The adrenaline from the park faded with each step away from the swings, leaving behind a cold, focused clarity. They moved not as students, but as operatives returning to base after a successful recon.
Cedric matched Ace's pace, his mind clearly already dissecting the new problem. "So, this cram school near Northgate... you know anything concrete about it?"
Ace glanced at him, the ghost of a smirk touching his lips. "Yeah, I guess. I'm pretty sure it's the same one Carl goes to. 'Northgate Scholastic Advantage.' Fancy name for a pressure cooker."
Cedric nodded, a flicker of understanding in his eyes. "So you already had a probable location for Jamie. You just needed the confirmation from Philip."
"More or less, yeah," Ace admitted. The plan in the park hadn't just been about Philip; it had been a two-birds-one-stone verification.
Cedric let out a short, thoughtful sigh. "Why even bother with the whole bait-and-switch with Philip, then? We could've just staked out the cram school."
Ace's expression turned flinty. "Because Philip was a loose end. A noisy, aggressive loose end pointing a finger at us. We had to deal with him sooner or later. Better to do it on our terms, in a place we chose, before he could bring that chaos anywhere near Carl's house." It was hunter-logic: neutralize potential threats to the perimeter before engaging the primary target.
"Yeah," Cedric conceded. "I guess you're right. Cleaner that way."
They walked the rest of the way in a silence that was neither comfortable nor tense, but functional. The city sounds felt distant, filtered out by their shared objective.
The cram school was exactly as Ace had pictured it: a repurposed office building with a sleek, impersonal logo. Through a large second-story window, they could see rows of silhouettes bent over desks, a single figure pacing at the front—the instructor. A monument to mundane pressure.
Cedric was the first to speak, his voice low. "I'm guessing they're not finished."
Ace shook his head, his eyes scanning the building's exits, the parking lot, the surrounding streets. Assessing the terrain. "Not for another twenty, twenty-five minutes."
Cedric leaned against a lamppost, his gaze fixed on the window. "How do you wanna do this? We can't just... walk in and ask for him."
"I'm not sure," Ace said, his brow furrowed. The straightforward intimidation that worked on Philip was useless here. "Violence is off the table. If we so much as shove him, he runs to Daddy, and Daddy has an entire department to make our lives disappear."
Cedric snorted. "Yeah, no. Threaten him, and we'll have a SWAT team at our doors and social services at your mom's by sunrise. His kind doesn't fight; they delegate to people with badges and lawyers."
Ace cracked a dry, humorless smile at the accuracy. "So we can't hurt him. We have to break him. Mentally. Make the idea of crossing us, of ever looking at Carl again, so terrifying it's unthinkable."
"I agree," Cedric said, his tone grim. "But how? We need leverage. Something he values more than his petty power trip."
Ace looked down, scuffing his shoe against the pavement, mentally rifling through a toolbox designed for monsters, not privileged brats. Reputation? Status? His father's approval? They needed a wedge.
Suddenly, Cedric stiffened. He pulled out his phone, his thumbs flying across the screen. His eyes scanned an article, widening slightly. "Ace."
"What?"
Cedric turned the screen toward him. It was a local news site. The headline: "Chief Rourke Announces Major Press Conference: 'Cleaning House' Initiative Tomorrow at 10 AM." Below it was a photo of a stern, polished man in a police uniform—Jamie's father.
"His dad is launching some big anti-corruption, 'tough on crime' media blitz tomorrow," Cedric said, his voice charged with sudden, fierce intensity. "His entire image is about being the untouchable good guy. If, tonight, his perfect heir was linked to a bullying campaign that drove a kid to a suicide note..." He let the sentence hang, his mind racing ahead of his words. "That's the leverage. That's the nuclear option. But we need proof. Something concrete we can hold over Jamie's head. School records, incident reports, something that ties him directly to Carl and to Philip."
He looked from his phone to the cram school, a plan solidifying in his eyes. "The admin office. They'll have digital records, maybe even cctv footage of Jamie bullying Carl. If I can get in there now, before they lock up for the night..."
He looked at Ace, the request and the warning in his gaze. "I need you to stop him. When he comes out, don't let him just get in a car and vanish. Buy me twenty minutes. Stall him. Talk to him, follow him, I don't care. Do anything," he emphasized, his voice dropping to a serious, pointed whisper, "but do not lay a finger on him. We cannot give him a physical complaint. Understood?"
Ace met his gaze, the parameters of his new, delicate mission clicking into place: Engage the target. Prevent extraction. Zero physical contact. A social operation. His least comfortable kind of hunt.
"Just trust me on this one," Cedric said, already backing away, his body coiled to move.
Before Ace could fully process the bizarre pivot from street violence to social engineering, Cedric turned and bolted, a shadow slipping around the side of the building, seeking a service entrance or an unlocked window—the hunter becoming a hacker, a thief of information.
Ace was left alone on the sidewalk, staring at the main doors of the cram school, feeling profoundly out of his element. The clock in his head began its silent, twenty-minute countdown.
The main doors of the cram school burst open, and a tide of students flooded onto the sidewalk, a blur of backpacks and relieved chatter. The twenty-minute countdown in Ace's head began its final, frantic descent.
Stall him. Talk. Don't touch.
The rules were a cage. He felt like a swordsman ordered to fight with a feather.
He scanned the crowd and picked out a nerdy-looking kid with glasses, peeling off from the main group. An easy mark. Ace intercepted him, forcing a casual posture. "Hey. Can I ask a quick question?"
The kid looked up, blinking behind thick lenses. "Yeah?"
"Can you tell me which one is Jamie?"
"Jamie?" The kid pushed his glasses up his nose and pointed without hesitation toward a knot of students. In the center, holding court, was a boy who looked like a catalog model for privilege—expensive haircut, a designer backpack, a laugh that was just a little too loud. Jamie.
"Oh, thanks," Ace muttered, already moving.
His target was in motion. Jamie and his group—three guys and two girls—turned away from the school, not toward a parking lot, but down the tree-lined sidewalk, walking. Ace followed, hanging back half a block, a shadow among shadows.
They walked for several blocks, the group a moving island of chatter and ease. Ace's mind scrambled. Talk to him. How? He couldn't just walk up. He had no cover story. The social paralysis was complete.
Then, a break. The group reached a crossroads. Hugs, fist-bumps, "see you tomorrows." The two girls split off to the right. Two of the guys went straight ahead. Jamie was left with just one friend, the two of them continuing down a quieter, more residential street lined with tall hedges and wrought-iron gates.
Fifteen minutes left.
Ace closed the distance slightly, his senses sharpening. This was a wealthier neighborhood. Large houses set back from the road. Fewer streetlights. More shadows.
Up ahead, Jamie's final friend reached a gate, gave a wave, and turned in. "Later, man!"
"Later!" Jamie called back.
And then he was alone.
He walked another fifty yards, humming something tuneless, pulling out his phone. He stopped in front of a large, pristine white gate—his house. He tapped a code into a keypad on the pillar. A soft, electronic click signaled the lock disengaging. He pushed the heavy gate open just enough to slip through.
Ten minutes left. Target is at the threshold of his secure location. Mission failure in 3... 2...
The hunter's protocol, cold and absolute, overrode the paralysis. The social mission had failed. The tactical imperative remained: STOP THE TARGET.
Ace moved.
He was a blur in the deep twilight. As Jamie stepped through the gate, Ace was there. His left hand clamped over Jamie's mouth from behind, stifling any cry. His right arm hooked around Jamie's chest, pinning his arms. He yanked him backward, off his feet, out of the gateway before it could swing shut.
Jamie thrashed, a muffled shriek vibrating against Ace's palm. Ace drove a knee into the back of Jamie's thigh, a precise strike to a pressure point that caused the leg to buckle. As Jamie sagged, Ace shifted his grip, his right hand forming the stiff-fingered blade. He struck, not with brute force, but with pinpoint accuracy, to the nerve cluster at the side of Jamie's neck.
The struggle ceased instantly. Jamie's body went completely, terrifyingly limp.
Ace caught him, lowering the dead weight to the manicured grass just outside the gate. He listened. No shouts from the house. No curtains twitching. The street was silent.
From his pocket, he produced a heavy-duty zip tie. He looped it around Jamie's wrists behind his back and pulled it tight with a sharp zzzip. He then hoisted Jamie into a fireman's carry.
He took one last look at the open gate, the inviting path to the lit porch of the big house. Then he turned and melted back into the shadows of the street, moving swiftly and silently away from the scene of the perfect, isolated crime.
The target had been stopped. Acquired. And no one had seen a thing.
Consciousness returned to Jamie Rourke as a series of disjointed, terrifying sensations. A deep, throbbing stiffness in his neck. A biting, plastic tightness around his wrists, bound behind him. And absolute darkness, a rough fabric tied over his eyes.
He tried to move, to scream, but his body was leaden, strapped to a hard, wooden chair. A whimper escaped his lips.
Then, voices. Arguing. Close.
"—the hell did you bring him here?" The voice was a furious, controlled hiss.
"He was at his gate. It was the last chance." The second voice was defensive, flat.
"I said stall him! Talk to him! Cause a distraction! Not this! Do you have any idea what this is?" The first voice was boiling over with a rage that was all the more terrifying for how tightly leashed it was. "You just turned a blackmail op into a kidnapping. This isn't a hunt; it's a felony. His father runs the police. They will turn this city inside out."
"I did what worked. He's here. He's contained."
A beat of furious silence. "Did anyone see you?"
"No. He was alone. I was clean."
"Small mercies," the first voice muttered, the anger subsiding into grim acceptance.
"Alright whatever. It's done. So? Did you get it?"
A rustle of paper. "Yeah. I got it."
Footsteps approached him. Jamie braced himself. A hand grasped the knot of the blindfold and yanked it off.
Harsh light from a single bare bulb stabbed his eyes. He blinked, tears springing up. The room swam into focus—small, concrete, windowless, barren except for the chair and a rickety table. It smelled of dust and fear.
Two figures stood by the table. He didn't recognize them. Not from his school, not from his circles. They were just… boys. But the one on the left had eyes that held a flat, vacant chill. The other looked at him with the focused intensity of a chess master surveying a ruined board.
Jamie's first instinct, born of a lifetime of untouchable status, was to reassert the natural order. He sucked in a ragged breath and screamed, "HELP! SOMEBODY—!"
The boy with the cold eyes moved. Not a lunge, but a swift, efficient step. His hand cracked across Jamie's mouth—a crisp, silencing slap that snapped his head to the side. The scream died in a gasp of shock. A coppery taste bloomed on his split lip.
"Nice try," the boy said, his voice devoid of inflection. "No one can hear you. Scream all you want. It wastes your breath."
Jamie stared, tears of humiliation and pain welling. The physical violation was absolute. He tried another script, his voice shaking. "Who are you? What do you want? Money? You know who my father is?" The last sentence was a desperate squeak.
The two boys exchanged a look. It wasn't fear. It was a shared, contemptuous understanding. They knew. That was the point.
The shorter one, the one who had argued, spoke. His voice was calmer now, almost conversational. "Your father is giving a big speech tomorrow. 'Cleaning up the city.'" He held up a thin manila folder. "Imagine what happens if, tonight, proof lands that his perfect son is the reason a kid named Carl Ames has a suicide note in his desk."
The words weren't a shout. They were a quiet statement of fact, more terrifying than any threat. They carried the certainty of a guillotine blade already dropped.
Jamie's blood turned to ice. Carl Ames. The quiet, broken kid from school. The one he'd pointed out to Philip as "an interesting specimen." This was about him? This… this concrete room, these terrifying strangers, it was all because of that?
The safe, powerful world of his father's name shattered. Here, in this concrete box, his name was nothing. His father's title was a liability. These two weren't afraid of the system; they were using it as a weapon against him.
The two figures looked at each other, then back at him. The argument was over. A new, terrible understanding filled the room.
The one who had slapped him leaned close again, his voice a low rasp in the silent space. "You're going to tell us everything. Starting with why."
Jamie's breathing hitched, shallow and terrified. He was no longer Jamie Rourke. He was a source of information. And his interrogators were waiting.