Game of Secrets and Shadows (Book One in the Covert Operations series)

Fourteen

Strange how things went full-circle like that.

It was very late and, in just over eight hours, I would descend alone into the Paris catacombs to save my brother and face whatever it was that fate had in store for me.

Thirty-nine minutes passed before the lights of the small town near our school became visible down the road. Another four went by before I finally crossed into town limits. Five as I went in search of the bus which would take me to London. The last one to London left at eleven p.m.

I paid for my ticket with a fake credit card belonging to a Miss Leanna Wilson, a stocky-redhead with green eyes and a splattering of freckles across her nose. It wasn't a fake I used often which was why I'd chosen it. At the very least, it might slow Tasha down when she went hacking into the nearest bus stations to try and find where I'd departed from.

As I waited for the final bus to arrive, I flipped through a file I'd stolen from Professor McCarthy's office while sitting on a bench inside of the station. Inside were details of Jack Briar's life prior to and during his time at Oaks.

It wasn't a very exciting read. His transcripts, a couple of photos, detention slips—one of which was for setting an entire classroom on fire during a failed explosives test instead of the small area he was supposed to light up. There were a few familiar names listed near his on those slips, Brent Grimes and Carlos Patterson, who happened to be one of my old Professors, and, Randall Walker. The latter appeared more than once in Jack's file.

I expected to feel closer to him, more connected or something, like he could actually be my father. If anything, I felt even more alienated from him because, aside from a few physiological features, I couldn't find anything that connected me to this man. He was just a face and a name. Nothing more.

The downside was that I had no idea how to draw him out. If Max was right, and he usually was, then Briar might be the only person who could help us take out Scorpion. No one else in the world had as much knowledge as he did about them without actually being in the group. But, he'd been missing-in-action for so long. It was impossible to know what he'd been doing or where he was or if he was even still alive. And if he was, could I even trust him to help us?

That was the important question. Sure, he was my flesh and blood, but he was a stranger to me. He'd given me up with good intentions but how was I to know if his intentions were still pure? How was I to know if, after my mother's death, he hadn't gone rogue for real?

Simply put, there was no way to know unless I talked to him and the possibility of that happening was looking increasingly slim.

I stared down at the picture of him in the file. It was the same picture Lydia had shown me in London only days ago. Jack Briar's eyes, the same as mine, stared up at me, piercing and unyielding. "Where are you?" I murmured.

Unsurprisingly, I didn't receive a reply.

There were only four people on the bus from Bishop's Stortford to London. One was an elderly woman dressed in bright-coloured clothing, who promptly fell asleep the moment he sat down in her seat. The other was a young girl, about fifteen or so, with her hood drawn up over her face, casting dark shadows over her eyes. She avoided looking anywhere except out the window and ignored me entirely. I was the third person, sitting at the very back of the bus, watching carefully for any signs that I was being followed—both by friends or foes. The last person was the bus driver, a stout, balding, middle-aged man who looked as if he'd rather be anywhere else but driving the three of us to London.

The bus rumbled to life and the driver pulled away from the station. It was just shy of an hour long ride from the small town to the city and it passed rapidly. Before I knew it, the city scape had appeared in the distance and we were pulling up to the station.