Free Into Focus (Focus Series Book 1) by Alex Bostwick

Prologue
     
    The kid they sent to meet me was nervous. He
was pale, sweaty, nearly shaking with anxiety. He couldn’t have
been older than eighteen. I doubted that he had done anything like
this before—not alone, at least. He was wearing a baseball cap,
extremely dark sunglasses, and had his hood up, obscuring his face
in dark shadows.
    In July.
    In Miami.
    The kid couldn’t have been more obvious if he
had a neon sign flashing the words HEY, I’M HERE TO MEET A SPY.
    I ground my teeth in frustration before
calming my nerves. The kid was probably just a cutout, someone paid
to meet a contact in public. The idea was for the parties involved
to hide behind multiple layers of people, so that they could
maintain deniability.
    It was also so to protect them if the contact
was violent.
    I don’t really have that problem. I’m my own
cutout; I almost never look like myself anyway. And it would take
more than these guys could put together in a public café to kill
me. You know, probably. I hadn’t really tested it.
    I squashed down my professionalism for a
moment, stuck it in the back of my head, and ambled over to the
kid. He sat rigidly in his chair, hardly moving, his eyes darting
left and right, desperately tracking both available exits and the
people around him. They eventually focused on me, and I saw his
eyes widen behind the tinted lenses of his sunglasses.
    I paused a few feet away from the chair
across from him. “Sagittarius,” I said quietly.
    I saw his eyes widen even further. They must
have been in danger of falling right out of his head.
    “G-Gemini,” he stuttered. He gestured weakly
at the seat across from me, and I sat down slowly, taking care to
keep my hands in full view. I didn’t want the kid to vapor-lock on
me. I placed my palms on the table, and looked at my contact.
    “You’re Deadhead, right?” the kid
stammered.
    That was what they called me in the industry.
You have to have some kind of name in order to build a brand, you
know. My real name was Rick Torin. You don’t just give out that
kind of information, though. With my abilities, all I needed was an
alias, and I was all but uncatchable. I didn’t even like the
Grateful Dead.
    But the kid should not to be so cavalier
about divulging details in public, so I simply stared at him for a
few moments, not moving a millimeter. I wasn’t actively trying to
scare the poor kid, but I had a reputation to uphold.
    “You have something for me,” I said. I kept
my voice low, steady.
    The kid gulped audibly, then reached into the
front pocket of his sweatshirt. He withdrew a plain manila folder,
and placed it on the table. With a single finger, he slid it across
the surface toward me.
    I accepted it with casual professionalism,
because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you meet a rookie
(or anyone else, for that matter), and flipped it open. Inside was
a series of photographs of a facility, a group of buildings about
four stories tall, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with
barbed wire. An aerial photograph showed the overall layout of the
compound, like that even mattered to someone like me.
    Behind the photographs was a small pile of
documents, detailing the kind of security I could expect to
encounter at the target. There wasn’t a letterhead on any of them,
which was typical. Any corporation or outfit who hired me wouldn’t
want to have any kind of easily identified paper trail attached to
the job.
    “What’s the target?” I asked quietly.
    “Blackstone,” the kid mumbled.
    “Mercenary outfit?”
    He jerked his head in disagreement. “Private
security and consultation.”
    “Mercenary outfit,” I said with a snort.
“There’s nothing in here about what you need.”
    “Client list and bidding information. Should
be on one of the higher-ups’ computers.”
    “Deadline?”
    “Ten days. That’s all they told me.”
    I nodded my head. “My fee?”
    “Cash. Black valise under the table.”
    I groaned quietly.