“I’m not lying, Davian. I swear.” Samantha’s tears began to fall, and I had to admit I felt sorry for her. I don’t know what circumstances caused her to betray Davian, but it had to be big.
Not that it mattered now, but the curiosity inside made me need to know. “What does Crosby have on you to make you betray Davian?”
She wasn’t the same bitch who tried to slay my dreams in the elevator. Samantha’s expression told me that she knew she was beaten. “Before I came to work for Davian, I worked at the McCall Agency. I was barely getting by with the bills and student loans I had acquired. So, I borrowed some money from a loan shark. I thought for sure with the job Crosby gave me, I could pay off the money I borrowed. But every day that I didn’t pay, he added more interest to the balance. I had to do something. I was desperate, so I stole the eighty thousand dollars I needed from the agency and paid the guy off. I thought I had pulled it off, and no one would find out until Crosby confronted me. He said if I didn’t do as he asked, he would go to the cops and tell them what I had done. That’s when I came to work for you. Crosby had me report back to him everything. I’m so sorry, Davian.”
“No wonder McCall and Salko were always one step ahead of me. You were feeding them information. But how?” Davian gritted his teeth, and the muscles in his jaw flexed.
Samantha rose to her feet and walked over to the bookshelf. She grabbed hold of a photo with Davian, Lorenzo, and someone I assumed was his mom. Turning the frame over, she pulled out a transmitter about the size of a pencil eraser and handed it to Davian. “There is another one beneath the glovebox of the SUV and your Mercedes. I’m so sorry, Davian.”
“This is what you are going to do. You are going to keep in touch with McCall like the plan is still a go. If you so much as breathe wrong or let on that we’re on to him, you will be in jail so fast your head will spin. Do you understand?”
Samantha nodded her head and swiped away a stray tear before she said, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
∞
It was crazy how much things had changed in a matter of days. Davian was getting closer to putting Crosby behind bars once and for all. Instead of taking Samantha back to the warehouse, Davian thought it would be better to take her to Salko’s hideout. He wasn’t sure how much reach McCall had and couldn’t take any chance in him finding out that we had Samantha. Axe and Stone stayed with her to make sure she behaved.
Just as Davian promised, he had included me in every discussion about what he and the guys would do about McCall—boarding his plane for a short flight to Savannah being one of them. Only this time, Davian and I weren’t alone. Marcus, Zach, Mitch, and Tyler were with us. Someone had to stay behind and watch the cameras at Salko’s hideout and take care of the girls. The logical men to do that were Patton and Calvin.
Davian would die if anything happened to me. So instead of tagging along to the docks, he put me up at the Bohemian Hotel, which was only fifteen minutes from where Samantha said Crosby would be. I hated not knowing what was going on, but he promised to contact me as soon as he had a chance.
Although the hotel room Davian reserved for me was nice, I felt like the walls were closing in on me. A helpless feeling consumed me every minute that passed that I didn’t hear from Davian. Obeying Davian’s orders, Tyler stayed behind at the hotel to make sure nothing happened to me. I didn’t feel threatened by Crosby or Delilah. Their only focus was to get out of Savannah. I doubted they would risk trying to take me so we could be one big happy family. As far as Crosby and Delilah knew, I was still back in Atlanta.
Tyler was sitting on the couch looking at his phone while I was in the bedroom, sitting on the bed, thumbing through a magazine. I was almost to the end and had no idea what I even read. My focus was on Davian and whether or not he was safe. Going crazy with worry was an understatement, and I had to do something other than reading a magazine to occupy my time
I pushed from the king-sized bed and planted my bare feet on the plush carpet. I had to get out of here. Maybe I could convince Tyler to take me somewhere so I could get my mind off Davian. Even though only two hours had passed since Davian left, I was going nuts. Just as I left him, Tyler was still looking at his phone sitting in the same spot an hour ago.
Taking a seat next to him, I looked over to his phone to find that he had been playing some sort of Ninja game. It looked like whatever he was playing, he was winning. He was so engrossed in the game, I almost hated to interrupt his winning streak.
Sinking further into the couch, I let out a long sigh. “I need to get out of here. Aren’t you the least bit anxious that we haven’t heard from the guys?”
Tyler paused his game and set his phone on the coffee table in front of us. When he turned to face me, I was so close to him that I could really study his features. He was a good-looking guy. Tyler was one of Davian’s men that I hadn’t spent much time with. He was new toThe Society,Davian’s name for the alpha ex-military men working for him. All of the men were loyal to Davian, and it was almost like a brotherhood that he created.
I waited for Tyler to say something, but all I got was a smile. He had a nice smile. Not like a knock-me-dead kind of smile like Davian’s, but welcoming nonetheless.
Tyler pushed from the couch and leaned over to pick up his phone. As he rounded the coffee table, he stuffed his phone in his back pocket and said, “Davian thought that you would get antsy. Come on. Let’s go for a walk. There is an ice cream shop down the street.”
I could have hugged Tyler. Going for a walk was better than being cooped up in the hotel. What I really wanted to do was to be with Davian so I wouldn’t have to worry. It was only wishful thinking because I knew that would never happen. So, ice cream it was.
~26~
Davian
One thing nice about owning a plane was that it got me where I needed to be in record time. Crosby and Delilah hadn’t shown up yet, and according to Samantha, they should be arriving any minute. The guys were getting impatient, and the September heat didn’t help. All of them were in protective gear that added twenty pounds to their body weight. It was nothing for them, though. They had been through much more over in Iraq.
In the process of sending Tyler a quick text to let him know the status of Crosby and Delilah, a white Chrysler appeared. He responded almost immediately, letting me know that he and Reyna were going out for ice cream. With a quick text back telling him to be careful, I switched my sights back to the car. As far as I could tell, there were four people inside the vehicle. However, when they got out, not one of them was Crosby or Delilah. Instead, they were all wearing white uniforms, with the taller of the group having four stripes along his shoulder. If I had to guess, they were a crew getting ready to sail. Freightliners and cruise ships lined the docks, so it wasn’t a surprise to see them.
It must have my curiosity, but I watched the four men walk to the docks and waited to see which ship they would board. One large yacht was docked between a smaller cruise ship and a cargo ship, and that was where I focused my sights. It seemed odd that it would dock there, but even stranger yet, the four men boarded the large yacht.
“Did you see that, Boss?” Axe said over my shoulder as he stood behind me.
“I think we might have just found Crosby and Delilah’s ticket out of Georgia,” I said, remembering what Samantha said about them going to Puerto Rico.
Twenty minutes later, another car showed up, a black Nissan this time. I fixed my eyes on the Nissan, praying for Crosby and Delilah to get out. My prayer was answered when Crosby got out with Delilah right behind him. The two men sitting in the front were none other than Elliott and Maverick. We had them. We had to play this smart. With the traffic on the dock, the last thing we wanted was to jeopardize the lives of the innocent bystanders working in the area. If I had known that the large yacht was waiting for them, the men and I could have boarded it ahead of time. Now, all we could do was wait. We had time. The freightliner, in front of the yacht, still hadn’t left.
We had to wait to make our move until Crosby, Delilah, and the two men were aboard. As far as the crew, we had to assume that they were part of Crosby’s team, but somehow, I had a feeling that once we informed them about the four wanted felons on their yacht, they would be more than willing to cooperate. At times like these, I wished I was with Reyna. I would much rather share ice cream with her than deal with what was about to take place.
Getting on the boat was much easier than we expected. For sure, I thought one of us would run into either a member of the crew or Crosby. I figured that the yacht had a least six floors to search. All of us agreed to search the lower floors first since that was the most logical place Crosby and his men would be. As we headed below deck, I suggested we break off into two teams. Axe and Mitch went with me, while Marcus and Zach headed to the floor below us.