the song for this chapter is "Counting Cards," by Rainbow Kitten Surprise :)

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Counting cards in the dark
We sit and talk, bleeding it out
Believing that all our cries are just diamonds

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   Tate

      As the boys continued to chatter around me, some of their words directed at me, some not, I zoned out completely. Every syllable, every breath, was slowly tuned out until it was nothing more than a muffled sound, barely audible in my mind. 

   My focus was on the picture in front of me, and the initials carved into that heart, staring back at me, and I wondered if this was some sort of sick joke.

   If it had been just the initials "C.B." and no date, I don't think that my heart would be ramming against my ribcages like it was right now. "C.B." could have been anyone, but the date that had not yet happened seemed to cement that those initials did indeed belong to my father. 

   My palms felt sweaty, and I hadn't even realized that they were clenched into fists until I glanced down and saw my white knuckles, and when I unclenched my hands, saw the deep nail marks I had inflicted upon my skin. 

    My mouth was dry, and my body felt like it was loaded up with alcohol all over again, as my movements, and my thoughts, were becoming slow and wobbly. 

    I knew that the people who had kidnapped me had told me that my father was still alive, but I don't think I ever let myself believe it, or even really entertain the idea of it. 

    Although my movements stayed slow, my thought process began to kick it up a notch, and I felt like I could fall over from how hard they were attacking my mind. 

  Did my mother know he was alive?

  Was he even alive at all?

  Was this a setup?

  What if he didn't like me?

  If he really is alive, am I ever going to meet him?

  Am I going fucking insane?

   The train of thought screeched to a halt when I suddenly felt Harry's hand on my shoulder, causing me to jump a bit.

   "Tate?" He asked softly, and I finally tore my eyes away from the computer to look up at him. 

  I gulped down the dry feeling in my throat and replied to him. "Mhmm?"

      Pitiful.

  "What's on your mind? Talk to me, what are you thinking about all of this?"

   "I...I don't really know. What are we supposed to do with this?" I asked in a half sigh, half chuckle, raising a hand towards the enlarged image on the screen.

   Harry sighed, and all of the other guys looked up to him for guidance along with me.

  "I mean...first, I think we need to determine what the date is for," he began, and we all slowly nodded.

   "A meeting?" Abel shrugged, and I nodded back.

  "Could be, yeah...or a deadline," I chuckled, finding bitter humor in the situation even though it was not even remotely funny.

   "A warning?" Harry suggested quietly, and even though I didn't want to consider it, I knew very well that it could be an option...but a warning for what?

     "Okay, what about the option that it might not even be him who wrote it?" Niall added.

  "Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing, what if it's a setup?" Will sighed, leaning his elbows against the counter that we were all crowded around. 

   "It could quite literally be any of these things, yes," I laughed, running a hand through my hair and sighing. 

    "What about the heart?" Abel suddenly asked, and we turned towards him.

  "What about it?" I asked, propping one elbow onto the counter and slumping my head against my hand. It was way too early in the day for me to be discussing my deceased...or possibly alive father. Maybe I needed another aspirin.

     Abel shrugged and blushed a little under our stares, as all the attention had dramatically shifted over to him.

    "I'm not sure...why the heart though? He could have just written the date and the initials...I don't know, I just figured if we are really gonna analyze this thing, we have to take every variable into account," he replied.

   "Maybe he just wanted it to be noticeable? Or to make sure it didn't get lost among all of the other things on the wall," I suggested, and Abel pursed his lips together, barely nodding, and clearly deep in thought. 

   "Yeah, I guess," he whispered, so softly that I had to crane my neck towards him to make sure I could hear him.

  "Tate, it's up to you...do you want to pursue this, or do you want to leave it?" Harry asked gently, and it seemed like everyone in the room was trying to control their breathing, as though if they exhaled too hard, I might crumble into a million pieces.

   They should know by now it takes a lot more to break me than one might think.

 I took in a deep breath, and firmly exhaled, throwing off the vibes of everyone else's breathing patterns at the moment.

   "I think we should pursue it. This means we have two weeks to decipher what it could mean, and whether or not we think it is actually from my father. In the meantime, I think that we should continue to find the rest of the clues, and gather any and all intel that we can with the time that we have, there's no telling how close Quinton and Grayson are to us, or what they have planned. We need to be one step ahead at all times, if possible," I instructed, and they all widened their eyes at my decisiveness.

    "I...okay then," Harry laughed, seeming to be at a loss for words, "well, Miss Tate, where to next?" he asked, with a lopsided grin on his face. 

   I glanced at all of them, eager to distract myself from thoughts of my father in any way that I could.

   "How soon could we have a plane here to go to France?" I asked.

    Abel smiled at me and closed the enlarged photograph on his screen, pulling up something different instead. 

   He scrolled across a few different tabs until he cleared his throat to speak.

   "I can call the pilots and have them here in about three and a half hours," he replied, raising an eyebrow at me, and it seemed that I was calling all the shots.

  "Perfect, let's get this place cleaned up, pack, and maybe eat some lunch, and by that time, we should have enough time to make it to the airport ten minutes early," I suggested. 

   "Sounds good," Abel replied, closing his laptop and unlocking his phone, scrolling for a bit before he pressed call on a contact.

   The rest of the group stared at me with blank faces and I looked at them expectantly.

 "Well? What are you all staring at? Let's all grab a trash bag and get to work!"

  ***********

    "My whole existence is hungover," Niall whined as he walked up the stairs to the plane, going at a sloth-like pace.

   "Well can it hurry up and be hungover in your seat?" I laughed, nudging his back with my finger.

  He snapped his head around and pouted his lip out at me, his black sunglasses keeping out the harsh afternoon sunlight beaming down onto us.

   "Tate, can't you literally see that I am dying?" He asked dramatically, and I rolled my eyes.

  "You'll be fucking dead if you don't get your arse on this plane in the next thirty seconds," Will warned, and I threw my head back in laughter as Niall scurried up the stairs, mumbling curses back to Will under his breath. 

   The rest of us made our way onto the plane at a normal speed, resuming our usual seating arrangement, and greeting the pilots as we all got settled in. 

   "So, when are we gonna solve this next riddle? I feel like I'm doing a bunch of brainteasers...well, brainteasers with possible lives at stake," Will shrugged, causing everyone to chuckle.

   "My brain has had about enough teasing, but I guess we can just figure the damn thing out now. Fuck, we should have been accountants or something," Harry groaned, slumping down in the plush seat and covering his eyes with his hand.

  "Yes, Harry, in hindsight, a normal desk job would have been a lot less stressful than being a criminal. Wonderful observation," Abel muttered sarcastically, and Harry snapped up in his seat, bending down to slip off his boot, and chucking it at Abel, who just barely managed to dodge it. 

   "When did you become such a smartass?" Harry laughed, shaking his head a bit.

  Abel just shrugged and looked at me.

   "Your girlfriend taught me, she's a great instructor," he quipped, and Harry rolled his eyes.

  "That she is," he chuckled, kicking my foot lightly with his now shoeless foot. 

  It was quiet for a minute or two before Harry spoke up again, reaching up to scratch at his hair awkwardly. 

   "Can I...can I have my shoe back?" He winced.

   Abel stopped whatever he was working on and glanced up from his computer.

  "No," he smugly replied, resuming his typing.

  Harry's jaw fell open slightly, causing me to laugh a bit.

    "You should have thought about this before you threw it at me," Abel shrugged, a smirk on his lips, his eyes never once leaving his screen as he spoke. 

  Harry looked so defeated, and to add to it, I reached forward and condescendingly patted his knee.

  "There, there. It'll be okay," I assured him in a motherly tone. 

  "Can we get food once we land? I'm starving," Will whined, and I felt like a preschool teacher with all of the grown-ass men around me pouting like a bunch of four-year-olds.

   "Will, we just ate," I laughed, slouching down in my seat.

 He stuck his tongue out at me. "We didn't just eat. We ate like... twenty minutes ago," he corrected me, and I threw my hands up in mock defense. 

    I ignored his whines and turned to Abel.

  "Any updates from the Fort we should know about?" I asked, desperate to get away from Harry, Will, and Niall's relentless pouting.

   Abel looked up at me with a serious expression on his face.

  "Nothing. I mean, I've been in contact with them, but they haven't really had anything to report," he sighed, and I frowned in confusion.

   "That's a good thing, right?" I asked, my voice tinged with hope. 

  Abel sighed and readjusted his glasses, nodding in a not very reassuring way.

  "You would think so, wouldn't you? But...I don't know. It just seems weird. Whoever this person is that they are working for has clearly been after it for a long fucking time. It just seems a bit odd to me that they would realize it was a fake, and then...nothing," he frowned.

   "Well, not nothing. They did kidnap Harry," I added, glancing back to see Harry flitting his fingers in a flirty wave at the mention of his name. 

   Abel gave me a half-ass smile and a weak chuckle. "Yeah, they did do that. But I mean...that's here. That's with us. Back at the base...it's dead. It just seems suspicious that everyone is so...quiet right now," he replied, subconsciously beginning to crack his knuckles, staring off into space. 

      I felt my stomach churn a bit at his words as the depth behind them started to sink in.

  "So you haven't heard anything? Whit hasn't told you of any weird activity? Not even a phone call or just someone giving the building a funny look from the street?" I asked in frustration, finding it odd as well that everything was going so smoothly. 

  "Not a thing. I just...I don't know. It's like...as bad as it sounds, I almost wish they were fucking up something, I wish they were trying to attack the Fort. I wish they would just do anything, anything at all...instead of just creeping around in the shadows," Abel whispered in such desperation...something I did not often hear from him. 

   The boys were chatting amongst themselves, laughing, joking about. But right over Abel and I sat a dark cloud, looming over us...causing our stomachs to twist and our hearts to skip a beat.

   It loomed over us without making a sound, but the presence of it made more noise than you could imagine. For even though it was just a dark cloud, we knew that it had the potential to bring along, wind, rain, sleet, snow, thunder, lightning...at any given moment.

    So perhaps that's why the uneventfulness at the Fort was scaring Abel and me so much. Perhaps that's why we weren't kicking our feet up-and in Harry's case, kicking our shoe off-and relaxing, settling in for a bit, and catching our breath.

     Perhaps that was why I suddenly felt chills and felt my hands go slightly clammy as my mind was once again bombarded with thoughts and fears and what-ifs.

     Because right now, Quinton, Grayson, and whoever the fuck they worked for...were really starting to resemble that dark cloud that had decided to take residence directly above our heads, our minds, and our thoughts. 

     Because even though right now...it was just a cloud, even though right now...it was just silence...

    Abel and I both knew...

        It could very well just be the calm before the storm. 

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