I snickered. “What? Didn’t like being President?”
He shook his head. “Not under those circumstances, no.”
All of my men stood and turned toward me with smiles on their faces. However, I held up my hand before they started all of their nonsense.
“If you assholes start clapping, I’m open-handed slapping each and every single one of you,” I said.
The guys laughed as I took my place at the head of the table, and damn it, it felt good to be home.
“Now,” I said as I pulled my chair out, “let’s sit and talk.”
And one by one, we all took our seats before all eyes were on me once more.
“Did you guys happen to get much done while I was gone?” I asked.
That was when Bender grinned. “We missed you, but we’re not helpless. Reaper?”
The man was practically all smiles as he leapt out of his seat and rushed his laptop screen in front of my face. “Got a video for you. Watch.”
He pressed the space bar and I watched the scene unfold. With the guys staring me down, Reaper hovered over my shoulder and practically drilled a hole into my temple with his gaze. However, the more I got into the footage, the more I understood why they were waiting anxiously for my reaction.
“Holy fucking shit,” I murmured.
Reaper nodded quickly. “We even took pictures of the dock calendar for shipments just to confirm.”
I looked over at Bender. “I heard them talking about this shit while I was being held. They were talking about a shipment coming in soon.”
Angel drew in a deep breath. “We uncovered the fact that they’re accepting not one, but three massive shipments. And you know damned good and well what that shipment is.”
Bender stood and pointed at the video screen. “Those containers that are specified? They’re fortified in a way that—”
I stood to my feet. “Do we know when the shipment of women are coming in?”
Viper tilted his head. “You seem very sure that it’s women.”
“Like I said, I heard them talking about it a lot over top of my head like the fucking idiots they are. I’d bet my soul that they’re importing women in those containers. But how did you guys figure this out? How did you figure out how to put the pieces together?”
Angel leaned back in his seat. “Viper and I were out on our usual dock patrol and a couple of the dockhands flagged us down.”
Viper crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, they were pretty frazzled. Looked like they hadn’t slept in a while. One of them told us that we needed to get out of there because Bullet and his men had just come by.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “So, Bullet’s making house calls now to the dock? Yep. He’s shipping in women.”
Angel pointed at me. “That was flag number one. Flag number two was that Pete, that young dockhand we paid off last year? He left the dockhand hut unattended for us. Said he had to ‘make his rounds’ and that he’d ‘be back in twenty’ before he left the damn door ajar.”
“So,” Viper said with a shrug, “we slipped in, took some pictures, and decided to look at the pictures once we got back.”
Reaper took his laptop back and closed it. “Between the videos I dug out of their cloud storage and the schedule pictures, it didn’t take us much time to put everything together.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, does that schedule say when those three containers are coming in?”
And when my guys all looked around at one another, I groaned.
“It’s tonight, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Not quite that early,” Reaper said with a grin. “But they’re slated for tomorrow night.”
I raked my hands down my face. “Fucking hell.”
