Tangled

Chapter 1 – Area

~Dylan~

“We need the perpetrators alive. No shooting unless things go out of hand,” The Special Agent Elliot instructs. The entire department of Organized Crime is in a rush, yet, paradoxically there is an ominous silence that follows a serious case where lives are at stake. My hands reach for my hidden holster under my leather jacket and my pants, as the Special Agent in Charge instructs the team about how this particular case should be handled.

 Six armed men, abandoned building, five teenagers and a hefty five-million-dollar ransom.

Agent Elliot yells, “Is everything clear?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Dylan, you hear me? No rash moves!”

I look at him, hands behind my back. “Yes, sir!”

~

It’s tricky. It almost always is. To reach for your weapon, legal at that is the first instinct when in the presence of criminals. A simple law of survival. But, being in Organized Crimes for the better part of my agent career has taught me a few things. One, be quick and catch the criminals off guard. Two, save people. Three, don’t ever shoot unless the time and place call for it. A criminal who’s alive is far more useful than one that’s dead. I still remember the first time I had been on the field, feeling proud after shooting the suspected accomplice when he had tried to run. Turns out he had run because of some theft he had committed, instead of the murder that we had accused him off. Ended up being benched for two months. There is no turning back since then.

I quietly enter the pathway in the dusty basement and make my way up, careful not to step on anything that would cause noise or alert anyone, with Aiden, my partner and best friend on my tail. My breathing quickens and my ear rings lightly from the adrenaline high as I reach the entrance of the floor in which the kids are being held. No fiction can come close to describing what a detective or an agent like me feels. While their audacity is recognized, the fear they feel is often not. My heart is pounding, my jacket feels heavy and hot and Aiden’s quick, heavy breaths hit the back of the neck.

While the plan had been almost been foolproof, a burner phone and all they did not expect for one of their hostages to carry a smartwatch that could be tracked, in his bag. Almost dumb, but not something they would have anticipated after confiscating the phones of the students. Dumb again, if they had thought that with the status of these kids’ parents, at least one of them would not have anticipated this. It anyways does not look like anything more serious than a bunch of idiots trying to make quick money or that is what I tell myself. I hear muffled laughs and the air is thick with cigarette smoke. I try to make a mental image of where they are likely to be seated before running into the floor. I pull my gun out of the holster and speed in, aiming it in the direction I assumed the noise and smoke are coming from.

“FBI!”

We had clearly caught them off guard.

“Drop your weapons, hands above your heads,” Aiden hollers.

The sirens blare, indicating that the rest of the team has arrived and I see the panic on the faces of these men who look like they can’t be any older than Aiden and I.

“Don’t try grabbing anything, mate. I won’t think a second before putting this bullet in you,” Aiden threatens when the kidnappers start checking their pockets for their own weapons. One of them, pale with unruly blonde hair is the first to reach for his jacket when Aiden catches him in the act. We have no plans of harming anyone, but they don’t have to know that. Fear is good look on criminals.

“It’s over, you guys. Now drop the weapons and on your knees!” I say, moving slightly forward with my pistol aimed at them. “This entire building is surrounded by the NYPD and the FBI. Try anything and you’re not likely to leave uninjured.”

The slow thuds of the guns and knives are followed by the sound of these men dropping on their knees. Aiden signals for the other detectives and agents to join us as we begin cuffing their hands behind their backs. Once deemed safe, I ask, “Where are the kids?”

The kidnappers point to a hallway in the building where I find three unconscious students, while the other two are crying, barely conscious. I quickly untie them from the pillar they had been tied to, most of the kids’ knees buckling from the stress of being kidnapped and the chloroform the idiots had used to keep them unconscious.

“Are you okay?” I inquire and some of them manage to nod their heads before the paramedics take over. The adrenaline is thumping through my body as I confiscate the weapons for proof and head over to the car where the parents of the kids are waiting. They seem relieved, sullen and appear to have aged at least ten years in the past twenty-four hours. They thank the team profusely and Agent Elliot smiles, patting our backs before he drives away.

Walking towards my own vehicle, a sleek, black, faithful Ford, Aiden’s hands sneak around my shoulder. “You think this feeling will ever get old, Dyl?” He quips, his cigarette dangling between his fingers, a lazy smirk playing on his lips. His impeccably styled dirty blonde hair is now mussed up from all that running around and there are dirt marks across his face.

“What?”  While I know what he is most certainly asking, it’s no fun answering him directly. There something extremely satisfying about riling Aiden up and while he knows it, he still plays along with an arrogant smirk on his face.

“Stop acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about, you asshole. But this feeling, after we save lives. Do you think it’ll ever get stale?” He says with his thick British accent and takes a quick drag before passing his cigarette to me.

“Stop being dramatic, A. This wasn’t even that big of a case. Did you look at them? Those idiots would have never done anything,” I chide. Truth be said, it’s always great and while I am understating what we just had done, I know both of us understand the weight of the case. Big names involved along with the lives of young kids who haven’t seen half of what life offers. It f*****g great to be able to save them and help them feel safe.

“Fine.” My six-foot child of a friend huffs, shoving me before jumping into the passenger seat of my old sedan.

“Stop free riding, A. Drive yourself,” I whine, before pulling out of the building.

There is a look of disbelief on Aiden’s face, his mouth forming an ‘O” at my indignance. “Who decided to drive my car when he was f*****g drunk and ram it into my garage door? It cost me twenty grand!”

I laugh, Aiden still recovering from the shock of my shamelessness. He crosses his arms and looks away, pouting.

“Man, you know I did not mean it,” I cajole him, only to hear him sigh and respond with a "Take me to Bob’s. The tabs on you."

There is nothing new about drinking my night away. Just enough to feel buzzed, which honestly is quite a lot of alcohol, in my case. Just enough, so I don’t wake up with a hangover. At Organized Crimes, you don’t really get a break to nurse a hangover of all things.

Bob’s is a dingy old bar that hasn’t bothered with the interiors since I had first visited. It isn’t the poshest of bars and the crowd here isn’t the most elite either, usually filled with students who don’t want to shell a lot of cash on drinks. The bar has dim lighting like every other bar to set the mood and has a bar space with steel top that is f*****g cold from all the air-conditioning. The décor is to the minimum, with most of the space being utilized for the dance floor that has these flashy lights and a dj booth.

Casually sitting on the barstool, I observe the bar. It’s a Thursday night and everybody seems to have hectic lives that they want to forget about because the place is packed. It’s, in fact, overflowing with people just looking for an escape from the real world. A man with his crooked tie and crumpled shirt. A lonely redhead, mopping over what could possibly be her ex. A bunch of students looking for some cheap drinks during happy hour.

From the corner of my eye, I see Aiden on the left catching blonde chicks with his British accent, an accent one would think would fade away after twenty years in New York. I see him walking over to my side, a snobbish smirk on his face that makes me want to throw a punch at him. It screams confidence, fortitude and just a little narcissism.

“Guess, who is getting laid tonight?”

Rolling my eyes, I say, “Boo, boo! Surprise, surprise! Cameron Adams.”

My dirty blonde friend laughs and takes the barstool next to me, signalling a drink from the bartender. A glass of bourbon, a signature Aiden drink. He bobs his head in my direction and I just shake my head. “I think I am done for tonight, A!”

Aiden shrugs and sips on his drink, shooting boyish grins at women passing him when something odd catches my eye. In the midst of the dancing crowd, I see a man slowly picking at the wallets of men. He’s sly and swift, nobody even manages to catch a look at him. He quickly targets five men from different corners of the crowd, who are too busy to notice a missing wallet amidst all that grinding they seem to be doing before he slowly begins to pull away. I get up and speed walk in the direction when I find him leaving. Catching up to him at the entrance of the bar, I gently tap him on his shoulder. He’s gotten the whole, ‘I’m keeping it down’ attire to the ‘t’. Hoodie, cap, shades, dark sweats and sneakers, in case he’s gotta run. Spinning around, he raises his eyebrows in surprise when he sees my outstretched hand.

“Yes?”

“Wallets, now!”

It’s too late in the night for me to be playing games with a petty pickpocket, so I choose direct confrontation. The man, somewhere in his early thirties, continues to act stunned. I pull my badge from my jacket saying, “FBI” when I see him throw a punch, right at my jaw. Quickly defending myself, I dive forward to punch him square on his cheek, before pulling it back, only to ram my clenched fist into his nose.  Somewhere in between, he manages to take a dive at my cheek too and then there is blood, some pain and that’s all the distraction he needs to take the run. I pacify the bouncers who start moving towards me and quickly follow him without delay, outside the bar, years of practice and training, pushing me forward on the concrete. He sprints across the sidewalk, pushing and shoving people in his way, turning back occasionally to check for my progress.

I feel the world slow down as I race down New York’s busiest sidewalks, chasing a pickpocket for lousy men who probably haven’t noticed the lack of wallets in the pockets. And probably don’t care either, in exchange for a good night.

Suddenly from nowhere, I find myself, crashing into someone, a small pause and they land in my arms, cinema-like. Hair is flying, icy blue eyes meet mine and instead of a kiss… a figment of my lonely mind almost gets me this time.

I hear a thud, a soft ‘ouch’ and then someone dashing into me and then out of my way because of the sheer momentum of my body. I find myself stepping on something that almost trips me, I feel my right foot sink into something soft like paper, a harsh tear ringing through my ears. It’s all happening in slow motion and despite the rush, I look around momentarily at the casualty of my chase, my mind yelling at me to pay attention to the dull throb on my dominant hand. A quick glance at my feet reveals a ruined sketch, half painted and some papers scattered alongside it. I want to apologize, I really do but there is something more important and so against my own values, I spin around and run. I hear a distant ‘hey!’ and then nothing but the bustle of late-night New York.

As opposed to the crystal blue eyes, I had imagined, I leave behind bright hazel eyes, staring at me in horror and in disgust, the later, hopefully from the nasty bruise that is forming on the cheek.

In no time, I catch up with this man, who thought he could outrun a bureau agent. But I guess, a man can try. It’s a shady alleyway with trash lining the corners and the man looks around like a deer caught in headlights.

“Why don’t you just hand the wallets over, man? I’ll be kind enough and put in a word for you with the DA!” I yell, as I walk over to where this man is standing. He turns around grabbing a rod that had been lying on the ground and begins to fling it at me. I duck and evade his horrible aims, sighing as I speak, “We’ve been here and I’ve already had two hits on you. All you have to do is give me the wallets and put your hands behind your back. Nice and easy. We can avoid blood and bruise. I think, I just scared a young girl there.”

The rod hitting and scraping the road echoes through the deserted alleyway and this man begins throwing more punches at me which I defend myself from.

“Man, you really wanna make this difficult, don’t you? You just attacked an officer, that’s gonna be a couple more months in the prison.”

I then, roundhouse kick him, almost knocking him out, throwing a few stray punches here and there, before I have him pinned against the wall. The spare cuffs I have in my jacket make an appearance, I call 911 and the i***t’s out of my face. Aiden finds his way to me after the call I made to him and soon after a quick smoke, a chauffeur is driving the two of us to my apartment. That was too much physical work for a day, my body maxed and being tipsy just did not help.

The happiest I have been today is when I open the door of my cosy flat and the faint hint of cedar from the candle my mom burnt the last time she had been here hits me. It reminds me of home, casseroles and warm smiles. I smile, lopsidedly at the thought of home and head straight to my room. Aiden knows his way around this house anyway. Plopping on the bed, I go through the motions of getting my jacket and shoes off before letting my body hit the bed.

 It’s bliss, I’m floating.

Then, I’m dreaming. It’s almost haunting.

Bright mahogany hues and the look of disgust.