"So Hobbs thinks we just gon' roll up on Cipher, grab her, and drop her ass off at the nearest prison."

"That's exactly what we're gonna do." Tej gave Roman one of his 'I have a plan' smiles. Sometimes you had to do exactly what the enemy expected so as to not get blown up later. Well, maybe not a plan per se but he had a couple ideas, but those were still based on guesswork and crossed fingers.

"You know it's not going to be that simple." Ramsey looked at Tej and sighed in exasperation. Was this his ego talking or had he just forgotten what'd happened in Vladovin? Although Dom was on their side this time, nothing about the mission suggested it would play out that easily.

"It's better than sitting around waiting for her to come to us." Letty allowed herself a glance at Dom, hunched over the kitchen table with Brian, sheet upon sheet of schematics and maps laid out before them. He hadn't said a word all day to anyone but Brian except for a casual 'Hey' to the team when they arrived. Instead of meeting them at the airport as planned, Dom had texted them to say they could make their own way to the house. "We can't afford to waste time if we're going to survive this thing."

Letty had a point. Tej couldn't deny that. They were all talking as if they were scared of what was coming next, he thought. Like improvisation wouldn't keep them alive as it had the past few years. Even he'd gotten sucked into admitting he wasn't confident in their chances of survival. "You saw what Jakande had coming out of that bus, right? Take that and make it a hundred times worse."

"Yes, Tej, I remember." But did he? That'd been Jakande, not Cipher. The difference wasn't a big one, but Cipher's only real weapon during their previous encounter had been Dom. Other than him, Cipher hadn't thrown much of anything their way (not counting the submarine). "But worrying about her artillery is pointless if we don't know where she is."

"Hey, Letty, you got a minute?" Mia asked, leaning over the stair railing. "I need to talk to you about something."

Thank God. She'd needed an escape from the team. Everyone's egos had been progressively inflating as they talked about plans and that kind of shit led to people getting hurt. It was something Owen Shaw had warded off with his 'show them the respect they deserve or it weakens us' spiel, not that it'd mattered in the end. Half of Shaw's team had ended up dead in Spain and who knew how many survived afterwards.

"What's up?" Letty unclenched her fists and jaw, pushed off the couch and followed Mia upstairs. "Is something wrong?"

Mia shook her head and sat on the edge of Dom and Letty's bed before flopping backwards. She stretched her legs out, feet dangling off the edge. "No. Just wanted to see how you're doing."

"I'm—" She collapsed onto the mattress next to Mia and rubbed her temples. Letty rolled over to face her and immediately found herself on the receiving end of a serious look. It was as if Mia were saying 'are you really gonna lie to me?'. "Fuck, I don't know. This whole thing is just messing with my head. The last thing I ever wanted was to be in the same room as him again."

"Because he's hot and you liked him or because you want to kick his ass?"

"Both, maybe. That guy scares the shit out of me, Mia. He was ruthless, killed so many people . . . and he was efficient. The way we completed jobs, we were in and out in under two minutes."

"And what about that other thing?"

Mia was going to have to be more specific because Letty didn't have a damn clue which 'thing' she meant. "Um?"

"Your period, idiot." Mia flicked her lightly in the head. They didn't often get to hang out like this anymore, but Mia was enjoying the moment right now. It felt familiar, safe. Comfortable. "It's been two months since your last one, right?"

Oh. That. She'd kind of pushed that knowledge to the back of her mind and left it there. Dealing with Marcus, with Dom, the cafe slash grocer and garage and everything else life threw at her, was more than enough for her to handle. The last thing Letty wanted was anyone getting ideas about her being pregnant.

"If it doesn't happen in the next two weeks, I promise I'll go to a drug store and get one of those piss sticks."

"Or you could just be getting old." The shit-eating grin on Mia's face lit up her eyes and earned her a hard shove. "Next thing you know, you'll be having hot flashes and having to take hormone pills."

"Shut up, man, I'm not that old."

"You kinda look it." Mia gestured to Letty's hair. "You know I think you've got some greys coming through. Might be time to ask your abuela for some tips on how to dye them."

"Uh-huh. You had your fun now?" Letty pushed Mia back down into the mattress the moment she tried to sit up. It really was starting to sink in now. The distance, the danger, the isolation — who the hell was she going to talk to besides Ramsey? It was fine for Dom, he'd have Brian, and Rome would have Little Nobody; Ramsey would have Tej too. Letty couldn't just sit there and spill her guts to fucking Hobbs or Mr. Nobody though. Without Elena or Mia around, she would probably be stuck in Nowhere twiddling her goddamn thumbs when they weren't all busy.

And she sure as shit wasn't going to sit there and act like Owen Shaw had any right to walk back into her life as if he'd been granted sainthood.

"Hey Mia, Letty, you two want breakfast?" Brian's shout came from downstairs. None of them had eaten since last night. With all their focus on the mission and the reality awaiting them, food had just slipped their minds. "We're gonna cook a stack of pancakes, some crispy bacon."

"Sure," yelled Mia. "Sounds good!"

"Okay!"

"So," Mia began, pushing herself up. She stood and moved to block the doorway and any chance of Letty escaping. "You wanna describe this guy?"

"Which one?"

"The cute British one."

"Half the team was British."

"The guy you liked most then. Or girl. There was another girl on the team, right?"

Oh come on. Mia wasn't going to make her rehash the whole thing, was she? They'd been over this before. "Just one. Kinda bitchy. Her name was Vegh and she was a blonde."

"The O'Conner to your Toretto."

"It wasn't like that at all."

"I don't know. Women get judgy when they're afraid that people won't like them."

"Can we please not talk about this?"

"Then get yourself a therapist or something." Perhaps Letty just thought no one would notice it, or maybe she'd swept the past under the rug. Whatever Letty had done, the cracks were beginning to show. She'd frozen at a set of traffic lights for a few seconds just last month, and before that Mia had found Letty asleep one day in the bathroom with her head on the toilet roll. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."

"I'll think about it. No promises. Now let's go get something to eat 'cause I am fucking starving."

"Letty."

"Mia, I love you, but you're not my mother. I don't have time to deal with my personal shit at the moment."

"Well maybe I should be." Clearly suggestions weren't going to work on her. Whenever Letty said she'd think about something, it was tantamount to saying 'no'. Unless Letty explicitly agreed to do a thing, she usually didn't end up following through on it. At no point in the past thirty-odd years had Letty ever acted like a people pleaser. "I don't want to see you get hurt again because of Dom."

"If I make an appointment after this Cipher thing is over, will you get off my ass?"

"No. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Trust me. I saw it in Dom after Dad died."

"I'm not Dom, Mia. I know I married him and took his name but I'm still me."

Yeah, she was. She was the same old stubborn fiery badass Letty who didn't stop unless someone pulled her back and made her slow down and think. The same Letty who'd gone undercover for the FBI, been blown up and lost her memories all for the sake of her boyfriend.

"Then just promise me you'll come back alive."

"A couple weeks from now, I'll walk in that door and everything will be fine. I promise."

"Are you threatening me, Shaw?"

Son of a bitch. Luke looked down at the knife then up at her. How long had she been carrying a weapon? Better yet, why hadn't the team searched her and her brothers before allowing them on the plane?

"I don't waste my breath on threats." Elizabeth turned on her heels and walked back the way she came, slipping through the gap between the two buildings, circling around another garden bed, till she finally sat herself on the concrete wall once more. Deckard and Owen were still standing there as if nothing had happened, looking somewhat tense despite how relaxed their posture was. Owen nodded his head as if acknowledging her presence or signalling Deckard — she wasn't quite sure which it was — and Deckard returned it.

"You didn't try to kill him, did you?" Deckard asked, noticing the way she carried herself. Head up, shoulders square, eyes almost blank; whatever her current state of mind was, there was a ninety-nine percent chance Hobbs had provoked it. "Because it causes problems when you start murdering people."

"I'm not you, Deckard," she said, keeping her voice flat despite Hobbs' words playing on a loop in her head. I have your family. A prison awaiting them. "I don't kill people where everyone can see me."

She has him there. Owen maintained a straight face but the crinkle between his eyebrows said he was amused. That little stunt Deckard had pulled at the hospital had been in full view of military guards, security cameras and doctors. They were lucky the British government had decided against trying to interfere with the CIA's interests, otherwise who knew where they'd be right now.

"If either of you are carrying a weapon—" Hobbs' footsteps were heavy, boots hitting the ground as if all his anger and irritation were being expressed through each thud. "—this is your opportunity to tell me now before I get a glove on and we get way too personal with the squat and cough."

"None of us brought a . . ." Deckard took a long look at Elizabeth and frowned. Now he remembered where he'd seen that look before: it was her 'I'm an innocent little girl' face, the one she used to pull when she and Owen were caught doing something illegal. "You have something to say, Beth?"

"I already said what I had to."

"No one has any guns, switchblades, or combat knives hidden under a bra strap?" Luke continued. At that, Deckard looked like he was about to have a heart attack. "Absolutely nothing I should know about?"

"Neither of us are carrying." Clearly he couldn't say the same for his sister, however Deckard had no intention of giving up his only reliable firearm. It was still strapped to his back, the same as it had been when he'd arrived at their mum's place. "Satisfied, Hobbs?"

When would he ever be satisfied? Luke wasn't an idiot. He'd seen the way Deckard's jacket sat — he was armed, but Luke had no intention of alerting Elizabeth to that fact. For no reason at all, she had just handed over her ace card, and Luke wasn't about to sign his own death certificate by running his mouth.

"If you three are done," Owen interrupted, "let's just skip to the part where you make us recite the pledge of allegiance."

"Here's a better idea: stop talking." Elizabeth closed her mouth, crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Luke as if to say 'bite me'. "Toretto gets here tomorrow morning with his team. Your sleeping quarters are at the motel. If you need access to a computer or the gym, they're in the warehouse. You want to leave the facility and hit the beach? I want an itinerary for the day detailing your every movement. You don't take a goddamn step outside that fence unless I know about it."

In other words, this was a prison and they were his bitches. Elizabeth pushed off the wall and moved to go inside. Cautiously she stepped through the doorway that led into the large warehouse, looking up, down, every direction but behind her. What is this place?

In the distance, she could see a dozen or so desks, with two shelves' worth of equipment behind them. That 'gym' Hobbs had mentioned was there as well. Weights, treadmills, mats, a rowing machine and two punching bags rigged up on chains — everything grown men needed to make themselves look tough — were shoved in a corner.

"Welcome to the Toy Shop." Once through the front door, Hobbs stood next to Elizabeth on a large metal stairwell, with three flights of stairs to descend before he reached the warehouse floor. Luke approached the railing and leaned against it, eyeballing the thirty foot drop to the ground. "If you can't find what you need here—"

"Ask for it to be delivered?"

The foundations of the warehouse had been set deep into the ground, allowing for increased height and two mezzanine levels to be built at either end of the structure. The mezzanine to his right, just below their feet, held a well-equipped kitchen and unisex bathroom with toilets and showers. The other, at the far end, hid a conference room and computer lab: everything Ramsey and Parker would need to find and track Cipher.

"So you know how it works then."

"Same shit, different boss." Elizabeth took the first set of stairs down and pushed open the door to the mezzanine. All that lay inside was an empty L-shaped corridor with two closed doors. "You're jamming the signals out here, aren't you? No phone reception, wi-fi or TV?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask your boss that."

So they weren't working for Hobbs? If not him then who? Who the hell had the kind of clout needed to transport three people across international waters without anyone querying what they were doing, let alone use military aircraft to do so. "Pity. Here I am thinking I'd struck gold with you pulling my strings. Good-looking bloke with a nice arse and all that."

"Excuse me?"

She let the door swing shut and took the second set of stairs down, then the third, keeping her head down so as to hide the smirk on her face. The easiest way to throw a man off his game was compliments, flirtation. Hobbs didn't seem like the type to think with his dick instead of his brain but who knew? Now they were stuck working together, maybe an opportunity would arise that she could take advantage of.

As soon as Luke's feet landed on cement, he looked up, waiting for Deckard and Owen to catch up to them. The sooner there was some distance between himself and the Shaws, the sooner he could stop looking over his shoulder. He had no doubts about his ability to put Deckard in a hospital and yet the presence of the other two made him uneasy. Their files described them as loose cannons in the worst possible way. Luke's own past encounters with them also told him he was going to be sleeping with one eye open till this whole thing was over.

"Where are the cars?" Deckard asked once he was standing on the warehouse floor. "We can't chase Cipher on mopeds."

"Or in Ladas," Elizabeth muttered.

"They'll be delivered tomorrow once you've decided what you're driving." Eric approached the group and held up a thick folio. While Hobbs had been playing Patty Cake with the Shaws outside, he'd been getting things organised. This time, they were keeping everything close to the chest, trying to fly as far under the radar as possible. If Cipher found them before they found her, it was game over. "Go through it. Pick your car. Just make sure that whatever you choose, it's not a neon orange Lamborghini."

"Do you have anything Russian-made in there?"

"I don't know." Reisner gave an apologetic shrug to Elizabeth then handed the folio over to Hobbs. "It's whatever we seize or other departments loan us. Oh, uh, there's no Land Rovers this time. Sorry, Deckard."

"Oh." He gave an exaggerated sigh. "What a shame. I'm still waiting on this bastard to fix that mirror."

"Might as well start digging your grave." Hobbs clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. "You're gonna be waiting a while for that to happen."

Owen stepped up to Beth's side and slid his arm around her shoulders as their brother and Hobbs began acting friendly, eyeballing Deckard all the while. Something had changed in him but Owen couldn't pinpoint it. Outside of his former SAS team, Owen had never seen Deckard act 'chummy' with other blokes. Keeping his voice low, he asked, "What do you need me to get?"

"Raspberry Pis, USB ports, disposable phones; a burnt copy of Linux," she murmured, matching his pitch. "Any good tech shop should have the Pi."

"But if the signal here is jammed—"

"There has to be a gap somewhere, or a weak point. Jammers have limited range. We drive around and find it or piggyback their network somehow."

"They'll likely be monitoring the traffic flow."

"I know." Fuck, they would be, wouldn't they? If she was forced to use the GPS' own satellite connection, she'd have to time the messages to cover their tracks. Beth rubbed her eyes and rested her head against Owen's bicep, covering her mouth when she yawned. "I'll figure something out. Deckard won't walk away without Cipher and we're not walking away without her money."

"So where's this motel then, Hobbs?" Deckard said, noticing the way Owen was keeping their sister upright. Maybe an extra hour's sleep would do them all some good. It would also allow him time to go through Little Nobody's book of cars and find something that could hold up under a heavy load of armour plating. "Can't imagine you'd fit on a cot."

"Oh, you're here for the complete tour. Alright then. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to begin by pointing out that what you see here," Luke gestured to Deckard, "is a unique specimen native only to the UK: the British asshole."