Page 37 of Fighting With Light

She lifts up and leans over me. Pieces of her hair fall around her face from getting all messy rolling around on the floor. I slip my hand behind her neck, bringing her to me. Our mouths meet in a rough clash.

Aelia pulls back and kisses my cheeks and the sides of my jaw. My hands slide to her butt and I squeeze the muscles, making her whimper. She kisses me again, then tucks her head beneath my chin and all I can smell is her cherry scent.

“You always smell so good,” I tell her.

“You smell like the ocean and sunscreen,” she says.

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

She nods against my chest.

“I need to look through Ferreira’s legal businesses and see which ones he uses to ship out from the port you mentioned.”

She sighs and draws her finger in small circles over my chest, messing with the fine dusting of hair. “I don’t actually know if that’s the port he ships his guns out of or if he uses multiple places.”

“I’ll figure it out,” I mutter, focusing on the way her body feels on mine. The curve of her spine against my hand. I don’t want to move right now. Shipping containers can wait for just a little longer. I’m spending time with mytemporarygirlfriend.

15

Liam

The rest of theday I spend hacking and finding back doors into Ferreira’s companies. He’s into importing and exporting, machining, and oddly enough, clothing. The import and export was the obvious place to start. It felt a littletooobvious, but I figured it could be a plain sight thing. It was not. So I kept looking and found that the company isn’t entirely owned by Ferreira. Half of it belongs to a shell corporation that of course led me to nowhere.

After that I noticed something quite interesting in the shipping manifests for their containers which isn’t odd, but the exact timing of them was. The weight, the size, and the time the containers were shipped out every two months made alarm bells go off in my head. Sure, it could be a consistent shipment of clothing, but while everything else was being shipped up north to Canada or down south near Texas and Mexico, there was only one container that went to the east coast of America. I think that’s our shipment, and another leaves in two days. We need to get photos of what’s in those containers.

I look out the window and just from the corner, I can see Aelia lying on a beach chair next to the giant pool. I wish I was out there with her right now, but this has to be done. Based on what happened this morning, I feel like we are on the same page, but going further with her feels like it would be more of a distraction at this point and I can’t afford to be distracted. Yet I’m getting up, leaving my office, and walking towards the doors in front of the pool.

I stand there for a moment, pull my shirt off, and dive into the pool. When I pop up for air, she’s sitting up, her sunglasses low on her nose.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks.

I swim to the side of the pool and rest my arms on theedge. “I did,” I tell her.

She hops out of her chair and sits right next to me dipping her feet into the water.

“And?” she asks with a tinge of excitement in her voice.

“I think there will be a shipment to the east coast in two days. We need to get pictures and the updated ship manifest when they set it, but they only do that the day of.”

“You want to sneak into a shipping yard, break into a shipping container, find the box that hasgunsin it, take pictures, somehow find the shipping manifest, andnotget caught?”

I shrug and run my hand through my wet hair. “Yeah, that’s the plan. Do you have a better idea?” She tilts her head and her eyebrows scrunch together.

“Well, is this a go-in-there, incognito, like a ninja situation, or is it a get-to-that-container, however, and whenever?” she asks. Her feet kick the water, making it move next to me, and I have to force myself not to drag my hand up her shin to her knees and higher. Focus,Liam.

“Well, I would think under cover of night ninja style would be the safest, but did you have something else in mind?” I ask her. This is not a game, there is no doubt in my mind if they are shipping things like guns, that means there are guns that will shoot at us if we get too close or are found looking where we shouldn’t be.

“Well…as much as I’d love to do the ninja shit, if we get caught I don’t have a gun, and neither do you.”

“Nope,” I say, wishing I did. I could call Emerson and they could send them over on the plane, but that might take a while and we don’t have that kind of time. I don’t think Emmy would be thrilled about asking for guns because that means I’m up to no good, according to him, even though this is all for them.

“So…I wonder if we can justwalk in.”

I chuckle and shake my head. “Aelia, I don’t think that’s—”

She lifts her hand to stop me and levels me with a sunglasses-covered look. “Just listen.”

Amused, I listen as she continues with her plan. “If they are in the clothing business, then I can pose as someone from the fashion house, if that’s what itis. I’ll have to look at it. You can be my chauffeur and I’ll go in the container, take the pictures, and walk out. But you have to sell the chauffeur thing because you’re way too hot to be one.”