Page 56 of Raven

Skiba does too. He meets my eyes. “Da fuck is with this food smell?”

I don’t know, but something doesn’t sit right with me.

We don’t spend much time at the port these days. I mainly ensure that there are no shipments issues and check on the reports about suspicious activities while Skiba and James hang out with the other guards.

An hour later, we take the boat back to Ayana.

When we dock and disembark, I motion for my men to carry on without me, while I sit down on the wooden boards at the bottom of the neighboring pier, behind one of the small yachts, and smoke.

My powerboat is visible between the hulls of two yachts, and I watch it intently as I smoke. My cigarette is finished, my guards are out of sight, the sun is rising, and it’s getting hot. But I don’t leave. I smoke another one.

Over forty minutes passes before I finally see the movement in my boat.

First, the top of a head with unmistakable messy hair appears above the boat’s port. The little stowaway looks around, then crawls out of the boat, jumps onto the pier and, hunching over, tiptoes down toward the sand.

I fucking knew it.

Look at him—he even has a backpack. There goes the mystery of burger-eating monster. He must’ve hid in the galley.

When I see him starting to walk away, I whistle at him.

He jumps like a rabbit, and his eyes go wide when he notices me. He freezes. Doesn’t move. Just stares at me.

I curl my forefinger, beckoning him over.

“How many times have you done this before?” I ask calmly, not getting up, as he hangs his head and digs the pier boards with the toe of his shoe.

“Once,” he says, hiding his eyes as he stands in front of me.

“Try again.”

I wait.

“Don’ know. Five?”

Bullshit. I’m sure hiding in speedboats is not the only way he snuck out of Ayana. “How else do you go to town?”

His eyes dart to me from under his eyebrows, but I wait for his answer. He bites his lip. “In a delivery truck. Main gate.”

“How else?”

“Thas’ it.” He chews on his bottom lip like it’s candy.

“Why?”

“I bring food,” he says so quietly as if afraid to be punished.

“For who?”

“My friends. Garrick and ‘em all.”

“Where?”

“The empty building behind the port.”

“Outside the port fence?” That’s where Kai and Callie met him first.

He nods.

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