Page 81 of Rogue Wave

“Exactly! It’s someone we both know,” I pointed out.

“Hazel, I don’t trust him.”

“Ugh, fine,” I replied, giving up because I didn’t want to argue about this anymore. It wasn’t over, but I just didn’t want to talk about it right now. I had better things to do.

“Thank you. You’re making the right decision.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is this going to be a thing we do? You tell me what to do, and I just always comply?”

“That’s the smarter option…and my preference.”

“Not for me, it isn’t,” I huffed and grabbed my keys off the counter. “I’m going to my house to grab supplies and then go to the beach. You and Shadow are welcome to join me. Or don’t.”

I stormed my way to the door as he called out my name behind me.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was concerned about me, but I also needed him to know that I wouldn’t jeopardize my own safety either. I wasn’t planning to meet my dad in a dark alley at night. I just wanted to give him the opportunity to tell me whatever he needed to say. He claimed it was about my safety, so I felt I had a right to know.

The second I walked into the house, something felt off. The front door had been locked, but the mood wasn’t right. Too angry to focus on that odd feeling, I walked straight to my living room, grumbling and talking to myself about how obstinate Hank was being.

Just as I turned to go to the kitchen, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. The guy who had been with my dad at the aquarium—Samson—was standing there.

I gasped and jumped back.

What was he doing here?

“Look who it is,” he said with a snarl.

“Wh…what are you doing here?” I asked him.

My dad emerged from the hallway, but unlike Samson, he didn’t look very comfortable.

He looked tense and nervous, as though my arrival had caught him off guard. He hadn’t expected me.

“We’re glad you came home,” Samson said with an unsettling grin. “We were looking for something, but now you can just tell us where it is.”

I turned to look at my dad, but he said nothing, just continued to look uncomfortable.

“We just want the stuff from the beach,” Samson said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, completely perplexed as to what was going on.

“The drug shipment you found on the beach was scheduled to arrive at the docks, but it never made it, leaving our boss without our latest shipment,” Samson told me. “Thankfully, the storm likely killed the men on the boat transporting it, so we had no witnesses.”

He smiled as he said that—so nonchalant about the death of those men that it made my stomach turn.

“Unfortunately, we still had to answer for what happened to the drugs and how they got caught,” he continued. “There were packets included with those drugs that washed up on shore. Packets that had the delivery locations and a bunch of other very valuable information.”

That was news to me.

“The packets were folded up and placed in a small box full of seashells and other seafood so no one would suspect anything.”

He took a step closer to me, and I took one back, but that only boxed me into my kitchen even farther. “We know you took some stuff from the beach that day, including seashells, and the packets were never found by the police, which means you must have taken them.”

What?

“I never took anything,” I told him honestly. “The cops even went through all the seashells I had collected prior to finding the drugs. I didn’t take anything.”

Samson didn’t look convinced, but my father broke in.