Fighting With Light (The Coldwell Brothers #2)

21. Liam

21

Liam

We kept the SUV that Ben got because I thought it might come in handy, and it has. With Aelia sitting in the back seat, I pull up to the shipping yard gate and she rolls down her window.

“How can I help you?” the man asks. I watch him through the tinted windows. He appears to be a normal guy. He has a taser for a weapon and he looks like he sits on his butt most of the day.

“Oh, thank God someone is here! I need your help,” Aelia gasps and sniffles into her silk handkerchief. She made her makeup run, so it looks like she’s been crying for hours.

“How is that?” he asks.

“Well, my fashion house sent a box to be shipped out with another massive order that wasn’t supposed to come here. It has unreleased pieces, and now our clients are going to kill me because the designs are custom and…well, you don’t want to hear about that. And…” she trails off, and the tone of her voice would make any man say yes. “I was hoping you could help me. I just need to grab the box and it will be like I was never here. Please, I could lose my job over this,” she says, her voice breaking right on cue.

The guard looks at the gate and looks at her. “I can’t let anyone in here without credentials.”

“Please, I’m begging you, I…I worked so hard to get here and this wasn’t even my fault.” Aelia turns up the waterworks and sobs again.

“Well…I…” the man hesitates, and then Aelia blows her nose into the hanky. “Let me see if you could even get to it. It might be one of those stacked three high and I can’t operate that crane. ”

“Thank you so, so much, thank you, you’re so kind,” Aelia says sweetly.

I already know where the container is. Luckily, it’s not stacked, and it’s sitting in a row where others will be loaded tonight before the boat ships off in the morning.

“I’m not supposed to be doing this, but you’re in luck. It’s sitting right over there,” he says, pointing in the direction closer to the dock. “I’d take you over there myself, but I can’t leave my post.”

Aelia reaches through the window and grabs his hand. “Thank you! You have no idea how big of a help this is. You’re going to save my job, thank you!”

He smiles and blushes a little.

“And for your trouble,” she says and subtly slips him a fold of a thousand euros.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he says and tips his hat. I look at Aelia through the mirror, and she smiles at him as he hits the button for the gate, and I drive through.

“Like candy from a baby,” she says.

“Don’t get too cocky, princess, we still have to get the thing open and look through the boxes.”

“I know how to pick a lock, Liam, and aren’t they labeled?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the box designation I saw is true to any description or there’s a box labeled illegal guns ,” I tell her.

“Duh, they would make terrible criminals if they did,” she grumbles.

Leaving the car running, I check our surroundings while Aelia picks the lock. She takes her little tools and works them into the padlock. There’s also a security tamper band, but I expected that and found a replica to replace it with.

I keep looking over my shoulder, ready to pull my gun if necessary, but it’s relatively quiet. There are some people working further down on the dock, but they don’t pay us any attention.

“Got it,” Aelia says, and pulls the padlock off the door. I could have done it, but she was so excited, so I left her to it. We open the doors and I take one more sweep, handing her a flashlight.

“The box in question on the shipping list is labeled CX261. ”

“Okay,” she says as we step into the container. Boxes and bins are stacked on each other to the top of the container. The boxes are strapped back with nets on either end so they don’t fall. There is a small aisle between the two rows, likely for access in case of inspection or for someone to get their shipment of guns. Luckily, that works for us because it makes everything easy to see.

Aelia looks at one side and I look at the other. She starts from the back, while I start from the front and as I scan the boxes, I realize they are all designated as CX two hundred something. “Shit,” I mutter.

“I was going to say the same thing,” Aelia says.

We keep looking, and I don’t see a 261 at all. “Wait, switch to black light. Maybe it was just a dummy number, and they marked a box with some kind of UV paint.”

Hoping she’s right, we switch our flashlights for UV light. I start at the front again, and I’m losing hope that this container has what we need. Maybe they are cleverer than I gave them credit for.

“Look!” Aelia yell-whispers. I walk halfway down the container and Aelia shines her light on a little dot at the corner of the box.

“Let’s hope this is it. Go untie the net there, we need to hurry because this is taking us too long not to cause suspicion.” Aelia runs over to the other end of the container, her heels echoing against the steel. I untie the other end and let it drop to our feet, then go back to the boxes to wiggle it out. It’s about five lidded boxes deep, and we need to put it back where we found it. I take the top crates off and Aelia goes to grab the last one and grunts.

“This is way too heavy to be clothes,” she says as she slides it out. The crate doesn’t have any lock or sealing mechanism. I hand her my phone and carefully open the box. On the top is a stack of what looks like pants and skirts each wrapped in plastic. I pull them out, and there is stuffing and then a small dividing panel. Lifting the panel, I hope to God that it’s what we need.

“Jackpot,” Aelia says. There’s a clang in the distance, and we pause for a second. We need to hurry or people are going to start asking questions.

“Hustle, princess,”

“Don’t rush me,” she snaps .

While I hold the rest of the clothes, she takes pictures of the gun parts. It’s a lower or a trigger, which goes to a rifle. Without a lower, you can’t have a gun. On the flat side of the piece, there is a designation stamped on it with the logo of the maker and the serial number which is what is used to register a legal gun. Only these lowers don’t have anything. With my gloved hand, I turn them to the other side and it’s blank.

“Got it,” she says and grabs the clothes to put them back. I lay the panel back in place, and then she sets the clothes down. While I put the crates and boxes back, she takes pictures of everything around it and the manifest that is taped to the inside of the door.

We hang the net back up and check it one more time, making sure we left it as we found it. I close the doors and put the new security band right where I found the old one. Then, Aelia takes another picture of the container. A group of men on one of the dock trucks’ lights shine over to us.

“Time to go,” Aelia says and hops in the car. I throw it in drive and we take off to the exit. The gate opens, and Aelia leaves the man, blowing a kiss in his direction before we speed off into the night.

We’re silent for about a mile and I keep checking my mirrors. But nothing is behind us. I make a random turn and check again nothing.

“Holy crap, we did it!” Aelia squeals, and she crawls into the front passenger seat. “Liam, we did it! You found it and we have evidence!”

I smile as I drive us towards the villa, doubling back just to be extra sure. My heart is pounding with excitement because we got away with it.

“I want to do that again,” she says, a little breathless.

“You’re a bad girl, princess.” I grin. She leans over the armrest and bites the lobe of my ear.

“I think I like being bad,” she whispers. “But is it really bad if we’re doing it for good reasons?” she asks.

“I don’t know, but it sure felt good,” I mutter.

She hums and kisses my cheek.

“Yes, it does,” she says between kisses everywhere she can reach .

I squeeze the steering wheel and focus on getting home. This is just one step towards a larger picture, but it’s quite a zinger. We just proved that illegal guns are being shipped to the US. We need proof that a Costa business is the one receiving them and confirm that my father uses his relationship with border authorities to get them through.