by Katy Jordan
“How do you know all this?” Bullet pried, rather amused at his extent of knowledge on a subject she would never associate him with.
Jack turned away from her, contemplating his answer.
She had been honest with him. It was only fair.
“I had a sister. She was a pretty spiritual person; she used to talk about all this stuff. Life after death, where we go, karma, yin and yang, the whole shooting match. That was her faith.”
“You had a sister?” Bullet probed further. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, it seems to me that we have plenty of time, don’t you think?” Bullet coaxed him.
Jack shuffled uncomfortably on his feet.
Turning away from her again, he went back to leaning on the railing of the conservatory, looking out of the window. His mind’s eye was recalling that moment in his life when everything turned upside down.
“Abby went missing. Just over two years ago. I have no idea what happened and neither do the police. She went to work and just never came back. My niece was put into care because I and the rest of my family were deemed unfit to take care of her,” Jack explained.
“Was she your little sister?”
“No, she was two years older than me. She worked for an optician at the reception desk. She loved her job. She loved her life.”
“Was her husband questioned?”
“She wasn’t married. She had a deadbeat boyfriend who knocked her up and then fucked off. Abby was a single mum. The best one on the planet, if I do say so myself,” Jack told her, not once giving her even a second of eye contact. “Abby’s body was never found. The police tried to say she’d run away, that she didn’t want to be a mother anymore and couldn’t face telling everyone, so she just disappeared. But, that’s not who she was. Abby loved her daughter more than anything. She loved her family just as much as we loved her. She wouldn’t have given that away for anything on the planet.”
“So, she’s never been found?”
Jack shook his head, mournful at the thought of where his sister could be. What she went through. Not knowing if she was alive and in pain, or dead.
“And let me guess, Neon offered to help you find her, but first you had to help him?”
Jack looked at her for the first time. His eyes told her everything she needed to know.
She nailed it.
“Where did you meet him?”
“I got a lead that a guy who hung out in a bar 24/7 on the east side of Edinburgh might know something. One of those finger in many illegal pies type of guy. Neon overheard me questioning him in the bar and stopped me outside. He told me that he also had his finger in many pies, and could round up some information to help me find her if I came and worked for him.”
“What did he have you doing?”
“At first, I was his delivery boy. He was in the world of drug lords, and he had me shipping packages from A to B. Picking up payment, if they had it, and bringing it back to him, as well as relaying any other orders that his ‘clients’ asked for.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Some hard, some harmless. Weed mostly. Some ecstasy. Heroin, cocaine, speed,” Jack listed for her. “I did that for about a month and then he had me answering his phone to take the orders. I did that for less than a month, and then he had me act as his debt collector.”
“So, if there were people who owed him money…?”
“I’d go and scare the bejesus out of them. ‘Do whatever I had to do to get him his money’,” he quoted.
A moment passed by as Bullet processed everything Jack told her.
Neon always had an M.O. that occasionally changed, but lately, from the intel that Bullet had been gathering, this seemed to be the one that he preferred. It was easy, straightforward, and quick to execute.
Right up his street.
“Why the hell are you here?” Jack burst out suddenly. “I mean, I know I’m here because Neon tortured me. What happened to you?”
“I’m here after I went back to get you,” she explained, “and we did. You’re probably in the hospital wing now. Well… not that I can see you…”
“If you got me out then that’s where I am. Just not on this plane.”
“Are we dreaming?”
“I don’t know… I don’t think so. It feels pretty real to me, don’t you think?”
“Yeah… it’s a bit echoey though. Too quiet.”
“Bullet, tell me what happened,” Jack changed the subject. “You got hurt trying to save me?”
“We set the warehouse on fire. But, I stayed back to trap Neon in the lower bunker. After that, I don’t remember.”
“Who got me outside?”
“Uhhh… Gecko did. Him getting out of the building was Flare’s cue to set the place on fire.”
“And she did it even though you were still in there?”
“The plan was for me to follow Gecko out. I didn’t. But, even at that, she was just following orders.”
The pair of them fell into silence looking out at the view, which normally was magnificent no matter whether it was sunny or rainy outside, but right now, it was bland.
Boring, even. Lifeless.
“Are we dead?” Bullet questioned.
“I really don’t think so. I think this is like ‘limbo’ or something,” Jack suggested.
“Why?”
“Because, a while before you showed up, I saw a man walk past outside and then fade away. The Akashic plane is where everyone passes through to get to the plane their supposed to be on. The Astral plane is where souls go when their bodies have died and they’re moving on. I don’t think we’re there. There would be people outside. I went out for a walk; there is literally nothing.”
“So, what? We just sit here until something happens?”
“I think we’re supposed to go one way or the other.”
“How?”
“Haven’t figured that part out yet. I haven’t seen a big bright light telling me to go into the afterlife,” Jack said.
“Are you expecting to?” Bullet pried.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I hope I do. Other times… I think my life was just starting to get good,” he said as he turned to face her, “and that was because of you. I don’t want to leave you.”
“I don’t want to leave you either,” Bullet admitted. “Jack, you have no idea how thrilled I was when we went in there and found you alive.”
He put his arm around her with a smile and continued to look out at the very plain and un-giving view.
Bullet just looked at him.
Every cut and every bruise was gone.
His arm didn’t need a sling from her shooting him.
His usual stubble was gone, just like the bags under his eyes and the scar that she had once noticed on the back of his neck. His eyes were bright and healthy.
Right there, he was everything that she had ever wanted for him.
Safe.
In no pain.
Just like she was.
And, better yet, they got to be in that state together.
“I wonder what everyone’s doing…” Bullet thought out loud.
“Probably panicking about you being at death’s door.”
“And you.”
“Mainly you,” he smiled at her, “and rightfully, so.”
Bullet looked away, embarrassed.
To this day, it was hard for her to take any kind of compliment. Jack showered her with them constantly, so, one way or another, she was going to have to get used to it.
But, she could tell by his attitude and his forced smile that he felt like they all loved her, and no one was bothered about him.
“They love you, Jack,” Bullet assured him. “When we got you home after I pulled the trigger… Tide was beside herself. She thought you had died in the back seat with her. Rocket and Gecko never left the infirmary until you woke up. And I was… well… you know the state I got myself into.”
“They really all felt like that?”
“Yeah, they really did. And I know that, right now, they’re all in the infirmary routing for both of us. Not just me.”
“We’re not done, yet. We have to go back.”
“I know. I don’t know what happened with Neon, and then there’s the whole drug scam he’s set us up for. He said that, in the event of his death, people had been ordered to come after us. We need to be there to make sure no one else gets hurt,” Bullet informed him.
“Yeah, that’s all valid. That does need sorted. But, that’s not what I meant.”
“You’ve been talking to The Spectrum too much. Quit talking in riddles, Jack,” she nudged him.
“We have to go back. We’re not done yet. You and me. Us. We’ve got so much further to go than this. We’re not meant to die yet,”
Bullet felt herself welling up at the sentiment he put into his words.
He wasn’t joking around.
His eyes, that always talked louder than he did, were saying that he genuinely meant every word.
“This…” he said, gesturing to Bullet and himself, “this was meant to happen. I’m not prepared to give up on that.”
“Neither am I,” Bullet admitted.
“So, let’s go back. Let’s find the way. Together.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Flare had Youth in a headlock, her thumb and forefinger nipping his ear as she dragged him into his room. He whimpered and squirmed in her grip, but he couldn’t break free.
“Stop struggling!” Flare yelled.
“I’ll stop struggling if you just let me go!”
“Oh, so you can go back to the infirmary!”
Flare shoved him across the room, ignoring that he almost bowled over a table behind him.
“That’s where we need to be! If Bullet wakes up then…”
“Then Lab will call us!” she snapped, cutting him off as Gecko followed them into the room, curious about the commotion.
“What’s going on?”
“We have work to do,” she growled, “are you prepared to help?”
“Well, yeah, of course I am. But, you know, if Bullet wakes up we should maybe be there.”
“We’ll be there when she wakes up because Lab will let us know when she does. In the meantime, we need to keep busy and get to the bottom of all of this. There’s still a lot of work to do!”
“She’s right,” Sparrow announced from the doorway, “there’s lots to get done. Don’t you think it’d be nice to have Bullet wake up and not have to worry about anything? It can be our ‘Get Well Soon’ present for her. Something meaningful.”
“Not like you to be so sentimental, Sparrow,” Gecko mocked.
“Thanks,” he said sarcastically, “she’s my frie… my family, too. I want her better as much as everyone else. We all deal with shit differently.”
“This is getting us nowhere, stop insulting each other,” Flare snipped at them.
“How can we help?” asked Rocket, walking in with Tide at his back.
“We need to do a think-tank. What do we know?”
“We know that Bullet’s fighting for her life and we’re not with her,” Youth scoffed.
“Will you give it a rest, Youth!” Sparrow pierced him.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t feel comfortable with this,” he admitted.
“Well, let me put it this way,” Flare interjected, “the sooner we get to the bottom of this, the sooner we can go back to Bullet and Jack.”
Youth slumped into a seat beside him, his mood mimicking that of a five-year-old.
“So, again, what do we know?”
“We know that Neon was signing off on stuff as The Spectrum, and packets of cocaine dressed up as C4 were being delivered to him only to be replaced with salt before getting sent back out, with initials on it that we believe belong to Rocket, Sparrow you and Bullet,” Gecko rhymed off.
“We know that Neon had a bunker built under the radar within the last year. But, he had a backup bunker underneath for whatever reason,” Sparrow added.
“It was his torture chamber,” Gecko announced. “Seriously, you guys didn’t see it down there. There were two bodies hanging from a hook on the back wall by wire around their necks, which were clearly snapped in half by the way.”
“And that’s where Bullet trapped him during the fire?” Flare said.
“She was lying on top of a door when we found her. I’d imagine that’s where he is,” Rocket chimed in.
“Okay… what else?” Flare asked.
“Well, we know this guy is important,” Youth said, loading David Watt’s picture up on the plasma again. “The Lion’s Den gang member that was accused of rape and then walked, but turned up dead on top of the Wallace Monument in Stirling.”
“Didn’t you also say he was the first person from the Lion’s Den to ever be arrested?” Tide asked.
“I did, yeah,” Youth said. “Jack also identified his brother as the delivery guy who dropped off all the cocaine dressed as C4.”
“And I can identify him as one of the dead men hanging in Neon’s torture chamber… torture bunker… thing…” Gecko announced.
“WHAT? Are you serious?” Flare probed.
“I’m no expert, and there was a lot going on when Bullet and I were down there, but I’m pretty certain. Those tattoos are rather in your face,” Gecko replied.
“Well, that’s a bit of a game changer,” Rocket confirmed.
“How important was he in this gang?” Sparrow asked Youth.
“As far as I can tell, he was pretty high up. If he wasn’t the drug lord, he was definitely second-hand man,” Youth said. “I have a feeling that Neon was running it though, it’s too coincidental that Prismatic and this Lion’s Den started running at the same time.”
“I’m telling you, it was his financial plan!” Tide said.
“Or his backup plan… if Prismatic failed then he had something to fall back on,” Rocket offered.
“No, the financial plan makes more sense,” Youth said, “we don’t earn money from what we do, but it still needs funding. Bills need paid, things need bought, people need fed, yadda yadda yadda…”
“Well, that’s pretty much everything,” Sparrow said. “So, what’s first?”
“Proof of death,” The Spectrum announced, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. “That is most definitely top of the list. Rocket, get the cars ready.”
“How many, sir?”
“Two; Yours and Sparrow’s.”
“Yes, sir,” Rocket shuffled past him in the doorway and headed down to the garage.
“Thank you. Proof of death will be Sparrow, Flare and Tide’s mission, since they’ve been down that way before and know where to look. Youth and Gecko, I want you to track down any known associates from the Lion’s Den. Get a location on them, and then Gecko will go with Rocket to track them down. I want earpieces set to pressure activation, and formal code used when communicating. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” they murmured, almost harmoniously.
“Good. I’ll have my earpiece in also, as will the Lavender Lab. If you need any of us, just call out.”
“And if there’s any change?” Youth asked, his passion and anxieties forcing him up out of his seat. “If anything happens with Bullet or Jack?”
“You’ll all be the first to know. Now, hop to it.”
The Spectrum left them in Youth’s room, walking away with his hands still clasped behind his back.
“We’ll tell Rocket that he’s to come back up here to wait in case a gang member is found,” Flare said, heading for the door. “Right, guys… grab your gear. Meet you all out the front in ten.”
“Sure thing,” Tide confirmed.
Flare, Tide and Sparrow left Youth’s quarters with haste.
“Where do we start?” Gecko asked Youth.
“We start where everyone always is… social media,” Youth smiled.
“Facebook?” Gecko scoffed. “
I’d never have thought of that.”
“You’d be amazed at the number of nosy parkers there are on there. The joys of a ‘search’ bar,” he giggled.
Youth clicked on the search bar and simply typed: The Lion’s Den.
Search.
Many people came up in the search, some of them with the surname Lion, or Lyon, and some of them with the letters ‘Den’ in their first names.
Youth scrolled down and saw a page for the TV show with the same title, skipping past it immediately, going straight for the posts from people with ‘The Lion’s Den’ somewhere in their status updates.
“These are just about the TV show,” Gecko said, leaning over Youth’s shoulder to look at the monitor.
“What about this one?” Youth asked, clicking on a link. “Aw, that’s someone that works on the set for the TV show… typical.”
They continued scrolling, looking through everything that they could.
“Wait, go back,” Gecko’s voice boomed in his ear.
Youth moved the page back up.
“What did you see?”
“I saw something that said… there, that one. ‘It’s obvious they’re doing it, how can the police not catch them’. That sounds ominous enough to be something.”
“It does indeed,” Youth agreed, clicking on the post.
After they both scanned over it quickly, Gecko read aloud.
“Everybody’s heard of the Lion’s Den gang in Glasgow, probably people trying to piggyback on the Lyons who constantly feud with the Daniels. It’s obvious they’re doing it, how can the police not catch them? I’m pretty sure one of them stays next to me in Bearsden because he’s constantly got people chapping his door late at night, and they leave a few minutes later with a packet that they never came with. The police have searched his house twice but they’ve never found anything incriminating? Surely, there’s something that will give them away… people get hurt with this kind of stuff! You heard about all the shootings between the Lyons and Daniels. It’s only a matter of time. This HAS to stop.’”
“Well, this guy is angry,” Youth stated.
“Aye, you’re not kidding,” Gecko agreed as he read over the post again. “Bearsden?”
“That could explain how they’re getting away with it. Bearsden is really well-known for being quite a wealthy area; if they’re dealing from a well-off neighbourhood, dress good and have a nice car and stuff, the cops probably won’t look far before apologising for taking up their time,” Youth suggested.
