embers // the line between dusk and night
[They’ve been watching the dive bar for over a month. Nestled between a by-the-slice pizza place and a six story walk up, it’s a basement level entry. Opens up onto an alley out back that’s claustrophobically walled in by all the surrounding buildings. It’s clear there is a set of transactions going on semi-regularly, on a rotating schedule between the gang they’ve been tracking and a local sect. It’s also a surveillance nightmare inside and out and they’re being forced to resort to old school techniques at this point. As Stiles wires up he can’t help but smirk bitterly. They knew what they were doing. They’ve always known what they were doing and his unit has been too many steps behind for too fucking long.
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‘You can play the tech junkie as good as any. Living in Greenpoint, meeting your friends for a drink at a local dive bar in just a seedy enough neighborhood to make it exciting for all of you making your six figure salaries.’
Stiles had leant back in his temporarily re-appropriated chair, with his feet on his desk if a filing cabinet and a card table could be called that, and feigned disappointment.
‘What happens when my friends don’t show, Murphy? Loners at bars draw attention, and none of our guys are going to buy it. I’m going to stick out like a neon sign wrapped in an FBI vest with blaring police sirens and the distant and ominous sound of helicopter blades’
‘We’ll have Danny and Trevor from the analytics team meet you inside. This is just routine reconnaissance. You’re not making contact, you’re getting the lay of the—don’t look at me like that.’
Stiles is mid eye-roll and rolls his head again, just for effect.
‘I’ve been working for you for three years, Murph. Don’t read me the rulebook you’ve got memorized now.’
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He pulls his jacket tighter across his shoulders as he crosses the street and ducks into the place. It’s cozy. Cozier than it has any right to be with a set of jalapeño string lights ringing the wood topped bar. He orders the Brooklyn based IPA on tap and pays cash, nodding at the bartender, and situates himself at one of the booths closer to the entrance, with the most casual viewpoint of the front door and the back room, darker and tucked behind the curve of the bar. The leather is flaking and creaks under his jeans, but there’s something comforting about it, nonetheless.
There are three points of entry from his sightline. He clocks seventeen civilians, and two targets. Bartender plus bar back rounds it up to twenty one.
He pulls his phone out, prop glasses scuffing down the side of his nose, just for something to do. It’s too early for Danny and Trevor, he may have jumped the gun but fuck it, he was too antsy sitting on his hands. Every day they waste on this fucking information gathering is another day they lose on the trail of missing kids they’ve been following like bloodhounds across the country.]