Takedown

by Heather Atkinson

  “Don’t be naughty and no, she said she’ll talk it over with him. I’m getting a cat.”

  “I had a feeling you would when you went in there.”

  “She’s called Blossom and she’s been stuck in there for three years. No one wants her because she’s old and has medical problems but she’s gorgeous and I fell in love with her. I’ve filled out an application form. If my application is approved then I need to have more visits with her, so I want all this firefighter crap wrapped up before she comes home.”

  “Why, are you worried about her being taken hostage?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t want her coming into a tense environment.”

  “Fair enough. Caleb called while you were in there. He wants us to meet him at his flat.”

  “At least he doesn’t want us to meet him at Mum’s.”

  Caleb lived in a two bedroomed flat on the Queens Promenade right on the sea front. The exterior of the building was a three-storey red brick Victorian frontage but inside was ultra-modern and very tastefully decorated in muted creams and light browns. It had been decorated this way before he’d moved in and he did his best to keep it clean and tidy but dirty dishes were piled up in the sink and a heap of unwashed clothes had been dumped on the thick plush tan carpet on the floor of the large lounge. When Faith saw her brother’s boxer shorts on top of the heap, he kicked them behind the couch with an embarrassed cough.

  “You should get a cleaner,” she told him.

  “I was thinking about it but he said it would be a security breach,” he replied, nodding at Vance.

  “I actually said getting in a stranger would be a security breach,” replied Vance. “One of Mum’s friends owns her own cleaning business. You should hire them.”

  “Yeah, I might,” he muttered. “Anyway, we’ve got some information,” he said, gesturing from himself to Kevin and Jason.

  “About Ben Cooper?” said Faith.

  “No. About Amanda Young. You were tackling Ben, so we thought we’d try her. We looked her up online and she teaches a self-defence class three times a week. She’s won loads of awards for martial arts.”

  “So she would have been able to train her colleagues?”

  “Exactly and we know where she’ll be every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - at the community centre on Claremont Road.”

  “I know it,” said Jason. “I went out with a girl who lived on that street. Really nice lass. You should have seen her tits, they were enormous…”

  “If we could stick to the point please,” sighed Faith.

  “Oh yeah, sorry. The community centre is surrounded by houses but it’s set in its own green. There’s a playpark on one side and nothing on the other but tennis courts, a park and a football pitch. Behind it is a bowling green.”

  “So you’re saying it’s pretty quiet?”

  “Not during the day but at night, yeah. The houses are set back a bit from it.”

  “What time are her classes?”

  “Tuesday and Thursday six thirty until eight thirty and Saturday four till six.”

  “So what do we do?” said Kevin. “Catch her when she’s coming out after her class, grab her and make her tell us where the drugs are?”

  “That’s one possibility,” said Faith. “But from what I’ve heard of her, she won’t give up the information easily.”

  “Then we take her back to the lock-up and persuade her.”

  “No Kevin, we don’t. These aren’t some dodgy scumbags we can rough up. Plus the woman is trained in martial arts and none of us are.”

  “You and Vance have training,” he countered.

  “Yes, I have my army training and Vance has his police training but it might not be enough to take on someone with her skills. Look what they did to Greg and his men.”

  “They’re bloody poofs.”

  “No, they’re not. I think we’re better off following her.”

  “Oh yeah? And how did you get on with following Ben Cooper last night? Did he lead you to the drugs?”

  “No but we now know that his wife has a gambling problem and probably a drink problem too. We followed him to a casino on the front and he dragged his wife out of there, who looked half-cut.”

  “Is that it?” said Kevin.

  “For now, yes.”

  “If we carry on fannying about like this we’ll never get the drugs back. They’ve probably already moved them on by now because we’re too afraid to tackle them head on.”

  “And, as I’ve already told you,” retorted Faith impatiently. “These aren’t the usual meat heads we’re used to dealing with. We’re tackling this in a different way and if you can’t handle that then you can piss off back to Mum’s and leave it to us.”

  Faith yelled this last sentence at him and an awkward silence filled the room. She rarely shouted at her brothers. Kevin turned crimson with embarrassment and frustration, his temper vying with his common sense. Everyone knew that when Faith was angry you didn’t push her.

  “Well,” she said, voice hard and icy. “What will it be?”

  Kevin took a deep breath as he struggled to rein in his volcanic temper. “I’ll stay.”

  “Good. Steaming in will get us nowhere,” she said more gently.

  “All right Faith,” he sighed, planting his hands on his hips. “We’ll do it your way but if we don’t get results quickly then we’ll do it my way.”

  Faith’s expression was devoid of all emotion. “I give the orders Kevin, not you. If you’ve got a problem with that you can always take it up with Jules Maguire.” Her smile was chilling. “She doesn’t take too kindly to her decisions being criticised.”

  The tension started to build up in the room again as the two siblings stared each other out, the others looking on, unsure what to do.

  Vance was the one to break the moment. “Faith’s right,” he said. “And Jules herself wants us to do this quietly. We follow Amanda and see where she leads us. Just because these people are firefighters doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be wary of them.”

  “Makes sense,” said Caleb, looking from Faith to Kevin, who were still staring at each other. He didn’t think Kevin would ever challenge Faith. He always seemed happy taking orders and doling out beatings. Clearly they’d all underestimated him.

  “Amanda will be teaching her class tonight,” said Faith, breaking eye contact with Kevin to address the rest of her siblings. “Me, Vance and Caleb will be there to follow her.” She frowned when Kevin tutted and rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “You and Jason will have a job too - go to Pulse and keep an eye on things.”

  “Because that’s all we’re fit for,” said Kevin. “Guard dogs.”

  “Actually no,” said Faith, an amused smile playing on her lips. “Jason’s excellent with tech. He’s very skilled. What are your skills Kev, other than mindless violence?”

  “Why are you being such a bitch?”

  “At least I’m not being a whiny little tart like you.”

  “That’s enough the pair of you,” thundered Vance. “What the hell has got into you both? I’ve never heard you speak to each other like that, not even when you were kids.”

  “Ask Kev,” Faith told him. “He suddenly seems to think he’s qualified to give orders.”

  “Maybe if I was in charge we wouldn’t have been done over by a bunch of firefighters,” retorted Kevin.

  Faith’s eyes were as sharp as knives. “So what would you have done differently? Please do enlighten us. Your many years of experience will no doubt be of great benefit.”

  Faith might have looked entertained but Vance knew she was furious. It was in her eyes and the way she held herself, as though she was restraining herself from punching Kevin right in the face.

  “I wouldn’t have stuck the vault out in the sticks,” snapped Kevin. “I would have put it somewhere we could have kept an eye on it.”

  “And do you think it would have turned out any differently if we’d put it in the centre of
town? Patrick would still have put that tracking device in the drugs. Ben Cooper and his friends would still have broken in, beaten up our men and stolen the product. And if I remember correctly, you were the one who recommended we employ Patrick in the first place.”

  Kevin turned bright red as he realised she was right. “Well I didn’t know he was going to do that.”

  “So you’re not the all-seeing god you claim to be.” She thrust her face into his, Kevin swallowing hard as he suddenly realised he was standing on very shaky ground. “You called me back from Scotland because you couldn’t handle a fucking lemon like Lenny Paisley. I sorted that mess out for you. It was me who saved our entire family from getting nicked by Marlow. If you like, I can always go back to Scotland and leave everything in your hands.” That grim smile returned to her lips. “You wouldn’t last five minutes so, instead of arguing with me, do your fucking job and keep an eye on Pulse and if you ever challenge me again I promise you’ll regret it.”

  “You’re threatening me?” he exclaimed.

  “I love you Kev but our success as well as our lives depend on us sticking together. Your words here today have weakened us and I will not allow that to happen again. Do it once more and you’re out for good. Do you understand?”

  He nodded angrily.

  “Say it Kev. Say I understand.”

  He was so angry his lips drew back over his teeth, which remained clamped together. “I. Understand.”

  “Good. Now that’s settled, me, Caleb and Vance will go and check out the community centre while it’s daylight. Let’s go.”

  She turned on her heel and stormed out, Caleb and Vance looking at each other and shrugging before following, leaving Kevin behind to seethe. When Jason patted him sympathetically on the shoulder, Kevin angrily shrugged him off.

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” said Caleb, sitting in the back seat of Vance’s car. “We never fall out, I mean beyond the usual stupid rows about Monty humping my leg and Jason and Kev arguing about who gets my old bedroom.”

  “I know,” sighed Faith. “And I wish I hadn’t been so harsh but he had to be put in his place before he took things too far. It’s important we’re united. If people know we’re in-fighting they will exploit that weakness.”

  “I’ve never seen you and Kev argue before.”

  “I know and it sucked but he gave me no choice. The Maguires have almost been torn apart too many times to count by fighting over who should be in charge. I won’t let the same thing happen to us.”

  “I don’t know what he was thinking. He could never run things. I love him to bits but he doesn’t have the brains.”

  “That’s usually the type who always thinks they should be in charge. Just look at the government,” said Faith wryly. “But Kev’s a man of action. He thinks all this following people about and being cautious is weak. He can’t get it into his head that we have to be careful. Don’t worry, I’ll smooth things over with him. It’ll be fine.”

  “It’ll take some smoothing Faith. He was furious.”

  Her dark eyes glittered. “He’s not the only one.” She looked to Vance. “You’re being very quiet.”

  “What happened back there wasn’t good,” he replied as he drove.

  Faith looked at him expectantly, a little confused when he didn’t say anything else but she turned her attention to the window, nursing the anger inside her that Kevin’s rebellion had created.

  None of them spoke until they reached Claremont Road. Vance parked at the end of the street and they got out of the car and walked together, as though they were just taking an innocent stroll through the park.

  “I want one of us to be here when she arrives,” said Faith, studying the community centre as they passed it by. “After everyone’s gone inside, we can pull one of their own tricks on them and plant a tracking device on Amanda’s car, then we don’t need to follow her everywhere.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Vance.

  Faith knew he wasn’t happy with her. He didn’t want to meet her gaze and his conversation was stiff and stilted but that would have to wait.

  Caleb received a call about some issue at Eclectic to do with the plumbing that he had to go and sort out. After dropping him off at the club, Vance drove Faith home in silence.

  “Are you going to speak at all?” she said.

  “We’ll talk once we’re back in the flat,” he retorted, once again without looking at her.

  Faith decided not to reply, knowing it would be pointless. He wouldn’t speak until he was good and ready.

  They took the lift up to Faith’s flat in silence, Vance refusing to look at her while Faith regarded him with an amused smile. His eyes were that brilliant hue again and she loved looking at them.

  “Go on then,” she said once they were safely inside her flat together. “Tell me off.”

  “You went straight for Kev’s jugular when a little reassurance was all that was needed.”

  “He might be your little brother Vance but he’s not a baby anymore. He needed putting in his place. Kev’s always been a bit of a loose cannon and he needs to be kept under control.”

  “That’s not what this is really about. You gave yourself away Faith when you said your little brother. Not so long ago you would have called him our little brother. You’re letting the past taint the present. I see it every time you’re around Mum. That pain is festering inside you and you’ve got to stop it before it ruins everything.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” she said, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it up.

  “That wasn’t business today, it was personal. What happened to you wasn’t Kevin’s fault, it was dad’s and he’s dead. Kevin wasn’t even born when you were abducted.”

  “It was Rose’s fault too,” she said, eyes flashing. “Don’t forget that.”

  “How could I? But don’t take it out on the others. It’s nothing to do with them.”

  “Kevin criticised every decision I made.”

  “So? Or are you now so despotic you can’t handle any criticism?”

  “I am not a despot,” she retorted.

  “We are allowed to question your decisions Faith. This isn’t a dictatorship.”

  “Kevin didn’t just question my decisions. He thinks he should be running things. What sort of leader would I be if I just rolled over?”

  “Yes, you’re in charge but we are first and foremost a family.”

  “I didn’t expect you to take this line.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re the hardest of us all but you’re acting the peacemaker.”

  “I’m not the hardest Faith, you are. I could never have spoken to Kevin like you did today.”

  “Because he shares your blood.”

  “I knew that’s what this is really about.”

  “All right, I admit it,” she sighed. “It has been getting to me lately.”

  “Any particular reason why you’re struggling with it more now?”

  “It’s Mum. There’s just something smug about her. I’m sure she’s up to something.”

  “No she’s not. You want her to be so you can retaliate and tell everyone what she and dad did.”

  “She’s sly Vance and she’s very clever. I’ve just got the feeling that she’s biding her time.”

  He took her by the shoulders. “She’s not Faith. You’re still dealing with what Marlow did to you and you never did recover from the shock of finding out that you were abducted as a baby. I think you should go back to the counsellor.”

  “I am. I’ve got another appointment booked.”

  “Not until next week. You should see her sooner.”

  “We’ve got enough going on without me wasting time like that. It can wait until all this with the firefighters is over.”

  “It’s not a waste of time. You need to get your head straight Faith.”

  “It is straight Vance,” she yelled back at him. “I just…”

  “Just what?” he said when she sigh
ed and trailed off, attempting to work out how to phrase what she was feeling.

  The challenge in his own eyes reminded her of Kevin and her temper skyrocketed. “I just want you all to appreciate all the fucking effort I go to to keep you safe,” she exclaimed.

  “I get it now. You’re afraid someone will do to us what Marlow did to you.”

  Tears filled her eyes and she turned her back on him.

  He wrapped his arms around her and she leaned back against him, too ashamed of her fear to face him.

  “What we do is so dangerous,” she said. “And I’m scared all the time that I’ll make a decision that will get one of you hurt. It’s always pressing down on me, which is why what Kevin said was an insult.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell him how you felt? He would have understood.”

  “No he wouldn’t. He’s hardly the sensitive type.”

  “I still think you should tell him what you’ve told me. After seeing you in your hospital bed he would get it.”

  Faith threw him off and wiped her eyes on the backs of her hands. “I’m explaining fuck all to him. Why should I? I’m not running a nursery here, it’s a business.”

  “You have to make it up with him. If you don’t then the resentment will fester.”

  “Why should I apologise?” she said, turning to face him. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Because you’re the bigger person. Kev’s ego won’t allow him to apologise first, even though he’ll be desperate to make it up with you.”

  “Then he should grow up because I am not apologising.”

  “Faith, you have to.”

  “Fuck you Vance,” she yelled. “I’m not apologising.”

  “You’ve no choice if you want to keep the peace,” he yelled back.

  “Just piss off and leave me alone,” she snarled, storming for the door.

  Before she could reach it, he grabbed her and pulled her to him.

  “Get off me,” she exclaimed, shoving him away.

  “God I love you,” he breathed before pulling her back to him and kissing her.

  She tore her mouth from his. “You mean you love a dictator like me?”

  “Yes,” he said, kissing her again.