Harry Styles, a secret service agent working for British intelligence is tasked with finding the killer after a series of brutal but calculated murders across Europe. His mind is sharp, he's smart, arrogant and works with a precision that leaves no...
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Harry Styles
"The nightingales." I said, my eyes focused on the pinboard in front of me. "Is that what we're calling them?"
Niall and Louis were on either side of me.
The room hummed with the low, fucking irritating sound of those fluorescent lights. I stood there, my eyes tracing the lines of red wool stretched tightly between photos, documents and handwritten sticky notes pinned messily to a corkboard.
On my left, Niall leaned in closer, his breathing shallow and his fingers twitching at his side. He'd had too many energy drinks today, still opting to not drink coffee because he was convinced the sugary fruit flavoured drinks were a healthier choice. The furrow between his brows deepened every minute, it was rare for him to be quiet and focused as he was right now. His eyes were slightly bloodshot after hours of staring at screens and documents, hours of working and making little progress. His expression reflected the same tiredness I felt, I probably looked about the same.
On the opposite side of me, Louis was sitting in a spinny chair, the end of a pen in his mouth so he could chew on the lid. I really, really did not want to work with him, but he was the closest thing I had to an insider in all of this shit. He seemed convincing enough that he too was working towards ending this organisation and throwing the man that ran it into a deep hole where he could never even look at someone again, for the rest of his disgusting life.
In front of us, the corkboard was a messy visual of our obsessiveness over the past few hours—no, the past few months. This was months of work. Black and white CCTV stills, ones of Roman from when he was in the park, images we suspected could be him, Aaron, any of the girls that worked for them. Although their ability to dodge every security camera was annoyingly impressive. It seemed their movements were random but in reality mocked our every attempt to follow them. Newspaper clippings of politicians, journalists and businessmen, some I knew who were killed by Winter, some of whom I assumed were killed by her or any of the other assassins. It was all a chaotic puzzle that we couldn't seem to fit together.
Names, places, times, all of them circled in red, some crossed out, others underlined in a desperation for answers. Theories were sprawled out in our handwriting and messily pinned on top of other papers, some of them barely legible from how quickly they'd been scribbled. Somewhere in all of this mess, there had to be something. This was months of work and it had to lead somewhere.
These girls and the men that led them knew how to vanish into thin air like they never existed, leaving only the bodies in their wake. It pissed me the fuck off. But it was as Winter had always said when I was first chasing her— how was I ever going to catch someone that didn't exist? I never entirely understood what she meant until I knew her better, until she let her guard down for me.
The clock on the wall ticked like it was mocking us for being here so long. It was late, most people had gone home for the night. Except the three of us. My eyes burned from relentless staring, my head hurt from fucking thinking, trying to see something that wasn't there. I didn't know who was the last to speak or when. We just stood here, locked in a desperate search for a mistake, something that would tell us anything.
