Page 1014 of One More Kiss

Chapter3

Before we left the SUV,I checked my email on my phone. I had hoped to be able to avoid a trip to Houston altogether, but a single phone call had quashed that vague wish. The containers carrying the tea shipment had been part of a much larger shipment, and I needed to see the area it had disappeared from if I wanted to try to learn anything through my magic.

Abercrombie had emailed me an itinerary of the shipment’s movements before it disappeared. I forwarded it to Connor. “Could you track down the owner of the trucking company while I find out where the shipment was unloaded?”

He gave me a two-finger salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

The harbor itself was a confusing maze of cranes, loaders, and shipping crates in a riot of colors. Noise came at me from all sides, crashing across the water and through the air as giant cargo ships sounded their horns and heavy equipment beeped and growled.

And the Houston harbor was only half as busy as it used to be in the days before our world started falling apart.

Some political radicals claimed we were in the end of days, and it was all the supernaturals’ fault. They believed that somehow, we were to blame for everything from pandemics to supply-chain shortages to the horrific crop failures that had led to the Tea Apocalypse.

Our being outed to the mundane world was definitely caught up in all that—but it was an effect, not a cause. We came out to the world because, for the first time in human history, we really believed we could help. Supernaturals weren’t affected by most of the illnesses that began rampaging through humanity, so a few philanthropic paranormals had stepped up to try to help scientists figure out why—and how our immunity could be shared with our human cousins.

I still didn’t know if it had been a good idea.

But we were stuck with it.

And about half the humans I met distrusted supernaturals entirely.

When I had spoken to Edgar Wallace on the phone to ask him about the cargo he had supervised unloading, I got the sense he was one of those.

As he met me now in the parking lot, a hard hat in hand to pass off to me, that suspicion deepened.

Wallace was a heavyset man in his late fifties, creases worn into his face by hard work and sun. His bright yellow vest made his tanned skin look sallow, and his fingers, short and thick, clenched unconsciously in a fist at his side as his mouth hardened into an unforgiving line.

“Like I told you on the phone,” he half-shouted over the background noise of the port, “I didn’t even know what was in the containers. I just got them off the ship and ready to be loaded onto the trucks that took them away.”

“I appreciate you showing me where it all happened.” Normally, with men his age, I would use a smile, maybe a slight flutter of my eyelashes. As a fairly attractive woman in my mid-twenties, I found that sometimes helped me win them over.

In this case, however, I could already tell it would do no good. He was all but snarling at me, his anger floating off him in palpable waves I could feel even without actively engaging my magic. “We don’t think there was any wrongdoing here at the docks,” I tried to reassure him. “We are just trying to get a sense of the order of events.”

At that moment, Connor joined us, tapping his cell phone off, and suddenly, I was glad Abercrombie had sent him with me.

“I got the information,” he said to me, before sticking out his hand to shake Wallace’s. “Connor Cole. I’m on Mr. Abercrombie’s security team.”

Wallace gave him a cordial nod and shook his hand. I wondered if it was because Connor was male, or simply because he had not identified himself as a supernatural.

“I can show you where the container was unloaded and stored until it was loaded on the trucks,” Wallace said with a shrug, “but there’s nothing left there.”

Connor gave him that same dimpled grin he’d offered me in my office. “We would still like to take a look. Ms. McKee here might be able to find something the rest of us wouldn’t see.”

Smart—he had instantly managed to align himself with Wallace as one of those “normal humans” who wouldn’t pick up any arcane information from the site.

That wasn’t true, of course. As a canid shifter, his sense of smell would be extraordinary. He could pick up any number of scents that might later put us on the trail of our thief. I gave him a sidelong look, and as Wallace turned to lead us deeper into the maze of containers, Connor turned the full force of his grin on me.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. We followed the loading supervisor to an otherwise unremarkable stack of containers, each the size of a train car.

“It was right here, in this spot,” Wallace said. “Three full containers. But that was over a week ago. We’ve had several shipments stacked up here since.”

“You mind if we look around a little bit, anyway?” Connor asked in his most charming Texas drawl.

“Suit yourself. Don’t touch anything, and when you leave, put the hardhats over there.” He gestured toward the stack where he’d picked up a hat for Connor on the way in.

“Before you go,” I said, “you don’t remember anything unusual about that shipment?”

He barked a harsh laugh. “Lady, I deal with thousands of shipments, and I have worked here for the last twenty-five years. The only reason I know anything about the shipment at all is that I looked it up in our records. So, no. I didn’t notice anything unusual. I didn’t notice it at all, to be honest.”

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