Springing the Trap

“It was such a relief to get your email,” said Aidan Glass, through the speaker of Anya’s phone.

“I was heartbroken to hear about your daughter,” Anya replied. “Getting in touch was the least I could do.”

“And you’re sure she’s in London?”

“I met with him—her—just yesterday. My chief of security tracked her back to a hotel nearby.”

“Then I’ll get on a train right away,” Glass said. “I’m sorry for any trouble Tamsin might have caused you, Ms. Clay. She’s—she’s not well.”

“I understand,” Anya said with a mournful sigh. “It’s a tragedy, really—so many girls like her, brainwashed into destroying themselves.”

“We looked into therapy. Even found a clinic that specialises in cases like Tamsin’s. But the fees—we just can’t afford it.”

Now that was an interesting thought. “And if you could?”

“Then we would do anything it took to get her there.” Glass paused, a meaningful silence, then added: “Anything, Ms. Clay.”

Anya looked up at Reeve, listening silently nearby. Reeve nodded.

“I can help you with that,” she said. “Getting your daughter the treatment she needs, and getting her to the clinic.”

“Oh, I can’t ask you to—”

“I insist. Make the necessary arrangements at the clinic, and have them bill everything to the Scriptus Foundation.”

“If you’re sure.” Glass heaved a sigh of relief. “I can’t thank you enough, Ms. Clay. I’ll send you the clinic’s address.”

“We’ll call when we have news.”

“I look forward to it.”

The call ended, and Anya gave Reeve an expectant look.

“Call Glass and get him to meet you at Bateman’s office, nice and late,” Reeve told her. “I’ll make sure we have access.”

“You think she’ll agree to meet?”

“Tell him there’s a problem with the transfer and you need to confirm the account details in person. He—”

“She,” Anya interrupted, insistent.

Reeve rolled his eyes. “Glass will do whatever it takes to get that money.”

The tablet full of Reeve’s research still lay on the table. Anya reached out to unlock it, then flipped to the photo of Ingram and his … partner? Boyfriend? Whatever he was, he’d be an obstacle. “What about Moran?”

Reeve’s answering grin was eager and vicious. “I’ll take care of Moran.”

---

Thanks to a car-share start-up that still hadn’t figured out the major security flaw in their booking system, Jay had procured a car.

It was nearly 2100 hours when Sebastian pulled up in front of the Mawson & Williams building. The streets were empty, all the businesses along the row shut up for the evening; this late in the year, the sun had set hours ago. Sebastian drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and glared up at the concrete edifice of the building. “I should come up with you,” he said, not for the first time.

Jay, in the passenger’s seat, unbuckled his seatbelt. “We’ve been over this. I’ll be fine.” He chewed his lower lip for a moment, then leaned across the centre console, reaching out to turn Sebastian’s face toward him. “We pull this off, and it’s all over. The job’s done.”

Sebastian had his doubts about that, but he kept them to himself as Jay kissed him, slow and gentle.

When Jay pulled back, Sebastian said, “I’ll be waiting right here.”

Jay nodded and stepped out of the car.

Clay had told them the building would be unlocked, and sure enough it was; Jay pulled the door open and disappeared inside. Sebastian sat back in the driver’s seat, watched the doors, and waited.

Only a few minutes had passed when movement in the street ahead caught his eye. An SUV had just turned the corner.

As it completed the turn, the SUV’s engine revved. With an abrupt lurch, it barrelled down the street toward him.

It was going to ram Sebastian’s car.

There was no time to get out of the way. Sebastian threw the door open and dove out, hitting the pavement hard as the SUV made impact. The car crumpled, bouncing and heaving on its suspension as the forward momentum of the SUV pushed it a good five meters down the block.

As both vehicles slid to a stop, Sebastian struggled upright. Down the street, Ellis Reeve jumped out of the SUV and strode intently toward Sebastian, breaking into a run to close the distance between them.

Sebastian got to his feet just in time for Reeve’s fist to collide with his eye.

---

Anya’s phone pinged; a text from Reeve confirmed that Ingram and Moran had arrived, minutes before Ingram stepped through the doors of Mawson & Williams’ reception area.

“Ms. Clay.” Ingram’s eyes darted around, noting the otherwise empty office. “It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”

“I wanted to get this sorted as soon as possible.” Anya tapped her phone to the card reader and opened the door to the inner office. “Just through here, please.”

“I could’ve just forwarded you the account numbers,” Ingram protested as Anya herded him into one of the conference rooms.

“I know.” Anya motioned for him to sit and settled into her own seat across the table. “I just wanted to confirm a few details first, Tamsin.”

The moment the name left Anya’s mouth, Ingram froze.

“That is your real name, isn’t it?” Anya said, pleasantly. “Tamsin Glass?”

Ingram stared at Anya with wide, panicked eyes; his fingers tightened compulsively on the arms of his chair.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to call the police.” Anya settled back in her own chair, one foot braced on the ground to spin it idly back and forth. “I’ve spoken to your father. He’s been so worried about you, Tamsin.”

There was a flash of defiance in Ingram’s gaze. “That’s not my name.”

“Of course it is.” Anya sighed. “On some level, I can understand why you’re doing this. Womanhood is suffering. It’s victimisation. It’s contempt from every man you meet, no matter what you’ve accomplished. Of course you’d reject it. Try to escape it.” She tipped her head and met Ingram’s eyes. “But you can’t, Tamsin. None of us can. You need to accept that.”

Ingram swallowed and looked down, eyes fixed on the tabletop. “What are you going to do?”

“My head of security is currently dealing with Mr. Moran,” Anya explained. “Once he’s done, we’re going to take you to a private clinic for treatment.”

Ingram’s hands, still clutching the arms of his chair, started to tremble. “‘Treatment’?”

“You’re unwell, Tamsin.” Anya sat up in her chair and braced her elbows on the table, leaning forward. “You need help. We’re going to help you.” She smiled. “I’ve already paid for everything.”

Ingram blinked, and the terrified expression slid off his face.

“Oh, good,” he said. “That’s all I needed to know.”

---

Reeling and half-blind, Sebastian danced out of Reeve’s effective range and circled, struggling to keep him at bay.

Reeve had easily four inches and five stone on him; the odds were not in Sebastian’s favour, and on an empty street like this there were no opportunities to even them. Sebastian could try cornering Reeve against the building to bounce his head off the wall, but if Reeve managed to corner him instead—or, god forbid, pin him—the fight would be over in seconds.

The smart solution here was simple: run. But that would mean leaving Jay behind.

Reeve closed on him again; he and Sebastian skirmished briefly, a series of blocked and dodged strikes in which neither gained or lost much ground. Sebastian still ached from his impact with the pavement, his joints threatening to lock up as bruised muscles began to swell.

And then Reeve slipped past his guard and delivered a brutal strike to Sebastian’s ribs. Something popped in his chest, and Sebastian gasped, crumpling to one knee.

Reeve loomed over him, reaching down to restrain him, a cruel satisfaction on his face—

—and Sebastian swung his forearm up into Reeve’s groin.

Reeve doubled over, wheezing, as Sebastian threw all his weight into a bare-knuckle strike to his jaw. The bone-cracking impact rattled through the both of them, and Reeve fell in a graceless tumble, landing hard on his back.

Sebastian stood and brought his foot down hard on Reeve’s knee. Bone crunched beneath his boot.

He couldn’t help but enjoy it when Reeve screamed.

---

Anya’s confidence faltered as Ingram reached for his phone, his attention shifting wholly away from her. “What?”

“I just needed to confirm you sent the money,” Ingram said, thumbs tapping away at the screen.

“But I didn’t send you money,” Anya said, struggling to catch up. “I sent your father money.”

“Oh, that wasn’t my father. That was my partner.” Ingram looked up from the phone; his affectionate smile was, very clearly, not directed at Anya. “He’s good, isn’t he?”

“But the clinic—”

“Doesn’t exist,” Ingram said, turning his attention back to the phone. “Well, aside from a website and a voicemail inbox. The account on that invoice belongs to Modern Dynamics.”

The name set off alarm bells inside Anya’s head. She’d just paid a substantial sum of money from Scriptus to one of her own companies.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably fine. Unless someone tips off HMRC about the whole transaction. Maybe even the Charity Commission, for good measure.” Ingram gave the screen one last tap, and a tinny whoosh played from the phone’s speakers—the sound of an email being sent. “Oops.”

Panic shot through Anya’s body, and she leapt to her feet. “Tamsin—”

“That’s really not my name. Like, even by your standards it’s not. Tamsin Glass moved to Seattle with her family ten years ago.” Ingram pocketed his phone and, noting Anya’s confused expression, rolled his eyes. “Anyone who’d follow me back to my hotel wouldn’t hesitate to run a background check, too. So I made sure your attack dog found what I wanted him to find. The story you were expecting to hear: the lost, misguided little girl.”

Anya began to see the shape of the trap around her. Ingram’s Canadian MP was a double bluff, a way to keep her on the hook while Reeve dug up an entire fabricated backstory. A backstory that was surely, by now, completely scrubbed from the internet.

Or maybe it wasn’t a bluff—maybe it was just yet another strand in the web, one of a dozen different paths all leading to the same inevitable end.

She shook her head. This was still salvageable; Reeve was just downstairs, and surely he’d dealt with Moran by now. She reached for her phone, pulling up his number in her contact list.

“Also,” Ingram said, as Anya put the ringing phone to her ear, “I really hope you weren’t counting on yours to beat mine in a fight.”

---

Reeve sprawled on the flagstones, slurring curses past his fractured jaw and struggling to sit upright.

“Don’t,” Sebastian warned him, and delivered an idle kick to Reeve’s shattered knee.

Reeve shouted and crumpled back to the ground.

“I need your attention, Reeve.” Sebastian’s voice was quiet and even. “We have to talk about your boss.”

Clutching his jaw, Reeve made a wordless noise of assent and met Sebastian’s eyes.

“She’s about to be in a lot of trouble,” Sebastian explained. “Trouble you could walk away from quite easily.”

Reeve glared up at him with pure hatred.

“Sorry, old boy. Figure of speech.” Sebastian grinned, unrepentant. “Don’t worry, it’s just the one knee. After a few surgeries and months of physical therapy, you’ll be on your feet again. You even stand a chance of walking unassisted.” He circled around to Reeve’s other side and his uninjured leg. “Which means you have a choice.”

Reeve watched him, nearly vibrating with tension. Somewhere, in one of Reeve’s pockets, a phone started to ring.

“We can call the fight here, and you can let Clay fall,” Sebastian said. “You saw nothing. You heard nothing. You know nothing. No matter who asks. Or—” he nodded to Reeve’s uninjured leg, “—I can break your other kneecap.”

There was a calculating terror in Reeve’s eyes. Sebastian had no illusions about where things would go from here—but if Reeve wanted to hunt Sebastian down and get his revenge, he’d need at least one functioning knee to pull it off. And Reeve knew that as well as he did.

“So,” Sebastian said, “What do you think?”

---

Anya’s call went to voicemail. Slowly, she lowered the phone from her ear.

Faintly, she heard herself say, “I can go to the police. I can explain.”

“Great plan,” Ingram replied dryly. “I’m sure they’ll believe you when you say you were tricked into robbing your own charity.”

Anya swallowed. “The press—”

“—will be wanking with delight over a children’s author who stole money from the little kiddies. The newspapers in this country love their fallen angels, don’t they?” Ingram considered it for a moment. “Hell, even if the police believed you they’d press charges anyway, just to keep the papers from tearing out their throats.”

Anya glanced up; there was movement from across the office, a brief glint of hope—

—but it wasn’t Reeve standing in the doorway. It was Moran.

Ingram followed her gaze and noted Moran’s presence with a nod. Then he stood and straightened his jacket.

He was leaving.

“I don’t deserve this,” Anya blurted out. It felt important that she say it. “I’m not a bad person.”

For a second or two, Ingram actually looked surprised. Then his expression settled into weary disappointment.

And then he was gone.

---

A half-empty bag of frozen peas lay forgotten at the back of Moran’s freezer. Jay grabbed it and wrapped it in a tea towel, then made his way back to the living room.

Moran was right where Jay had left him, sprawled gracelessly across one half of his antique upholstered sofa and propped up by every single wanky throw pillow he owned—or, at least, all the ones Jay had managed to find. One hand held a cold pack to the darkening bruises around his eye; the other was submerged in a bowl of ice that rested on the coffee table.

Jay settled in next to him and held up the bag of peas. “Where’s this one going?”

“Ribs,” Moran mumbled in reply. “Left side.”

Jay moved to place the makeshift ice pack, only for Moran to grunt a wordless negative and clarify, “My left.” He whined through his teeth as Jay laid it against his ribs, but quickly settled and relaxed back into his nest of pillows.

He regarded Jay through one sleepy, half-closed eye. “You all right?”

“They never even laid a hand on me,” Jay assured him. “You saw to that.”

“Not what I asked.”

Jay tipped his head to the side until it rested against the back of the sofa. “It … was a little close to home. Not close enough to matter.”

Moran hummed, apparently content with that answer.

On the coffee table, Moran’s phone went off as the timer he’d set reached zero. Jay sat up and stretched to turn it off. “That’s fifteen minutes for your hand.”

With a groan, Moran lifted his hand from the bowl of ice and flexed stiff, half-frozen fingers.

Jay took Moran’s hand in his own. His skin was damp and disturbingly cold, his knuckles swollen, the skin over them scraped and split. For Jay, because he’d done what Jay asked him to.

“Was it what you wanted?” Moran asked.

He had to know it wasn’t. That, in the end, Clay was just another useful idiot. That there was a hollow feeling in Jay’s chest where a sense of triumph was supposed to be.

But if Jay said “no,” how badly would Sebastian break himself until the answer was “yes”?

“Yes.” Jay bent to press a gentle kiss against his fingers. “Thank you.”

---

---

Ruth had recommended an old pub on a corner not far from the Cygnets office: a mildly claustrophobic establishment full of artistically-peeled wallpaper and old oak furniture that had changed very little since the days when Charles Dickens might have stopped in for a pint. A pair of faded leather sofas formed a small, relatively quiet alcove next to the elaborately carved fireplace, where Jay nursed his drink and waited.

Within a few minutes, Ruth appeared; today’s skirt featured a variety of brightly-coloured whales, with a cardigan to match. She ordered a gin and tonic from the bar, then came to sit on the couch opposite Jay’s.

The first words out of her mouth were, “I hear Anya Clay’s in some trouble.”

Jay shrugged and mumbled a non-committal reply into his pint.

Ruth gave him that old schoolteacher’s look, the one that informed him in no uncertain terms that she could see right through him. After a moment, she sighed and took a sip of her drink. “Probably best if you don’t tell me.”

Jay cleared his throat. “I just … wanted to thank you. For everything. I should’ve done it before now, but—”

“But you were a teenage shit,” Ruth interrupted, with easy cheer.

“Yeah.” Jay gulped down a mouthful of beer. “And it’s—all this shit they put you through. You don’t have to put up with any of it. You could walk away at any time.” He met her eyes, uncertain. “Why keep doing it?”

Ruth considered the question. “Two weeks ago, a little girl came into the office and showed me her new dress. The first dress she’d ever got to wear.” A wide smile broke across her face. “She was so happy, pet. Everyone in the world deserves to be that happy.”

It was a sentiment Jay couldn’t quite bring himself to agree with. He could name any number of people who didn’t deserve that happiness. But Ruth was a better person than he was.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew an envelope. “Here,” he said, and shoved it at her.

Ruth took it; the envelope wasn’t sealed, and inside it was a cheque. She took a few seconds to put on her reading glasses; the moment the amount on the cheque came into focus, she blurted out, “Fuck’s sake, Jay!”

Jay lurched forward to hush her. “It’s from Sebastian,” he hissed. “He’s got money. He wanted to help.”

It wasn’t, strictly speaking, Moran’s money. But it had spent enough time in his account that nobody would bat an eye when it went to Cygnets.

“Christ.” Ruth shook her head in disbelief and tucked the envelope into her purse. “Hang onto that one, pet.”

With a wry smile, Jay said, “I don’t think I could get rid of him if I tried.”

Ruth finished off her drink and set it aside. “I should get back to the office,” she said, with some regret. “They still haven’t fixed the door.”

Jay stood with her, and she pulled him into a hug, one that he immediately returned. If she noticed her shoulder was a little damp when he pulled back, she didn’t say anything.

Not long after Ruth’s departure, Moran wandered over from where he’d been watching a few tables away. He settled into the spot where she’d been sitting.

“She took the money, then,” he said.

Jay nodded.

“Good.” Moran settled comfortably against the back of the sofa. The black eye Reeve had given him was healing quickly, but for now it gave him a slightly disreputable air. “I asked around—checked in with some friends. From what I hear, your friend Ruth’s been doing this for about ten years. Started by taking in queer kids who got kicked out by their parents.”

There was a question behind the words—one that Moran had already guessed the answer to.

Jay stared down into his pint and said nothing, waiting for Moran to keep pushing. To try and pry him open, the way so many had before him.

“Anyway,” Moran went on, “I’m glad we could help her.”

Jay blinked at him, but the questions he’d expected never came. Instead, Moran was digging his wallet out of his jeans.

He opened it and produced a business card, which he handed across to Jay. The card read “Janus Tailoring”; the stock was solid white, bordered along the top and bottom in pink and blue.

“What’s this?” Jay asked.

“A tailor who specialises in transgender clients. I checked them out myself.” Moran gave him a reassuring nod. “No awkward questions.”

Emotion welled up in Jay’s chest; he shoved it down and eyed Moran sceptically. “Is this part of some elaborate plot to burn the suit I already have?”

“It’s polyester. It won’t fucking burn.” Moran sounded as though he’d put serious thought to the matter. “I may just have to throw it into the Thames instead.”

Jay laughed and closed his fingers reverently around the card.

---

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