Page 86 of Caught Up

No signs of a murderer, but I didn’t let my guard down. The spiders could be anywhere.

A narrow set of open stairs climbed the wall opposite the cabinets. I beelined toward them, watching my step, skirting all the trash on the floor. The stairs looked rickety as fuck when I got to them, but I didn’t see any other options. Moonlight filtered in from above, meaning whatever window or hole was up there faced the ship.

I ascended carefully, testing each step to see if it would hold before putting my full weight on it, and even then I was ready to leap backward at the first sign of collapse. The second floor seemed more stable than the stairs, made of poured concrete like the one below. I paced across it to the hole in the roof, a narrow gash too thin to fit through. Didn’t matter. All I needed was a line of sight to the freighter.

I slipped on my night vision goggles and peered out into the darkness. One look at the boat deck was enough to tell me we were fucked. I noted five men standing guard in the shadows, and it looked like they had—

I ducked before getting spotted. “They have goggles, too,” I warned the others.

“Roger that,” David said. Everyone else remained quiet.

The silence held for what felt like an hour but was probably no longer than twenty minutes. Finally, David’s voice came over the line. “They have half a dozen men waiting on the deck alone, and there’s no way to know how many more are below. I don’t see a way to approach the ship without getting spotted. Confirm?”

Four confirmations followed, one after another.

“I have to give it to the guy,” David said. “This is a genius location for ablack-marketpoker game.”

Despite my annoyance, I was impressed, too. No wonder the other bookies had a hard time tracking him down and were always a step behind and a day late. The fact that Stefan had been able to do what they hadn’t was impressive as hell, and it made me wonder if maybe I’d been underestimating my quietest brother.

“Do you recognize the crew on deck?” I asked. David made it his business to know every other merc operation within the tristate area.

“Yeah, it’s Oscar’s,” he said. “They might be thugs, but they know enough to be dangerous.”

Impatience clawed at me. I wanted to get this over with and get back to Lauren. “What are you thinking?”

“We wait them out,” David said. “Eventually, they’ll have to leave, I’m guessing before dawn. By that point, they’ll have been up all night, and I’m hoping their fatigue will make them less alert. We can grab him then.”

Given the circumstances, it was probably our best option. Which meant we had a long night of waiting ahead of us. God, I loathed stakeouts, especially when I was unprepared.

Fitting the goggles to my eyes, I rose up just enough to peer out of the roof again and confirm everything David had said. The men on deck seemed mostly focused on their immediate surroundings, few looking up. As I watched, a new figure crawled out of the deck hatch. I almost discarded him as more hired muscle—he was big enough for it—but he was dressed in a suit. One of the gamblers? This could be promising. If tonight didn’t work out, maybe I could ID this guy and exploit his connection with the bookie.

He stoodside-onto me, speaking to one of the guards, looking like he was issuing orders. My heartbeat picked up. What if he wasn’t a player, but the bookie himself? I rose to my feet, trying to get a better fix on him, when suddenly he turned, and recognition tore through me like a bullet.

What thefuck?

I was looking at Josh’s former roommate, Tyler. Maybe if I hadn’t just seen him a few hours ago, I wouldn’t have been so sure, but there was no mistaking his douchey face or his smarmy grin. Finance, my ass. No wonder he’d looked so smug when I told him I ran imports. The motherfucker probably knew who I was.

“Change of plan,” I told David. “I’m going to walk right up to the ship.”

“Do not recommend,” he said, as brusque as ever.

“Yeah, well, turns out I know this asshole.”

“Wait for us to get to high ground, then,” he said. “We’ll cover you from up there.”

“Roger.”

I checked my weapons while I waited: the guns in my holster, the one on my right ankle, the knife sheath tucked into my left boot. No doubt the guns would get taken the second I stepped on board, but I was hoping they’d miss the knife and I’d have something to fall back on in an emergency.

One after another, the men checked in from their new positions.

“Whatever you do,” David said as I walked back into the night, “don’t leave the deck.”

“I’ll try not to,” I told him. “I’m taking the radio off so they don’t realize I have backup until I’m on board. I’ll leave it outside the door here.”

“Roger,” David said.

I disentangled myself from the thing and set it on an overturned plastic bucket before striding around the side of the building. Instead of taking a stealthier route, I walked right into the open with my hands in the air so the men on board would see my approach and know I wasn’t a threat. Moonlight turned my surroundings into a world of grays. Gravel crunched beneath my shoes. The sound of the creaking ship echoed off the nearby buildings, almost loud enough to drown out my pulse beating in my ears.

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