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His head snapped up as he glared at me. “We do not ask what they are transporting. Ever.”
I nodded to appease him, but if he was giving me this job, it wouldn’t be long before my curiosity got the better of me.
“Your job is to pack each shipment with the corresponding crates. You never open the crates. Just pack the wine on top and seal it for delivery. That’s it. Are we understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You’ve already worked in packing before, so this shouldn’t be too much of a change for you. All the information is on that sheet. And as I said, don’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
He slapped the clipboard against my chest and walked out. I studied the packing list, counting the number of crates that had to be shipped by the end of the day. The list was long, and I didn’t recognize any of the client names, but that didn’t surprise me. If people were using the vineyard for illegal activities, they wouldn’t exactly advertise who they were.
I got to work, crossing off the shipments as I fulfilled them. The burning need to see what was inside each crate grew stronger with every shipment, but I somehow held off. I had only two shipments to go when I heard a noise coming from the front of the warehouse. Everyone else in the warehouse had gone home hours ago. I slipped around the corner, keeping to the shadows as I made my way to the front. I snatched a crowbar off a crate and kept it at my side.
I heard whispered voices headed my way, but they were down the center aisle. I kept myself hidden as they passed. My boss was one of the men, but the other, I didn’t recognize. He was dressed in a fine suit and was carrying a briefcase to the back of the room. They stopped at the back and my boss looked around before continuing his conversation with the man.
“I want a ten percent cut.”
The man laughed. “Ten percent?” His hand struck out at my boss, grabbing him around the throat. “Do you know what I do to men when they get greedy?”
My boss clawed at the man’s hand, but before I could even move, the man dropped his briefcase and slid a knife across my boss’s throat. He snapped his fingers and two men appeared beside him. “Clean it up. Make sure no evidence is left behind.”
35
RAE
“Wait,so a man was killed in front of you and you did nothing?” That didn’t sound like FNG at all.
“I was going to, but then his men entered and I realized that they might not be the only ones in the building. I tucked myself in-between some crates and waited for them to leave an hour later.”
“What about the guy in the suit? I assume he’s the same man you were with in Marrakech.”
“Precisely,” FNG grinned. “It was by happy circumstance that I ended up in his company. He doesn’t even know that we met all those years ago.”
“What were they moving?” Dash asked. “Did you ever find out?”
“They were moving priceless artifacts from World War II, things the Nazi’s had stolen and stashed across Europe. Instead of returning the items to their rightful heirs, Rupert sold them and kept the money for himself. I tried to find a way to take him down, but as a one-man band, there wasn’t much I could do in a foreign country. I thought about going to the police, but if they were on his payroll, I would end up just as dead as my boss.”
“So, what changed this time? You were on your own in Marrakech.”
“I may not have been entirely alone,” he answered.
“And who were you working with?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s?—”
“Classified,” I answered for him. “Are all of your stories classified?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Not all of them. I could tell you how I found Rupert again. Ooh, or how I met my first wife.”
“Your first wife?” I said incredulously. “Are we talking about Honey?”
He laughed at that. “No, I’m afraid not.”
I couldn’t believe this. Not only was I unsure if any of his stories were real, but he was supposedly married sometime before he met Honey? “Wait, how could you be married before Honey if you were on the run?”
