s body tense up beside me, he’s not happy.
"Cain…"
"I don't want to hear it."
Six words and Mason closes his mouth. I’m not sure why he’s keeping Mason off, he’s never done anything wrong, he’s always followed Cain’s rules. He’s never even looked the wrong way, so there must be something we don’t know about.
"Miles."
"Yeah."
"You're back. Everyone leaves but Miles.” What’s going on? I’m back and not Mason. And then he wants to give me something with no one else in the room, that is strange. I wait for everyone to leave, wondering what job he has for me.
He opens the desk drawer and my whole body gets excited. He’s giving me an envelope. Yes, an envelope. I’m getting a big mission. It’s about fucking time. I mean I’m always behind them as the hacker, but this one is for me. I'm the lead.
He sets it in front of me. My name is on the front in Cain's handwriting.
That means he wrote it himself instead of having someone else do it, which means whatever's inside it didn't go through anyone else's hands. I mean it’s only him, dad and Lincoln that know the hits, but this one, it’s all Cain.
I look at it, but don't touch it yet.
"This is not a quick fix," Cain says.
I look up at him confused. "Okay."
"I want you to understand that before you open it. This is not the kind of thing you look at once and resolve. This will take time. Everything is slow. Everything is with patient. You research every thread before you pull it and you don't move on anything until you're certain. Or even spoke to me."
"What is it?"
He looks at me across the desk with the expression he gets when he's giving you the answer to a question that isn't the one you asked. "It's in the envelope."
"Cain."
"One wrong move…" he says, "…and it goes badly. Not for you. Not just for this family…For a lot of people."
I look at the envelope again.
The weight of what he's not saying sits in the room like a third presence, this is something large and not yet fully formed, the shape of something serious without its details.
I've sat across from Cain Crawford in this office more times than I can count and I know the registers he operates in, know the difference between calculated discretion and genuine complexity.
This is the second one.
"Take your time with it," he says. "All of it. Don't rush any part of this."
I pick up the envelope, and for some reason it feels a lot heavier than it should, and I don’t even know what’s inside it.
He doesn't say anything else. I wait, giving him the space to add to it, to give me something more that he has but Cain is looking at the window now, at the club.
I move toward the door when he speaks. "Miles."
I stop.
"Slow," he says. "Patience. It's always the best way." I give him a nod, knowing whatever this is, I have to listen to every word he says. For this mission I have to focus, I have to make sure I do it right, and by the sounds of it, there is no room for mistakes.
“Miles, one more thing, tell Mason if he wants to go on the sixth floor, I’ve put his name on the list.” Cain smiles knowing this will make Mason happy for a while.
“Are you trying to get into his good books now?” I ask making him laugh, but he doesn’t answer me.
Mason and Declan are in the corridor outside; Mason clocks the envelope immediately.
"So?" Mason says.
"He gave me something to look into," I answer there isn’t anything else to say.
"What?" Mason asks.
"I don't know yet, haven’t opened it.”
Declan looks at the envelope, then looks at me. "Did he say anything else?"
"Slow," I say. "Patience. Take my time. Don't rush it." I pause. "One wrong move and it goes bad for a lot of people."
The three of us stand on the pavement outside Cain's club, the line is around the corner, and a few girls are calling us over. If only they knew we’re college students, I mean it won’t stop us, but it might stop them.
"That's it?" Mason says.
"That's it," I tell them both.
Declan pulls his keys out. "You going to open it tonight?"
“Yes, I need to know whose life I have in my hand.” I look around, wanting to be somewhere else, but can’t because I need to know what the weight in my hands is.
“Are you going to tell us?” Mason asks, and I give him a nod. Cain never said I can’t tell them anything, and I think with Mason still out of this part of the family business, this will keep him from going crazy. “Oh, one more thing. Cain said your names on the sixth floor, if you…”
“See you in class,” Mason shouts walking back to the club. I knew he wasn’t going to wait for me to finish my sentence.
Walking back to Declan’s car, I've already planned out my night, sitting in front of the laptop, and researching everything I need to know.