The first time I met Shay, my boss had tied her to a radiator pipe.

I’m not sure if it’s the right point to start this account, but it is the moment I met her, and it made for quite a first introduction. Maybe one day, when I have time to do more research, I’ll properly describe what happened before, but for now, I’ll stick to my own account.

So, there she was, tied to a metal pipe, shouting abuse at all. I was sent in to look through her phone, but I needed her fingerprint to get in. (Hacking is much easier when you don’t have to.) I was scared to get close; her reputation preceded her. The men bringing her in had all come back damaged; she’d kicked one of them in the kidney so forcefully his piss turned orange. He went to hospital, together with the man she punched in the liver hard enough he turned into a sack of potatoes.

When I entered the basement, she fell silent. She glowered at me, studied me intensely. It felt like every move was documented, carefully processed and filed away.

“You’re not a strongman.” Her voice was rough, but every syllable was laced with the stubborn defiance shining in her meadow-green eyes. “What do you want?”

Awkwardly, I waved her phone. The boss had suggested I didn’t talk, warned me that she’d find an in any way she could.

Sighing, she flexed the fingers of her right hand and offered it up. It was trembling slightly, I noticed, but she didn’t seem to care. Exhaustion, maybe. Adrenaline leaving her system. Maybe she needed a good meal.

“Call Carlyle,” she half-joked, “Tell him I’ll be home late.” She unlocked the screen, frowning at the time before I took the phone back. “He must be worried.”

“Boyfriend?” I couldn’t help myself. This Carlyle was as good a point to start as any.

She hesitated for a moment. “Landlord.” She made a face. “Groundskeeper? It’s complicated.”

I opened her text app. Her conversation with the mysterious Carlyle was a string of almost home and what’s for dinner and pick up some carrots on the way home, Tesco’s got a sale. His profile picture was of a man, sixty-odd years old, with messy hair and a three-day stubble. It was artfully edited; the only thing not in black and white were his piecing sky-blue eyes.

(Those eyes are so much worse in person, looking down at you, angry and cold as ice, or compassionate and warm as a summer’s day, but always, always brimming with an undeniable intelligence.)

“Is he your dad?” I pretended to study the photo a bit better. “Is he your daddy?”

“No!” She made a gagging sound, “Hell no. He manages my estate. Long story.” She rattled her chain. “Please just text him to let him know I’m fine.”

“Will do.” I found my fingers typing out a message, already. “Should I tell him you’re chained to a radiator?”

“Maye leave that part out.”

I hit send. “Anyone else interesting?” There was a man named Trevor high up on her list, but I understood about one in ten words of that conversation. There was a picture of a baby, though.

“This yours?”

She was comfortable enough to roll her eyes. “I can’t see the screen.”

I showed her. “Cute baby.”

“Not mine.” She tilted her head, and something in my gut shifted as her laser focus homed in on my every movement. There was a moment, a brief breath suspended in time, before she spoke again. Something in her eyes changed, her shoulders relaxed, and her entire being seemed to shift, grow. Her next words came out quietly confident, certain.

“Do you realise your boss is a murderer and a mob boss?”

Of course I did. I tried not to react, looking at her passively, but I still had the creeping feeling she could read my reaction like a book. I was proven right as she continued speaking.

“Have you ever seen the filth he gets up to with your help? Or do you convince yourself you’re just the tech guy?” I could almost taste her disgust. (Her disgust in me.) “Did you convince yourself that what you do is just white collar? There are crack addicts out there who would’ve been fine without you. There are people on Brompton who wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for you.” There was a fire in her, a fury that told me that she’d done her research and thought she was right even when she wasn’t. She was giving me too much credit. I really was just a tech guy. I never did come in contact with drugs, let alone encourage anyone to do crack. And I’ve never ever killed anyone. (Promise.)

“You’re wrong.” She was. She was. If only I could articulate why, in that moment.

She picked up on something in me. I’m not sure what; I don’t even know if she knows what she saw. If she does, she’s never shared it with me. Whatever she saw, though, it softened her.

“What’s your name?”

“I-” After a moment’s hesitation, I decided. “Aiden.”

“Aiden.” She nodded. “How long have you been here?”

Where was she going with this? “About five years.”

“And it’s keeping you here, isn’t it?” She almost sounded compassionate. “At first, it was probably just money, benefits, decent work hours. But now, it’s a five-year gap in your resume.” Her gaze didn’t move, but I could feel her focus briefly shift to my hands. “You need the money. A man like you, you’ll want to provide for your family. You need to.”

I was warned she might do this, but it was still a bit of a shock to the system. Sure, most of it is guesswork. Sure, she just spotted my wedding ring. But still, the feeling of having your every motivation analysed is enough to push anyone off-kilter, if only for a moment.

“What is it then?” It wasn’t a question. “A wife, two children? Three? Nice median family, two boys and a girl?”

She was just guessing. I know she was. There is no way she knew.

It was infuriating.

“I don’t have to take this.” I didn’t manage much more than a growl, but I did manage quite a dramatic turn and stomp back to the door, ready to slam it and leave her in the ringing silence.

She wasn’t going to let me, though.

“Aiden.”

I didn’t turn. Hand on the doorknob, I counted to ten, waited.

“You’re going to help me.” I could hear her swallow, her dry throat working for moisture. “You’re going to go up there, log into your computer, copy all your boss’s files, and send them to the person named Fox in my phone, and you’re going to tell them where we are.”

I frowned, “What, because you tell me to?”

“No.” Her dry throat produced little more than a croak, but the confidence was still there. I could feel her eyes on my back. “You will because I’m giving you a choice.”

The door closed behind me a lot quieter than I’d planned.

She wasn’t wrong.

At three in the morning, there was a sound at the front door. The boss had asked me to stay and dig through her phone; really, I just wanted to stay near and see what would happen.

The sound was loud in the stillness of the night, and it had me upright and out of bed within a minute. I waited, standing behind my door in darkness, keeping my breaths even as my heart tried to pound out of my chest.

The knock on my door, roughly three minutes later, scared the shit out of me.

It came again, a polite rap, rhythmic, almost cheery. tap tap tap-tap tap.

I opened the door.

Logically, I knew what to expect. Still, her face, just over a head below mine now that she was standing, made me startle. Her mess of hair was tied back, now, out of the way, and her companion had given her a zip-up hoodie big enough to drown in.

Her companion, now he scared me.

He stood tall, I maybe had only half an inch on him, and he was broad. He had the physique of a well-trained boxer, wide shoulders, strong arms, the stance of someone itching for a fight. He filled out his faded brown-leather jacket and the black t-shirt underneath strained over his chest. And he glowered. He glared at me as if the only thing keeping him from wrapping his arms around my neck and snapping it like a twig was the woman standing between us. The barely-over-five-feet woman that was kindly smiling at me as if she wasn’t holding the leash of a dire wolf.

“May I have my phone back, please?” Her volume was normal, regular, jarringly loud in the night. Not breaking eye contact with the mountain behind her, I reached to the small desk and grabbed it.

She took it from me.

“Come.”

I followed.