Page 50 of A Man of Wealth

He grins at me. “Speechless? That’s a new one for my curious cat.”

“You choose right now to profess your love for me? Are you shitting me?” I grumble.

His grin widens. “I think it’s the perfect time.”

I roll my eyes. “Of course, you do, because even though I love you, you’re still a giant asshole.”

“I am, but I’m your giant asshole now,” he says as he leans down again and kisses me passionately once more. This time I give in to his kiss until I hear his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulls it out and groans. “For fuck’s sake…” He trails off as he types a reply. “Aiden needs to chill the fuck out. Also, here’s a photo of what they think we are looking for.” He shows me his phone.

“Got it. Too bad we’re doing this on the fly. It’d be a lot better if we could have all the fun spy gear,” I point out.

“That it would, but this will have to do,” he says, holding up his phone.

“OK, what now?” I look toward the fence and take a deep breath because I know what’s coming and I need to steel myself for the task.

“See that.” He points out where giant cranes are removing things from a ship.

“They are still unloading. So, do we wait?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nope. That’s the last cargo ship of the day. But it’s nearly unloaded. We are going to start over here and work our way across. You’ll need to stick close to me because he has at least a crew of five security guys walking around out there at any given time.”

“Five!” My eyes grow big. “You’re saying one of five men could find us at any given time?”

He winks at me. “Did I ever tell you about my granny?”

I groan. “Conner, now is not the time to reminisce about family members.”

“She was blind.”

“Great, now let’s focus.”

He leans toward me. “I learned how to use my ears instead of my eyes when I was with her.”

“Wonderful, I hope those superpowers help us because we’re going to need everything we have.”

Nodding and giving my hand a squeeze, he holds the fence for me. “Stick close.”

“I’m insane,” I mutter as I crawl through and wait for him to follow. Once we’re on the other side, he looks both ways and motions for me to trail behind him. We make it to an area filled with rows of shipping containers.

“This is where they leave the empty ones. But it will provide us with good cover. We need to get to the far side, over where we parked before because that’s where he’s keeping refrigerated containers. The container would be marked based on the owner’s code. We have that information for Confervo and for my father’s company. It would be one or the other.”

I grab Conner’s arm. “Are you kidding me? That’s like a third of a mile away.”

“Trust me,” he whispers. I want to trust him, but this entire thing is insane. It’s like we’re trying to overthrow an entire empire with a stick and a rock. I follow him because, at this point, I’m committed to seeing it through, even if that means the end for us. I push the morbid thoughts from my mind as we run between cargo containers. The wind whips off the Patapsco River causing me to shiver.

We eventually get to an area where I can hear people yelling. It’s the workers unloading the ship. The area has less cover and more lights. Not good.

“Now what?” I whisper as I stand behind Conner and crane my neck around him to see beyond us.

He pulls out his phone. “Bryce, I need your help. Can you kill the lights for about thirty seconds at the main loading dock? Thanks. I owe you.”

He turns to me and grabs my hand. “When I say run, we run.”

He barely has the words out of his mouth when all the lights go dark.

“Run,” he whispers. And we take off sprinting. I have to pump my legs as fast as I can to keep up with him. He weaves us around machinery and a front loader. We manage to get to the other side and are safely tucked back between more cargo containers when the lights turn back on, and the workers start loudly talking to each other.

He weaves us around one and stops abruptly. I can hear a man, he’s not more than twenty feet away. Conner pushes me back, and we plaster our bodies against the side of the cargo container.

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