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He wasn’t exactly old himself—only in his fifties—but it was recognised that he was the head of the Wynter family. My own father, Samuel Cornell, could afford to sit back a little more since he had both me and Tam to shoulder the responsibility. Jay wasn’t mature enough yet, and Marlon didn’t like Hallie to be involved in the business, especially now she was pregnant.
I went outside to see Jayden already approaching the driver, who was jumping down from the cab. The tang of cigarette smoke on the night air filtered over to me.
There was still that rivalry between the families, even though we were working together now, and I didn’t want the Wynter family to be the one to get there first.
“Get round the back, Jay,” I told him. “We need help unloading.”
Jayden scowled at me but didn’t say anything back.
I shook the driver’s hand. “Any problems on the way?”
“Nope. Drove straight through.”
“Good to hear. Is everything as it should be?”
“As far as I’m aware.”
We’d been stiffed recently on an import of forged bank notes, and it had not only cost us a lot of money but cost us a lot emotionally as well. If it hadn’t been for the switched money, we’d have never gone to Estonia and killed Kaspar, Rasmus’s brother, and so Rasmus would never have come to London to seek his revenge. Jodie would still be alive, and I wouldn’t even know Kaja existed.
It was strange how life could follow so many different pathways.
The driver followed us around to the back of the lorry, and he got to work, opening up the back. Removing the guns from where they were hidden inside the computer parts was going to take time. The driver needed to continue on his way with the genuine parts and make that delivery, but he couldn’t until we’d retrieved everything we’d paid for. Once we’d separated the guns from the computer parts, we could then divide them up into the various orders we’d received, ready for collection.
The driver opened the rear doors, and we got in line, each collecting a cardboard box and carrying it into the warehouse. Marlon pulled out a flick knife and opened the first one. It contained a tower for a PC, but when he took the front off the tower, there weren’t just electronics in there. He extracted the parts of a handgun, each piece separately wrapped in clingfilm. I knew without checking that the serial number had been filed off to prevent identification. As well as the guns, there were silencers and ammunition.
“Everything is in order,” Marlon said, nodding approvingly. “Let’s get the rest in.”
We ferried everything back and forth, each taking the time to open the boxes and remove the contents and check each product with our order sheet. None of us wanted to have someone turn up to make a collection, only to find their order had never been received. We didn’t want to piss off the wrong kind of people.
“Did anyone get to this box?” Marlon called out. “It’s been put behind this pillar for some reason.”
I straightened from what I was doing and frowned. “What bo—?”
An explosion threw me backwards. I flew through the air and hit the floor, sliding several feet across concrete until my head hit a wall. My ears rang, and lights burst in my vision. I was completely dazed.
What the fuck had just happened?
I pushed myself to my hands and knees, willing the world around me to stop spinning. My ears were still ringing, and I lifted my hand to my right ear and touched it lightly. Fuck, that hurt. I checked my fingers, and they were bright with blood. Had the blast burst my eardrum? My head hurt as well. Had I split my scalp?
Tam? Where was Tam?
Smoke and dust filled the air, stinging my eyes and leaving my mouth and throat coated in dry grit. I hacked and coughed, trying to rid myself of it, but the more I inhaled the worse it got. I doubled over, trying to catch my breath. Fuck, we didn’t have time for this.
“Tam?” I croaked. “Where are you?”
“Leo? I’m over here.”
The crack and pop of flames came from somewhere nearby. The blast had ignited the cardboard boxes and soon their contents. I tried not to think about the amount of money that was going up in flames.
That wasn’t our biggest problem. Who had been hurt? And who the fuck had set the bomb in the first place?
The Gilligans. Those fuckers. Some of their men had been seen hanging around earlier in the week. They must have set it then. How had they heard of the shipment coming? It would have been easy enough to find out if they had the right contacts in Holland.
Our men coughed and groaned around us.
“Get out,” I told them. “We don’t know how stable the building is.”
Was the driver among them, or had he been outside? I couldn’t remember. I was thankful I hadn’t gone through with my instinct to bring Jodie here, and that Hallie and her friend, Layla, hadn’t been here either.
