“Yeah, okay.” He laughs but I can hear the distressed tone to it. Something is bothering him and I’m the kind of person who likes to help everyone else out. I’d much rather help people with their own problems than tackle any that are happening in my own life.
I’m the complete opposite with myself as opposed to my friends and family. I’d back them up the whole way, fight next to them, and stand up loud and proud to support them. Whereas when it comes to myself, I tend to push my head in the sand and pretend everything is rosy—even when it isn’t.
Thinking about myself only leads to thinking about Geena, but as soon as she flashes in my mind, it’s replaced with the hauntingly beautiful eyes that I met a couple of days ago. I startle, my seat moving back a few inches at the image of Lexi. Luke flicks his gaze to me questioningly before he turns back to face the screen.
Jesus, where the hell did that come from? I don’t want to be thinking of the ex-con that I have to work with. Several times I’ve thought about running a check on her, but every time my fingers go to tap on those keys, something holds me back.
I’ve never, not once, had second thoughts when running a background check, but for some reason, I don’t want to find out what she did. I don’t want to think about what that means.
I shake my head, trying to push her out and focusing back on the screens.
“Oh, shit!” I click on the screen as the same man comes back out of the gallery, only this time he’s dressed in a suit as if he’s off to a business meeting. If it wasn’t for his hair that I spotted, I’d have never known it was the same dude.
“What?” Luke asks.
“See him? He went inside like fifteen minutes ago dressed in jeans and a shirt, and now he’s coming out dressed like that!”
Luke comes closer, narrowing his eyes as he watches the man jog down the steps, buttoning up his navy suit jacket. “Holy shit. It is.”
I try to zoom in more, frustrated that I can’t get a good image of his face but have no luck. Luke stands up and makes his way through the bulletproof screen toward the front of the van. Neither of us say a word, we both know that we need to follow him: to find out who he is and what he’s up to. Nobody goes into a gallery in one set of clothes and comes out dressed completely differently. There’s definitely something going on.
I stand and watch the feed, twisting it to see where he goes as Luke starts the engine.
“He’s getting into a black SUV,” I tell Luke. “There’s someone in the driver’s seat—what the fuck!”
“What?”
“They just pulled out into oncoming traffic, they’ll be passing us any second!”
“On it,” Luke gruffly replies, staring out of the side mirror, watching them speed past us and then allowing a couple of cars to go past before pulling out.
I hold onto the side of the van as he goes speeding after them, all the while maintaining a good distance as to not raise suspicion.
“Turn the front cameras on record,” Luke says to me.
I sit back down and tap away at my laptop, bringing the cameras up and then pressing record to capture it all.
I wince when they run a red light and cross my fingers that we won’t lose them; as soon as we start to slow down, the light turns green and Luke speeds across the intersection, taking a sharp left and heading down toward the industrial estate that sits on the outskirts of the city.
We’re only about twenty miles away from the town where we all live and where the MAC Security compound is, but it’s a stark difference to the small town where everyone knows everybody.
“They’re heading into the estate,” Luke barks out.
“Slow down, let’s see if we can see what unit they go into.”
No sooner have I said it does Luke slow down, almost coming to a stop. “Give them five; there’s only one gate in and out of here. There’s no way they can get out without us seeing them.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me, all the while I replay all of the video footage that I’ve caught so far, trying to get a visual on the person who was driving but all I get is their outline because of the blacked-out windows.
“He didn’t get out of the SUV when he first arrived,” I tell Luke. “He was walking down the sidewalk and the SUV was already out front.”
“Hmmm, looks like a run-through to me.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I say, getting a still picture of the man who went into the gallery and saving it, ready to run through my extended system as soon as we get back to the compound. Although I don’t know how much luck I’ll have because I can barely make out any of his features.
The police have a system where you can run a picture for facial recognition, the problem with that system is that you have to have been arrested to get a hit. My system runs differently. It has everything that the police system has but I also have all of the people who haven’t been arrested.
In the business that we’re in, nine times out of ten, these people are career criminals, having never been caught. Without my adapted system, we wouldn’t know who half of these people were that we have to put away.