Page 47 of Grant’s Blaze

“I’ve had a lot of time to come up with a theory,” I offered right away. This part, I could absolutely deal with away from the sink. “I think these assholes are probably undertakers for the criminal world. What better place to dump bodies than the middle of the ocean, right?”

Bas plunked his nose back into the clamp of his fingers. “Damn,” he muttered.

“Double damn,” Elijah seconded.

“But more than logical,” I asserted. “We already know the government in that area of the world is as crooked as they come because of the deal they made with Bas.”

“But how does this involve him?” Elijah asked.

“With Shark Enterprises using that shipping lane as much as we are now, we’ve increased freighter traffic in that area by—what would you estimate, Bas? Thirty percent?”

“At least,” he concurred.

I nodded while slowly pacing the length of Elijah’s kitchen. Thankfully, his automatic room spray kicked on to diffuse what I’d just subjected his poor sink to. “With the increased traffic comes increased attention from the authorities, for one thing,” I continued. “Also, smaller freight lines want to copy what the big boys are doing, so they start using the same routes to offer identical service to customers.” I stopped to spread my arms out, palms up. “More traffic means more law enforcement attention. All of that means less freedom to do bad, stupid shit—like use dead humans as fish food. I heard them bitching about why they still had a full cargo hold. They couldn’t make the ‘drop,’ as they were calling it, in that shipping lane we’ve been using because there was too much boat traffic when they were there.”

“So why did they commandeer our vessel a couple months ago? What do you theorize that was about?” Bas challenged.

“My guess is a factfinding mission,” I suggested. “I think they were looking to see who the ship belonged to, what was on board, and most importantly, how quickly we would respond to the boat being taken over. Not just an answer from our internal operations, but what sort of media attention it would get. They needed to know the situation they were dealing with.”

Elijah, now on the opposite side of the kitchen, angrily pounded both palms on the edge of the long counter. “So now what?” he bit out. “Where the living hell do we go from here? We definitely need a plan. If you think they’re going to keep trying to bully Shark Enterprises out of that traffic lane just so they can go about their dirty business, those pricks can think again. We need to have a plan in place to protect our assets.”

“And our families on the ground here,” Sebastian added.

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “That being said… Bas, we have to tell the girls what’s going on. Rio can already tell something’s going on, and I don’t like lying to her by omission. I don’t want to fuck shit up with her before we even get off the ground. I really want to make a life with her.”

Sebastian gave me a sideways glance with one of those rom-com best buddy looks that I never thought he’d permit on his face. “Seriously? You’re that into her?”

“I’m pretty sure I love her. No. I know I do. The thought of anyone hurting her, or doing anything to cause her pain, including me being stupid, just makes me ache in here.” I rubbed the center of my chest with my fist. “Like I can’t breathe right. I’ve never felt this way before, so I’m guessing it’s love?”

Even though I posed it like a question, I didn’t expect an answer. I knew I was in deep with Rio Katrina Gibson.

Both Elijah and Sebastian chuckled and shook their heads.

“Oh, man. Welcome to the world of feelings!” Elijah exclaimed.

Chapter Eleven

Rio

That was the worst night’s sleep I’d ever had. I wasn’t sure I could think of one worse. Even when three sheets to the wind, eventually I would pass out completely and log a few hours. Of course, there were the room spinners and the bouts with the hiccups that inevitably led to throwing up, but again, at least sleep came in between those joyous events.

No, last night was just hell. Torturous hell that nothing seemed to help. I employed every trick in the book except for sex, because who was I going to do that with? And I tried handling things myself, and after getting off the second time, I still couldn’t sleep. I had, however, discovered a really great porn site by way of Pornhub that I bookmarked for future reference. They had some great links on their site for some really cute role-play costumes, so I made a few middle-of-the-night purchases too.

Credit cards should be time sensitive. I made the dumbest buying decisions between the hours of one and four in the morning. Seriously. Was anyone thinking rationally at that time of day? Why would a retail establishment even allow purchases to be made at those hours? They had to know people weren’t making the best decisions.

Poor Robert only got about ten hours yesterday with all my shifting around and up and down and in and out of bed. He would probably be a real bear this morning because of it.

Of course, the cause of all the insomnia was the tall guy. I missed him. It was one night apart, and everything seemed off in my world. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t seen him. I also hadn’t talked to him. Not on the phone, not in person, nothing. Not one time all day, and he was supposed to have a really trying day.

Ideally, I would’ve been with him at the appointments he had so I could hear firsthand what the doctor thought was going on and what the plan was for treatment. In my experience with Sean, he never really listened to what a doctor said past the point if he was going to be getting medicine to take or not. It was very frustrating.

When I did finally get a phone call from Grant, I was away from my phone and he left a voicemail. I called him back within minutes, but he was already off to his next appointment with Elijah.

Even though I felt like my eyelids were lined with sandpaper and my back felt like I’d carried my Fiat a mile down the 405, I decided to go into work. It was a few days earlier than originally planned, but there was no way I could sit around all day and be ignored by the only person I wanted to see or talk to. At least at my business, people treated me like I was important. Never mind they were being paid to do so.

See? There were perks of being the boss.

I thought I would be nice and early as I turned into the industrial business park where Abstract Catering rented space. To my surprise, however, the parking lot was full when I arrived. It was nice to see the new crew was punctual, I guessed, but I felt like a slacker arriving last.