Double Agent

The Weight of What Was

Over the next fortnight, I continued to lie through my teeth to Dash and the others. Leading them to believe that my contact was setting up a shipment that would leave them with a motherload of A grade weaponry, which would damn near ensure their win against Jonas when the time came. I was doing my job well, keeping Henry up to date with anything significant that was going on, whilst keeping the Calaway's in the dark about my true intentions. In fact, I was doing my job so well, that the only thing I was struggling with now, was my building self loathing and guilt.

With every single day that passed, I felt like I was getting closer to the crew that I was helping to bring down and send to jail. No matter how hard I tried to keep them at arm's length, I was unable to stop myself from falling in deeper with them. It was this budding friendship that was causing me to withhold certain facts from my own team as time went on. I couldn't betray the personal information that I was becoming included in. The secrets that were shared with me, the weaknesses that I picked up from observing each of them as they went around the house, feeling safe enough to be themselves. As much as some of them may have provided advantages when it came to the day it would all go down, I was physically incapable of betraying them in that way, and whenever the perfect time came to spill my guts to Henry about them, I choked. Unable to force myself to go to those depths of betrayal.

My bonds with each of them were strengthening as we spent so much time together, scouting the various locations where Jonas's people were supposed to be, and meeting other members of the firm who had been enlisted to help. But the bond that was becoming the most meaningful of all to me, was with Dash. Since I'd agreed to help him, he'd begun to open up to me. He was still tightlipped about the reason for all of this, and was guarded, but I felt like the walls that he kept up, were beginning to lower gradually. I'd have been overjoyed in most cases at the fact that I was getting more out of a mark. But here, I felt terrified. Because the more that he let me in, the more I struggled, and the more that I realised, I wanted to do the same to him.

"What does your mother think about all this?" I asked, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear whilst we walked through the abandoned warehouse.

"We don't really speak to her these days." Dash answered, shining his torch into the darkened corner opposite us. "She picked her side in everything that went down. That speaks volumes to me."

I so badly wanted to know what had happened, I had come so close to asking many times over the weeks, but each time I chickened out, scared that it might be the straw to break the Camel's back and destroy everything that I'd built up with him.

"I know what it's like to be distant from your mother." I sighed, thinking of my own strained relationship with mine.

He stopped walking, turning to face me in the half darkness of the moonlit room that we were scouring for clues.

"Why are you two distant?" He asked, propping himself against a concrete beam.

"Mostly because of my job, she never approved of what I do." I explained.

"Well I don't think any parent would be delighted with a criminal child." He laughed, stopping me in my tracks.

Criminal... Right. I reminded myself.

"Anyway, she always thought that I should do something better, something safer and more honourable." I continued honestly, remembering the multiple conversations that had ended in arguments. "I'm not the daughter that they are proud of." I finished.

"You have a sister?" He asked.

"Yeah, Priya, she's a few years younger than me."

"And what does the showcased daughter do?" He half teased.