At Your Mercy

3

You know times like those, where you fight for a person long and hard with your better judgement, and the whole world is against you, and you feel rebellious for sticking up with your choice, and remain with it. This unhelpful desire of proving everyone wrong is burning somewhere within, and catching that fire you set out to prove that you can see what the others can't.

You know what usually happens in situations like that?

You come out of the trance, because quite frankly, they appear to be exactly like everyone said they were going to be.

And this guy is proving to be a pain in my arse. This judgement has been formed before I have even had the courtesy of acquainting with him, purely on the basis of the fact that I can't fucking find him.

I shoot down another dirty look from Patrick and look at Sloane instead. "Alright, let's chalk it up again. What do we have?"

I hear another heaved sigh right behind me and it does quite the work of spiking up my wrath over a few degrees, which is definitely saying something. I don't even look back to confirm the tired eyes of Erik which I can already paint a mental picture of, and all in all, this is exactly why I hate when everyone actually goes with what I voice out. In an establishment agency, it is quite a moment of self pride when you put in an opinion and it is worthy of application. Like every good thing in the world, it lasts short, that rise in self esteem. But up to the point where they go to work on what you said is when you realise what the price of that acceptance is. Every time that they have to work extra, every little piece of unnecessary background information that they have to cater themselves to, every shard of the labour it takes to find something vital, you will also get a package of dirty looks, heavy sighs, tired eyes and complete and utter bullshit that just seems to shout out 'I told you so'.

And it is annoying. God it's ripping my patience right off me.

Sloane is saying something so I make an effort to listen in, even though she's probably repeating what I've already committed to memory, she's actually the only person not throwing crap at me for this. Sloane is nice that way.

"- know he was seen last time in Boldero, because they've been keeping close tabs on him. Over six months ago, an agent from the CIA went undercover on a mission to bring him in and they came as close to arresting him as they could have-"

But they didn't.

Because quite surprisingly when they moved in the place the undercover agent had come out of barely five minutes ago after a meeting, he was absolutely nowhere to be found.

That gobsmacked them to their wits, and they searched the house as thoroughly as only the CIA could have done, and there were no underground tunnels or closed off passages that he could have went through. The man literally vanished into thin air, and it's been six months since and the CIA have nothing except rumors.

This only added to my sparked curiosity of this man. Who was he? And how was he so dead cunning to identify that he was going to be arrested right after an agent had left that place. I mean, if he escaped, he would have probably needed two or three minutes just to get out of sight in a completely surrounded area.

This information had come out exactly an hour ago and apart from putting up with Patrick, the only thing my mind was on was the explanation. It wasn't possible to pull it off, to put it plainly. I had one of the research guys pull a map of the said area he was supposed to be in and if the CIA was right (which they mostly are), there was no way this guy could have just ran off. If he did escape it had nothing-

I stop in mid thought as the phrase seems to stick in my head.

If he did escape.

I snatch the photo of the area one more time just to be sure. Double-checking every angle of the place, I form an image with officers standing at every possible route for exit. Yep, there was absolutely no way he did it.