The Fire Within Series: Books 1 - 3

by Ella M. Lee

  He sighed, twisting his hands together. “Are you staying here, then?”

  “No,” I said. “I was always coming home today. It feels like I can’t get a moment alone to think in the clan house, being near Nicolas and you and the group and the entire clan. I just wanted ten seconds to myself.”

  “Yeah, I understand what you mean. But don’t get into bad habits. I’m responsible for you, so you can’t leave me in the dark.”

  “I don’t know if I can go to the meeting,” I said. I braced for more of his annoyance, but he merely sighed.

  “What have you been doing here?” Dan asked.

  “Sleeping.”

  “For two days?”

  “The sedatives helped,” I admitted.

  “Sedatives?” he repeated, his tone laced with disapproval. “That’s not good for you, and it’ll fuck with your magic if you’re not careful. Have you eaten anything?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m sick to my stomach. I feel hot, and my throat is sore.”

  “Well, no shit,” he said. “That’s your magic trying to burn the sedative out of your system. Do not take any more of them.”

  “Please don’t be mad at me. I need you.”

  “I know, Fi,” he said. “You’re my lieutenant, and I’ll take care of you whether I’m mad or not.”

  I was relieved. I needed a friend with me. It didn’t matter that he was Nicolas’s protégé. Right now, he was my commander, and he was caring for me and protecting me, exactly as he had always done.

  “Get your stuff,” Dan said after another few minutes of holding me. “I’m taking you home.”

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeves. “Yes, sir.”

  He made to dislodge me, but I stopped him. “Wait,” I said, putting my hands on his arms. “Are there things I don’t know about you? I just… don’t want any more surprises. I’m sick of being so clueless.”

  He frowned. “Not like Nicolas, no,” he said carefully. “I have killed people while part of Water Clan, but only in self-defense or in defense of my group. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t cruel either. I don’t hurt people or torture them. Do you really think I could? I did destroy some priceless artwork in Vancouver once, but that was an accident.”

  I wiped my eyes again, smiling hesitantly. “I want that story some time. When I’m not in so much pain.”

  He studied me. “Listen. Clan life is lonely and difficult. I don’t want to tell you what to do when it comes to Nicolas, but my advice? Don’t overthink.

  “Ryan calls me, uh, a chronic overthinker,” he continued. “There’s no one who likes careful consideration more than I do. But in this case? Maybe just listen to your heart and your intuition. Life is too scary to do anything else sometimes. When it comes to Nico, that’s what I did. Would it be the worst thing to model yourself on your amazing commander?”

  I laughed weakly. “Maybe not,” I said, pulling away.

  Daniel was a genius. I had never met someone with better instincts than him. And the other people who knew Nicolas’s past and still respected him—Ryan, Sylvio, Teng, Irina—were some of the smartest people I had ever known. If they could accept him, in at least some ways, couldn’t I?

  Don’t overthink, I told myself. But even with that directive, it was hard to discern what my heart wanted.

  Daniel checked me out of the hotel and retrieved Nicolas’s Porsche from the valet. We drove back to the clan house in silence. His hand was wrapped around mine firmly, but I could tell he was still quite annoyed, and I didn’t know what to say to change that.

  “Is that Nicolas?” I asked, as we waited at a stoplight near the clan house garage. A shiny silver Tesla pulled out of the garage and headed down the street away from us.

  Daniel squinted. “Yeah, it is.”

  I frowned. I had no idea where he was going, but he frequently left the clan house on business. It was just past ten o’clock in the morning, and he likely wouldn’t be back until much later if he was only leaving now.

  Once inside, Daniel walked me to my apartment door.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “Please don’t be angry with me. I’ll do anything. I love you. Please forgive me.”

  Daniel put his hands on my shoulders. “I love you too, Fi. I forgive you, of course I do. I just need some time to calm down. You need to eat something and drink water. That is an order. We’ll talk later.”

  I nodded, immensely relieved that he and I would be okay. I watched him walk back to his apartment before I could bring myself to shut my own door.

  I retrieved my phone and winced at the couple dozen imploring, angry, and worried texts from Dan.

  Surprisingly, there was only one text from Nicolas, and it didn’t contain anything I thought it might—no apologies or explanations or begging. It merely contained a quote.

  “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is—to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

  A quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, my favorite poet.

  I knew what Nicolas was doing, because I had done it to him.

  He was giving me a choice. He was telling me to take my time and search my heart and figure out the right thing to do for myself. He had offered this quote in particular because he knew it would speak to me. He knew I would view him as a question now, a locked room or a foreign language or any number of other possibly insurmountable challenges.

  Worst of all, he was telling me that was okay. He knew that I might need days or months or years to figure out how to approach the answer, or that it might happen in such a distant day that everything will have changed, both him and me included.

  This was him giving me space and time, giving me the chance to say aloud that I didn’t know yet what I needed or wanted. This was him letting go for the time being—and possibly forever.

  He wouldn’t fight me on it, I realized. Not because he didn’t want me. No, he loved me, and therefore he would never pressure me or guilt me. Of course not. He would consider that to be manipulation, which he never wanted to use on me. I could understand that because I had been willing to do the same for him.

  But there was another way to interpret that quote. It was bound in the first line, “try to love the questions themselves.” Nicolas was my question, and I could perhaps accept him as he was. I could accept that I didn’t feel, and may never feel, fine with every aspect of him, and maybe that was okay. I could live our relationship in the moment, uncovering my feelings about this part of him over time.

  Nicolas, the commander who now dedicated his life to others, who had no goals of happiness for himself anymore, who didn’t think he deserved that. Nicolas, who had sins that he atoned for willingly, who understood that his mistakes may have undone his prosperity in life.

  Tears welled in my eyes.

  I could try, couldn’t I? Try to forgive him, try to understand? I could follow my intuition and my instincts, as Daniel had recommended. Every fiber of me clambered for Nicolas. Could every fiber of me be wrong?

  I love him so much, I thought.

  But was love enough?

  Chapter 20

  I was hiding in our group training room at 5:17 in the evening, reviewing lists of items that would need to be moved if we secured a new clan location, when I got a text from Daniel.

  Is Nicolas with you?

  I frowned, writing back quickly:

  No. Isn’t he with you?

  Daniel’s one-word response chilled me.

  No.

  Their meeting was supposed to have started at five. I had known Nicolas for months now, and he was never late to anything. He had a rigid schedule and adhered to it faithfully.

  After a brief pause, I got another
text from Dan.

  Come to me.

  My chest tightened with anxiety. I made my way as fast as I could to the meeting room on the thirty-sixth floor, dancing on the balls of my feet impatiently while the elevator rose slowly through the building.

  “Is Nicolas ever late to meetings?” I asked, glancing between Dan and Sylvio, who both looked grim.

  Sylvio studied his own phone and frowned. Dan watched him, wary and concerned. That answered my question.

  “Let’s, uh...” Dan said hesitantly. “Let’s give him a few more minutes. He went off-site today. Maybe he’s stuck in traffic?”

  That didn’t seem likely, but I nodded. The beginning of a tight pinching sensation was harsh in my chest as I picked up my phone and checked the group schedule. Under Nicolas’s name for today was noted:

  Recon. 福田区 / 罗湖区 Ref. 3476 APTNC 6

  I tilted my screen toward Daniel. “What is that location?”

  He squinted. “It says Futian and Luohu. Those are districts in Shenzhen, China, just over the northern border of Hong Kong.”

  That meant this was a bunch of Nicolas’s shorthand which effectively read: I am doing reconnaissance in Futian and Luohu. The information about my work is detailed in Task #3476. All precautions taken but no contact, which means I don’t expect to engage my target, but I’m wary enough about the situation to bring along a block-sync and a few other helpful toys. I expect an approximate length of six hours for this operation.

  I pulled up Task #3476 and scanned the text. It was all in Teng and Nicolas’s incomprehensible shorthand, half in Chinese. My eyes widened when I saw Derek’s name.

  “Dan, explain this task to me,” I said. “Now.”

  He was alarmed by my tone. “Cam and Teng have been tracking Derek from the Russian-Mongolian border down to southern China. We had some intel he’s been around Shenzhen. Nicolas was going to check out some of the locations.”

  “Alone?” I asked, aghast.

  “He deemed it low risk,” Sylvio explained. “He wasn’t going to get anywhere near Derek. We were simply checking out Derek’s connection to Meteor, since they’ve been far too active in the region. We want to get a sense of his allies, see if there are any other players we need to worry about. Rather than waiting until we could assign the task to someone else, Nicolas took it.”

  I texted Nicolas.

  You okay? Where are you?

  I watched the screen, rereading the Rilke quote as my muscles tightened second by second. No response. Another few minutes went by.

  “Dan,” I said.

  He looked at me. “I know.”

  He took out his phone and made a call. He let the phone ring for a long time—he had to be calling Nicolas. Eventually, he hung up.

  “We saw the Tesla leave the garage shortly after ten,” Dan said. “Nicolas guessed six hours for this op. He should be back by now. Is there a link to a chat channel in the task, Fi?”

  I scrolled through the text. “No. There’s a status from eight this morning indicating that he still intended to complete the op today. Nothing else, but that’s not unusual.”

  Nicolas often wrote digests only after his tasks and operations were over.

  Daniel shook his head. “He would have said something to someone if he planned to go over the time estimate.”

  “He responded to a text of mine at 3:06 p.m.,” Sylvio said. “But that’s the only contact I’ve had with him.”

  “No indication he’d be late?” I asked.

  “No,” Syl said.

  “Has he done this before?” I asked. “Missed a meeting? Dropped off without a word?”

  When it came down to it, these two knew Nicolas better than I did. They were more likely to know his habits.

  They exchanged a look, and then Dan shook his head. “No. Nicolas is never late to anything, and he never goes completely dark. It’s a basic tenet of his group: the commander never goes dark. He doesn’t take operations that require that sort of work.”

  “Something is wrong, then,” I said. “Is there a protocol for this?”

  With Nicolas, there was a protocol for almost everything.

  “Yeah,” Dan said. “This is why we have tracking devices. I’ll get Teng on the line.”

  He dialed Teng, putting it on speakerphone.

  “Wai?” Teng said after a single ring.

  “Something has come up,” Dan said. “Can you pull up Nicolas’s tracking list?”

  There was a slight hesitation from Teng. “Stand by. What’s up?”

  “Nicolas didn’t show for a meeting just now,” Dan said. “I’m here with Sylvio and Fiona. We haven’t heard from him since fifteen hundred or so, even though he should have been back from 3476 by now.”

  “Nicolas has an extensive list of trackers. Five are currently active. I’m pulling their locations now,” Teng said. “Can you come to me?”

  Before taking the stairs down one floor, Daniel went to Nicolas’s door. He pressed his hand to the shield, and it evaporated with a huff. I didn’t know if Nicolas had given Daniel a disabler ward for his shield, or if Dan had just forced his way through in a mere second. He shoved the door open.

  Nicolas’s apartment was cold and empty. Daniel went into every room and looked around. When he returned, he shook his head.

  “I don’t think he’s been here all day,” he said.

  I walked through to the bedroom and took a look around as well. Everything was neat and organized, all very usual for Nicolas.

  “His laptop is still here,” I said. “So is his tablet, and both his work bag and his overnight bag. He didn’t return here to get anything and then leave again.”

  “Certainly not without telling any of us.” Sylvio’s emphasis was significant. Nicolas’s lieutenant, his girlfriend, and his most-allied commander. It didn’t seem likely that he intended for none of us to know where he was.

  He wasn’t the forgetful type who would run off to the next thing hastily without communicating. If he needed to change plans for any reason, he would have left notes within our tasks and chat channels. He would have canceled our meeting.

  He would never just disappear.

  When we hurriedly filed into Teng’s apartment, we found him typing furiously on his computer. Cameron stood at his shoulder, his arms crossed. He nodded to us as we entered.

  Daniel took a seat on Teng’s couch and folded his hands together. I stood behind him, unsure what to do, the knot in my chest constricting painfully with each passing moment.

  “Teng?” Daniel said calmly.

  “Nicolas’s active trackers are his phone, building access card, sunglasses, one of his pens, and one of his watches,” Teng said. “His watch, pen, and sunglasses are here in the clan house. The phone and the access card are together. I’m pinpointing their exact location now.”

  “How about the Tesla?” Daniel asked. “Actually, all three of his cars.”

  Teng did some more typing. “Fiona, come cross reference these addresses on a map.”

  I brought my laptop with me and sat in the empty chair beside Teng. He pulled up the address for the phone and access card trackers and moved it over to the monitor in front of me.

  I typed it into a map website. “This is in Tai Hang, a little north of Tai Po.”

  “The Audi and Porsche are both in the garage, but here’s the Tesla’s location,” Teng said, tossing another location at me. Geo-coordinates this time.

  “Uh… this is near Wu Tip Shan, off the main road,” I said. “Even more north of Tai Po.”

  Daniel’s eyes were narrowed. “Pull up the logs for his phone tracker. It will have been pinging us all day. Let’s see where he went.”

  I watched Daniel bring out two small lacquer bowls from under the living room table. He placed them to the right of the Go board that dominated the center of the table and opened them to reveal the black and white pieces of the game—lovely convex stones. He took one black stone between his index and middle fingers and studied
it, his eyes distant.

  With a click, he placed the stone on the board. Cameron went to sit across from Daniel, taking a white stone and playing it next. The two of them traded several more turns before Teng interrupted.

  “Looks like Nicolas left here at 10:21 a.m. and drove up to Shenzhen. He went to various parts of the city but stayed in the general area until 3:56 p.m.,” Teng said. “The phone last reported its location at about 4:45 p.m. in…”—he checked my address—"…Tai Hang. It hasn’t moved since.”

  Daniel’s black stones were quickly filling up the board and dominating Cameron’s white stones. I didn’t play Go, nor did I know much about the rules beyond the fact that you need to capture territory on the board, but it looked like Daniel was winning. Cameron knew him quite well; Daniel liked to keep himself busy while he worked through situations, and Cameron was providing an outlet for that.

  “And the Tesla?” Daniel asked. “When did it stop in Wu Tip Shan?”

  Teng hesitated, waiting for something to load on his screen. “Probably about 4:25? Give or take, because we don’t have minute-level data.”

  So,” Daniel said, meeting each of our eyes briefly in turn, “Nicolas goes to Shenzhen for his recon task. Things seem to be going fine. Nothing happens until the afternoon, on his way home. He would need to pass through all of these tracking locations between Shenzhen and here. He leaves Shenzhen at about 4:00 p.m. He’s driving. He makes it to Wu Tip Shan around 4:25 p.m. That timing is about right. Something happens. Either voluntarily or involuntarily, he leaves the car there. His phone and access card—which was probably in his wallet—make it a little further south to Tai Hung.” Daniel paused, sighing. “But where’s Nicolas?”

  “Is there any reason at all to believe this might be intentional on Nicolas’s part? Can anyone think of a valid explanation?” I asked.

  There was silence in the room, interrupted only by the clicking of Go stones.