Ugh, Teresa thought.

She didn't want to run yet here she was. Jogging at 5 am in the morning like a freak. She had hired a taxi from Sacramento to San Jose at 3 am. Her aim was to roam the streets and get to know it before coming up with a plan. Reports stated that the notorious gang was mainly spotted in the Almaden Valley. Hence that's where she got off. It had taken less than two hours to reach her destination.

She had hoped to get some sleep in on the way, but the driver seemed like a very suspicious man. He had one shining gold tooth among his upper front teeth. Occasionally, he peeked at the rearview mirror only to give her a creepy smile. It bothered Teresa a lot, and she couldn't use the cop card on him. So, sleep came to her in temporal naps.

Teresa travelled the unknown streets in a pair of shorts and a jacket with red coloured earphones plugged in. No music played in her ears.

It was a cool and cloudless morning. The streets stank of danger, even though they were empty. The roads were unpaved in places, and she often found herself tripping over a peeking pebble. The dusty lanes were lined with a few houses when and plenty of trees. It could have been pretty if not for her mission and the mist. As she walked and wandered about, there were no more houses. It was just trees and lonely streets.

It was a depressing day already.

Navigating her way through the foggy lanes, she continued to run in search of anything interesting when she saw a couple of men smoking before her. It was difficult to figure them out from where she stood due to the lack of sunlight and the fog.

She moved closer and observed herself approaching four guys out of which two were lean, and the other two were just as bulkier. There was one such man who looked absolutely nerve-wracking. His arms bulged out to the width of an elephant's trunk.

If he hits me, I'll go soaring high.

Teresa squinted her eyes as she tried to make out who those boys exactly were, but she could barely see their faces clearly. As she continued to tread carefully towards them, all she managed to see was the figurine of a dagger poking out of the t-shirts of one of the lanky men.

Bingo, she grinned.

She began jogging at their direction, pretending to be oblivious to their existence despite her heart beating at the speed of light. She wore no warm clothes. It was a full-sleeved thin top and a pair of track pants. The chilly morning air cut through her clothes and hit her harshly. Teresa gritted her teeth and moved on. One of the men noticed her and whistled, which she ignored with a poker face.

They blocked her path smoothly without being obvious as she reached them.

"Excuse me," she said with a bit of an attitude.

The lanky guy with the dagger tattoo tugged her earphones out of her ears with a finger. Teresa sensed him smiling.

"You excuse us. Use the other lane," he spoke with confidence.

How she wished she could step on him right there and then.

In a swift motion, she kicked the guy's legs from under him. He would have hit his head on the bricks placed precariously on the road had she not caught him by the wrist at the last moment.

I'd rather not add another name to my kill list just yet.

"I was hoping you could let me use this lane itself," she smirked.

Then she let him go. The boy fell, but he didn't hurt himself fatally. The other three men stared down at her, and she instinctively rolled her sleeves up defensively. If it came down to the worst, she was almost confident that she'd be able to take down the other lean guy, but the bulky bulldozers worried her.

Say your goodbyes to the world, Teresa.

"What's wrong? Never seen a female figure jog?" she asked with an eyebrow raised at them. It was a struggle not to turn over her heels and run away.

Plot twist of the year: They already knew about me and were just waiting for me.

"You clearly don't seem like the regular female figure. What gang do you work for?" the lesser bulky man said, taking a step closer towards her.

Teresa looked at his face then and her heart twisted in a knot. The long snake-like nose, thick lips, auburn hair with an undercut and the light blue eyes. She recognized him clearly.

It was Jordan Gray. The one important man.

She hadn't expected to meet him so quickly. Her nerves ran amuck, but she managed to keep her wits about her.

"None," she answered. "But I'm here looking for one"

Please ask who.

"Who?"

YES! HE'S FOLLOWING THE SCRIPT.

"If I tell you, would you know?" she smirked. She was so panic-stricken on the inside she feared her smirk was just a painful grimace.

Jordan Gray rolled his eyes and scoffed. A bit too proudly. In the background, she heard the over-confident jerk pick himself up noisily from the road.

"The nerve of this girl," she heard him mutter making her sneer a little.

Teresa peeked a glance at the bulkiest of the men surrounding her. The sneer vanished instantly, and her knees weakened. He was a bald, hairless man with biceps the size of monster tires. It wasn't just his biceps that were huge. His entire body was. The man looked back at her with lazy eyes. Black-pitched lazy eyes.

Veins were poking out of his temple, arms, neck, everywhere.

Suddenly the mission didn't look too easy.

"Do you even know who we belong to?" he asked. His voice was so deep she felt its bass vibrating through her bones.

"I don't care. All I know is that I am here in search of Shadow Killers. Are you losers them?" Teresa retorted back with equal arrogance.

Oh, I might die.

"You might want to rethink that cause we are them," someone answered from right beside her.

As Teresa turned at him, she mentally strangled herself for forgetting about the fourth man. When she took a good look, she realized that he wasn't a person to be underestimated.

The way his light brown eyes remained fixated on her just told her that he might be an intelligent guy among everyone else. With a six feet height, he towered over her threateningly. Teresa might have been intimidated by that, but she had seen and met many guys like him to be scared of him. At the end of the day, all of them were scared of death and jail.

The man inched closer towards her and lifted her chin up at him with his fingers deftly. His touch was gentle, but she noticed how rough his fingers were. He was a fighter, that was for sure. Teresa didn't break her gaze from him, but she couldn't help letting her eyes wander on his face for a while.

This man had the straightest nose she had ever seen. The mere perfectness of it irritated her. In fact, even his skin was clearer than her future. His wide lips were sort of drooping as he observed the strange fearless woman before him.

Fearless my foot, Teresa whimpered inside her head.

Teresa got a weird sensation in her stomach as if she were falling when she looked back into his eyes after a one-second glance.

I'm hungry.

However, what the guy said next took all sensation from her body altogether.

"Yes. Yes we are," he answered with a slight smile. "But you already knew that. Our enemies are everywhere and kill whoever mentions our name."

Google didn't tell me that. Nor did Mr Bakshi.

He continued, his gentle touch on her chin becoming a grip around her jaws.

The halcyon river Teresa had dived into had suddenly turned violent and tumultuous. She had to paddle through with caution if she wanted to swim safely in those dangerous waters.

"So, you tell us who you really are and we'll decide if you're worth living or not," he challenged.

That's a bad deal. As an agent, I assure you that.

*****

OKAY QUICK QUESTION!

Do you want me to work on my descriptions a bit more or are you understanding the scenes I am telling you?

AND THANK YOU FOR THE 100 READS!! IT MEANS A LOT!! This chapter was dedicated to @Pride_04 for her continuous motivation and beautiful support!

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