Page 81 of Healing Conviction
“Drake, what if there were bags in there? What if there’re women inside that container right now?”
He kept looking into the scope, waiting for any movement. “People coming in on a weekend with a new ‘delivery’. Sketchy shit. With what these bastards have been involved in so far, it wouldn’t surprise me. The code on the back, did you get it?” He rambled off the code he remembered.
“Yup. All that. Samesies.” She underlined the numbers she’d drawn on the ground. Despite her flippant word choice, her face was anything but. She swallowed, and whether purposely or not, he didn’t know, but she sidled up against him and he wrapped his arm around her back, tugging her close while they lay on the ground.
Everything comes second nature with us, Pix. Why can’t you see how good we fit together?
“Also looks like they’re not supposed to be here,” she pointed out. “It looks like they were bypassing CTI’s tech to get inside. See that box outside the fence and the guard station on the inside?”
Draco pointed his scope to see a mailbox-shaped box outside the fence gate and a small, closet-sized building inside the fence. “Yeah.”
“That fence isn’t meant to be manual, and it’s supposed to be operated from within that guard post. Whoever those men are, they somehow know the way CTI’s security works and manually unlocked the chain on the gate to bypass it. They did it for the garage doors for the warehouse too, with that guy who was opening it manually.”
“What does it matter that they bypass security when there are cameras?”
“From my research on Charitable Technologies International in Ashland, these types of places have pretty tight security. As in everything is logged and kept record of. I bet the mechanism that opens the gate from within the security building would normally log that someone had entered the facility. Whoever they’re working for probably is in charge of the cameras too. It would take nothing to scrub the cameras or have them look the other way for an hour or two.”
“Shit, I bet you’re right.” He reached for his phone from his pocket. They needed to call his teammates, tell them what they saw, and ask what the next course of action was.
“Drake, I think we should call Snake.”
Draco bristled at the suggestion and he silently cursed himself for his ill-placed jealousy, especially since he’d been thinking the same thing.
“On it. About to call Hawk since he’s lead.” Telling himself he wasn’t a petty asshole, he turned on the phone for the first time that day. He had a radio system back at the camp that used solar to power on so they wouldn’t use up their phone battery or the solar power charger he had for their phones. If his teammates needed to talk to them, they could use the radio, but Draco wasn’t ready to leave their perch yet.
The phone rang once before Hawk answered without preamble. “Draco, any news?”
“We’ve got movement at CTI. A few minutes ago, a van dropped off something into a container matching Shanna’s. Code on the back is charlie-tango-india-uniform, one-four-eight-seven-two-nine-seven. We think there were canvas bags inside, but not clear.”
“I’ll get Snake to investigate what he can from here. See if there’s anything out of the ordinary.”
Nora leaned close to speak into the phone, wafting her lavender scent, faint, but still present even days after a proper bath.
“Shanna said that’s how she was transported and these guys are here on a weekend and not using their logging system to get inside.”
“Got it. I’ll have Snake on it and get back to you ASAP.”
Before Draco could reply, the call died, and he made sure it was on vibrate before sliding it back into his pocket. He hoped they’d get back to them soon, or he’d have to take matters into his own hands.
“I don’t want to leave yet,” Nora whispered. “This is big, I can feel it.”
“I feel it, too.”
After a few more minutes, Nora shifted out from under his arm. “What if they think it’s nothing?”
“They won’t.”
“Yeah, but what if they do? My spidey senses are tingling, but that’s not exactlyevidencethat some bad mamma jammas are doing sketchy shit.”
“We’ll figure it out—”
His phone vibrated against his leg and he answered while peering through his scope. Nothing had changed.
“Draco,” Hawk began, once again without any preamble. “Snake and I have three-way called you. We’ll share with the others, but Snake has information.”
“Yeah, I’ve been looking into CTI’s transports ever since you guys talked to Shanna. I searched today’s intake, but there’s nothing, however the log does show a lot of importing and exporting tomorrow. That container’s one of them. What’s really interesting is the last time this container was meant to be exported was the weekend after the party we busted a few months back. It was marked as canceled for weather, but the whole state had blue skies all that week. Last week it was marked as loaded and is set for an export, bright and early, on its way to the coast. You guys are right. That special delivery you witnessed shouldn’t exist. The container was already considered ready to go.”
Draco felt his lips tighten at all the implications before he spoke. “I think we should investigate it.”