North’s Nikki, Page 7

  She gasped and hit him harder.

  He shook his head. “Stupid things. They seem to think they’re some kind of mighty warriors, but they pack such a tiny punch.”

  This time she didn’t hold back, and she smacked him as hard as she could.

  He turned to look at her. “Did you want something?”

  At that, North laughed out loud. She just glared at the two men and collapsed backward again. With her arms across her chest, she thought about how infuriating the two men were. Sure, they’d also pulled a fast one on Jonas, and, for that, she appreciated everything they’d done for her. But she sure as hell didn’t want to get caught interfering with MI6 without at least knowing what was going down. “Who can we give that ampule to?”

  “I already sent a text to Levi,” Anders said, “asking him who he might have for a contact here. We need somebody in the pharmaceutical industry who can analyze it fast.”

  “Preferably before MI6 does,” North added.

  “Bullard might know somebody,” Anders said.

  North’s phone buzzed. Anders picked it up and said, “Hey Levi. What’s up?” He listened for a moment. “Yeah. Send me a text with the address, will you? It’s pretty late, but, if there is any place we could take it at this time of night …” He let his voice trail off.

  She realized how hard it would be to get anybody in the industry to take a look at this tonight.

  “Charles will have a connection?” Anders repeated to Levi. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll give him a call next then.” Anders hung up and dialed Charles.

  She had her phone already out and was calling him. “Bet my phone goes through first. … First phone call gets in,” she cried out.

  “It’s hardly a competition,” Anders said, “but be my guest. Call your granddad.”

  The phone was already ringing in her ear. When Charles answered, she explained what they found.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, his voice a little distracted. “I’m looking up the number now. Give me a moment and I’ll text you the address. Take care of yourself.” And he hung up.

  “He is texting me an address,” she told the guys.

  Anders said, “Yeah, I’ve got one from Levi too. But he didn’t think we’d contact them until six in the morning.”

  She waited until her phone buzzed again. “I’ve got it.” She read off the address and phone number. “Granddad added a note, saying he would contact them, and he’d get back to me.”

  “It’s a different address, so we’ll try yours first,” Anders noted. “If we can get it done now, perfect. If not, we’ll contact this one in the morning.”

  When North sent a visual signal to Anders, Anders switched from his phone to North’s, typing in something, then snapped the phone into the holder between them on the front seat.

  North suddenly took a right turn. She held on to the side of the seat and said, “What’s going on?”

  “Look behind you.”

  She turned to see another vehicle had pulled up behind them, fast on their tail. “Are they following us? How did they know we were behind the truck?”

  “We might have been seen leaving the warehouse.”

  Just then the car raced forward and bumped into the back of her car.

  “Oh, my God! They’re trying to kill us.”

  North took a sharp left, followed by an immediate sharp right. She looked down at his phone to see what he was looking at. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Anders has the GPS trying to find a way to lose them.”

  She kept quiet because that meant he wasn’t following the truck with the drugs. But, given the choices right now, he’d chosen the right one as far as she was concerned.

  “Hold on,” he warned. He took another sharp left and then turned left again. And, just like that, he hit the brakes hard and turned off the engine, killing the lights. She waited, lying flat in the back seat, her breath caught in her throat, staring at the men who were looking forward, waiting and waiting.

  The two of them looked at each other, and then Anders gave a sharp nod. North turned on the engine but not the lights and slowly backed the car out of whatever spot he’d pulled into.

  “Do you think we lost them?” she asked quietly.

  “I hope so. No way to know for sure.”

  Anders brought up the tracking position of the smuggler’s truck again. With the new path charted, North quickly pulled back onto the main street and headed out.

  But she couldn’t stop staring behind them. “Who was that? Who does things like that?”

  “Bad guys,” Anders said succinctly. “Only assholes would try to ram a vehicle like that. Best-case scenario is we would have pulled off to a stop, and they would have raced past us. Worst-case scenario is that they would have hit us hard enough so that the vehicle ended up flipping or crashing against a wall.”

  Neither sounded good to her. In fact, both sounded way too horrible to even contemplate. She sat facing backward the whole time, looking to see if they were being followed, but there was nothing. Finally, after a good ten minutes, she sank into the seat slightly and relaxed. From where she sat, she could barely see what they were tracking. Last time she’d seen it, it looked like it was forever up ahead. Finally North slowed. She leaned forward, whispering, “Are we stopping?”

  In an equally low voice he said, “No, but we should come up behind the truck in the next few minutes.” He took a series of turns, and, with the last one, he ended up right behind the big white truck.

  She gasped. “Where’s the MI6 car?”

  “No way to know,” Anders said. “But they’re back there somewhere. As long as we have the truck, that’s what we need.” They kept driving north.

  “But we’re between them and the truck, so that’s good,” she said, immensely cheered, feeling as if she had picked the right team in this game to cheer for.

  The truck slowed. North pulled into a lane, turned around at the end and went back to see where it had gone. There was no sign of it. He moved slowly, coming up to the corner where it had turned. He followed it and caught sight of it, backing into a loading zone. He drove past, marking the spot on the GPS. He kept going, turned around and doubled back and parked in the darkness.

  “Are we stopping here? Are we waiting for MI6 people?”

  “They’re not here, and I don’t know why,” North said. “But the thing is, we’ve run the truck to its destination. I really want to know who and what lives here.” He peered through the darkness. “I’d like to go in and check out the place. It looks empty enough.”

  “Except for the driver. We still have to worry about him.”

  “Right. There’s always something or someone …” North said.

  That’s when she realized the men were getting out of the vehicle. She scrambled to step out.

  But Anders held her door firmly shut. He looked down at her and said, “I’m standing here, keeping watch. North will check it out.”

  She shook her head. “You shouldn’t let him go alone. You don’t know how many men are there.”

  “I know that. But neither can I leave you alone, and you can’t go with us,” he said in a no-nonsense manner. And he turned, placing his hip solidly against the vehicle door beside her.

  She sat back and watched as North disappeared into the shadows.

  *

  North slipped across the alley and over to the street, coming up the other side where the smuggler’s truck had backed into. He knew Anders was keeping watch over him as he moved. North heard no sound of voices or anybody around as he approached the truck. He slipped up between the side of the smuggler’s truck and the wall, and, at the far end, he peered around the corner. Nobody was there. The double doors on the back of the building were open. He figured a forklift had picked up the first of the pallets and had taken it. But, on closer inspection, he realized the pallets were still all here in the back of the vehicle. He walked around to the side of the truck, retrieved And
ers’s phone and pocketed it, then slipped into the warehouse, moving along the back where the darkest shadows were.

  He saw no name on the warehouse, and it was mostly empty, which didn’t help him to stay hidden. He moved along the back wall, looking for anybody or anything around. But nothing obviously said what business was done in this building. If somebody was here, they certainly weren’t showing themselves. North skulked along the darkness at the back wall all the way to the far corner. There he heard two men talking.

  “I don’t have a forklift operator right now.”

  “Well then, let me on the damn thing. I loaded it,” the truck driver said. “You know I’ve got to get this unloaded.”

  North pegged him as Willy, if he loaded the truck. That left Carl and Phillip back at the London Emporium warehouse.

  “We’re hardly set to receive this right now,” the warehouse clerk protested. “I don’t know why there is such a rush at this moment.”

  “It’s here, and it’s to be unloaded now. It’s already been okayed by the bosses. So either take it or don’t, and you get to explain to them why.”

  Grumbling still, the clerk said, “How did this even happen?”

  “I hate to say it was a clerical error, but that’s what it’s looking like. Still, the product is here. It should make you happy.”

  “It doesn’t. I don’t have the orders in place for double the amount.” With a heavy sigh, the clerk said, “Fine. Let’s see if we can get the forklift.”

  They walked out of an office. From a light showing through the open door, North saw them head toward the opposite wall. He watched until they were safely out of sight; then he walked into the office they’d come from, closing the door all but a crack. He headed toward the desk. With his camera out, he took pictures of everything, then pulled out drawers. He found a laptop there, but he didn’t want to take the chance of turning it on and getting caught with it. He wanted to take it with him, if he could. If he had a chance, he’d circle back and snag it on the second round.

  With that done, he made his way back to the door, opened the door partway again so it looked the way it had before. He raced down the back of the warehouse to where the men had disappeared. He could hear the sounds of a forklift rumbling toward the big delivery truck.

  What he wanted was a photo of the man who had received the shipment. He watched and waited as one of the guys walked by, but it was just the man who came from the truck—Willy, as presumed. North took photos of him. North headed around the corner, but still he saw no sign of the other man. Worried he had come back and tracked him to the office, North stayed quiet, listening for any sound. But heard nothing.

  In his gut he knew something was wrong. Or they had an unexpected visitor. A few minutes later he heard a whisper of a sound. He froze in a crouch at the bottom of one of the aisles, waiting for the warehouse guy to appear. But heard only silence again. He kept his breathing steady and regular, knowing something that simple could also alert the other man to where he was. Finally he heard the clerk talking.

  “Yeah, look. I didn’t want to wake you tonight. But we got a shipment unexpectedly.” After a few seconds of listening, he spoke again. “Oh, good. They did call you. Well, thank heavens for that.”

  He walked around as he spoke on his phone, pacing at the end of the aisle where North could see him but never so he could catch a picture of his face.

  “I don’t know what you want to do, but we’ve got inspections this week. We can’t have this stuff sitting here.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I know. I know it’s crazy.” He stopped. “True, true. I mean, at least we do have a double product, but it’s not like we can put it on sale to move it out. I’m also worried about the clerical error. Who knows what trouble that’ll cause.”

  The two men appeared to discuss the logistics of what to do with the extra shipment on their phone call. As no real intel was divulged from this side of the phone conversation, North left his phone on a nearby shelf, recording the warehouse clerk. North quietly raced along the warehouse to the office, picked up the laptop, slipped back out, disappeared into the aisles again, came out to where he left his phone and found the man was still talking.

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’ll sign off on this. I just want to get rid of this guy and lock the doors. Then we’ll have to figure this out tomorrow. … Yeah, okay. Yeah, will do.” And he ended the call.

  With the phone tucked in his pocket again, the laptop safe in his arms, North backtracked to where the smuggler’s truck was. He needed an opening so he could leave the warehouse area without being seen and get back to Nikki’s car.

  The two men met as the pallet was being unloaded. North could hear the warehouse clerk talking.

  “Look, the boss isn’t really happy about this.”

  “Yeah, my boss isn’t either. On top of that, one of the stupid employees came to check it out too.”

  “What are you talking about?” the clerk asked in alarm. “Are you saying somebody saw this?”

  “No, don’t worry about it. I overheard Carl and Phillip talking to a clerk from London Emporium. She came to check the manifest because of the clerical error, like I said.”

  “Yeah, but that’s hardly a nonissue if she went to the warehouse. How do you know she didn’t open anything?”

  “She did, but she saw the wine, closed it up and left.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” the clerk said, his voice rising in anger. “Nobody is allowed to open these cases. You know that.”

  “Hey, Carl scared her off. So not an issue.”

  At those words an ominous silence followed. North understood how the clerk felt.

  “Are you serious? Somebody saw what was in this and was then scared off?”

  Willy gave a half laugh. “Look, Carl is one scary dude. He just has to show his face, and every chick around goes running.”

  “Carl himself spoke to her?”

  “She’s a nobody. Don’t worry about it. Let me get this last pallet unloaded.”

  The forklift headed to the back. The clerk pulled out his phone and made another call. “Hey, apparently some chick from London Emporium went to the warehouse and opened a case of wine. Willy says she didn’t see anything, and Carl showed up and scared her off, … but I don’t know …”

  North watched as the guy nodded his head to whatever the man on the other end of the call was saying.

  “I know. I know. To me it raises all kinds of red flags too. You know we can’t have anybody know about that. Nobody can know. I also don’t like the fact this guy was so free to open his mouth. … Well, sure, that’s one option,” he protested. “But what am I supposed to do with the truck? They’ll know he was here.” He groaned. “Yeah, yeah. But I’ll need to be picked up from there. Or could just drive it back here.” He paced back and forth. “No. I don’t know what to do. This isn’t my area of expertise. It’s yours. You deal with it.” And suddenly he hung up and started swearing. “Shit, shit, shit.” He paced back and forth.

  That’s when North realized just how much this had gone south. Did the truck driver even know how much danger he was in? North highly doubted it. But it was evident the receiver was pissed off about somebody seeing the shipment, enough so that he realized something had to be done. The question was, what exactly was that? And what about Nikki?

  With great relief North watched as Willy returned, closed up the back of the truck, gave a half wave, hopped off the loading dock and walked to the driver’s side of his truck. He climbed in, turned on the engine and drove away.

  North at this point was outside the warehouse. The inside man closed up the loading bay doors and locked them, and the darkness of the night enveloped the area. The big smuggler’s truck slowly moved away in the distance. Then a side door to the warehouse opened, and the warehouse clerk stepped out and around the corner, out of sight. Soon he drove by the loading docks in a black car and slowly followed in Willy’s direction.

  Moving as silently as he cou
ld, North returned to Anders and Nikki. “I’m afraid the delivery guy is in trouble,” he said. “I’m calling Jonas.” North separated himself from Anders and Nikki so as not to be heard.

  When Jonas answered his phone, North said, “Did you have somebody tracking the truck?”

  “Yes, they also say you got into the warehouse. What’s up?”

  “I think you should pick up the delivery driver. The receiver at the warehouse was pretty pissed when he found out Nikki saw the contents. And then he said something about Carl having showed his face, and that was bad news. I guess Carl is a direct connection to them. The other thing is, I lifted the laptop from the office.”

  Jonas’s breath sucked in. “You did what?”

  “I didn’t exactly have time to covertly copy anything,” he said. “And, as I’m standing here outside the warehouse, the delivery driver has pulled away with the receiving clerk in a second vehicle behind him. I think you should pick up the delivery truck driver before somebody kills him. From what I overheard from one end of a telephone call, they aren’t planning on leaving anyone involved alive, and that could include Nikki.”

  “I want to see what’s on that laptop.”

  “Yeah, sure. You can, but I want to see what’s on it too. We’re still here. I want to copy what we need, and then I’ll return it.”

  “The doors to the warehouse are locked, I presume,” Jonas’s voice was neutral, guarded.

  “Yeah,” North said cheerfully. “And, as you well know, that won’t make a damn bit of difference to me.”

  “We’ll pick up the delivery driver. I’ll be at the warehouse in fifteen.” And he hung up.

  North turned and walked toward Anders and handed him the laptop. “We have fifteen minutes to get what we need off this computer. Jonas wants to see what’s in this. If we can get everything off it before he arrives, I’ll return it, so nobody is suspicious.”

  Even as North spoke, Anders had turned on the laptop. He quickly searched through it, checked the documents available and said, “Yeah, everything is in here. No way this laptop is going anywhere.”

  “If we don’t put it back, they’ll know somebody took it.”