Chapter 11

Ari

"Get down."

I hit the ground as soon as Samson told me to. I wasn't the kind to be a hero, and Samson had way more experience with criminal gangs operating out of a forest in the middle of nowhere than I had.

I caught my breath like I was gasping as soon as I was splayed flat in the dirt and debris of the forest floor. A criminal gang operating out of the forest. And Cylve was involved.

As if the day hadn't been surreal enough to begin with.

"You see something?" one of the men in combat pants and t-shirts called to Clyve, who had walked all the way to the edge of the gravel and stared with a frown into the forest in my and Samson's direction.

Clyve took a long time to answer. It felt like an eternity. He searched the trees, squinting. He even raised a hand to his forehead to shield the afternoon sunlight from his eyes. He was looking in our direction, but if my guess was correct, he was searching above us instead of checking the ground.

"Boss, if you see something, let me know," another of the men carrying a gun said, stepping over to Clyve's side. "I can assure you, the forest is secure. Frank and Bob just got back from a reconnaissance sweep half an hour ago. There hasn't been any activity since we found the car yesterday morning. Other than that loner who lives three miles away, there isn't anything on this side of the mountain at all."

Prickles raced down my spine, and for a number of reasons. Clyve's men had found my car. It hadn't been randomly stolen by kids or something. Clyve's men also checked the forest, maybe on a regular basis. And they knew about Samson. I had no idea of they'd IDed and researched him and knew Samson was an ex-cop, though.

But what really made those prickles stand up and itch was the way I could feel Samson's emotions as the information flew at us. I could feel it like we had one of those old-timey "telephones" that were really two cans with a string between them to communicate with. It was rudimentary and small, but there was no mistaking what was going on.

I was flattened to the forest floor beside the hulking, ex-cop alpha I'd met last week, who had just gotten me pregnant and with whom I was forming a bond, while we watched my despised fiancé organize a bunch of criminals for something big.

A faint, musical sound had me flinching as it rose up above the birdsong. I was wound so tight that it nearly had me pissing myself. Samson even reached out a hand to touch my arm, which went a long way to soothing me, believe it or not.

Clyve reached into his suit jacket pocket and took out his cell phone.

"Hello?"

It felt like the entire forest held its breath as he frowned at whoever was on the other end of the line.

"What do you mean, there's a delay?" Clyve said, turning away from the edge of the drive and marching back to the space between the SUV and the shipping containers. "Remmington said he would collect the shipment and make the payment at three o'clock," he complained. "No, I don't have time for all these delays and set-backs. Does he want the drugs or not? I'm sure we could find a dozen other buyers who—yeah. Yeah, I know." There was a longer pause, then a loud, "Yes, Dad, I know!"

The breath left my lungs again, and despite being pressed to the ground, my jaw dropped. Norman Ingraham was involved in illegal drug trade? How…no, why would someone as powerful and important as Norman Ingraham bother to get involved in something so immoral and illegal?

Of course, it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that drugs were part of the reason my would-be father-in-law was so rich and powerful to begin with. He'd made his fortune in shipping, but I'd never really stopped and thought about what he was shipping. It was easy to put two and two together to see he had the means and methods to ship whatever he wanted to Barrington from wherever he wanted it shipped.

I'd never really understood why Clyve hadn't ever told me what, exactly, he did as part of his father's company. Granted, I hadn't really cared. Now I understood.

"Well what am I supposed to do until then?" Clyve demanded, clearly frustrated. After a pause, he huffed out a breath, then said. "Fine. Bye."

He ended the call, and for a second, it looked like he wanted to throw his phone at someone.

"So what's the story?" the biggest of the guys, the one with the biggest gun, asked. Clyve had called him Bruno earlier. "What are our orders."

Clyve rubbed a hand over his face and huffed impatiently. "My father wants us to sit tight and make sure everything is secure. Remmington and his men won't be able to get here until later tonight."

"They probably want to wait until after dark to do the deal," another of the armed guys said.

"Shut up, Emory," Clyve snapped.

Samson tapped my arm just then, making me feel like I would jump out of my already prickling skin. When I turned to him, he gestured for me to crawl slowly and quietly away from the scene in front of us.

"We have to wait here," Clyve continued to try to get a handle on his men as I crawled shakily away with Samson. "Who knows how long we'll have to wait. I'm heading over to the house. Bruno, give me a report of what you've found out about the car and that abandoned campsite. Ansel, maybe do another patrol to make sure we're still secure."

The first bit about the house intrigued me. The last about another patrol had my blood running cold.

"Ari," Samson whispered, making me realize I'd frozen. "We have to move."

I nodded, trembling, and forced myself to continue to crawl away at Samson's side.

We didn't keep to the ground for long. As soon as it became clear Clyve's men were all distracted, Samson gestured for me to stand, and we hurried as far out of earshot from the warehouse and the impending drug deal as we could.

"We need to contact the police," I whispered to Samson as soon as we'd paused for breath in a small, sunny clearing. "We can't let Clyve and Mr. Ingraham get away with selling drugs."

I was a little surprised that Samson didn't instantly agree with me. Instead, he blew out a breath through his nose and glanced back at the woods that now stood between us and Clyve's men.

"The Barrington authorities might already have people on the case," he said.

"Then we need to contact them and tell them a deal is about to go down," I said, still keeping my voice low, but getting excited.

Samson turned his focus on me, reaching out to hold my arm, like he needed to steady me. "I don't disagree," he said, "but this is seriously dangerous stuff. I can't be completely sure, but from the look of things, your fiancé knows what he's doing."

I bristled at the way Samson called Clyve my fiancé.

"If we catch Clyve and make sure he's brought to justice, Mr. Ingraham, too, then there's no way my father will let the marriage go through. I'll be free."

Just thinking that sent a wave of elation through me. I could be free, free of the threat of marriage to an ass. One who, it turned out, was a criminal. Granted, Father would probably find someone else equally powerful and flashy to marry me off to, but I doubted even he would be able to accomplish that before it became obvious I was pregnant. And while that brought a whole other mess of problems with it, those were problems I was confident Samson would help me solve.

I felt a pull through the infant bond Samson and I shared. Even though Samson turned back to the forest and sighed impatiently, I could feel that he liked the idea of me being free as well.

I could also sense his mountain of frustration.

"Okay," he said at last, squaring his shoulders and exuding a sudden burst of alpha that would have had me on my knees with my mouth around his cock, if the circumstances had been any different. "We'll let the local authorities in on this. But they're going to need details, specifics, in order to act."

"What kind of specifics?" I asked, my body pumping with adrenaline. This was it. If I brought Clyve and Mr. Ingraham to justice, I might just stand a chance of having a life with Samson.

"We need to get close enough to see the license plate on that SUV," Samson said. "They'll be able to run the plates and find out more about who's involved. Same for any other vehicles at the scene."

"My car is at the scene," I pointed out.

Samson frowned. "We'll explain the circumstances. I can vouch for you."

It was better than nothing. Even if I ended up implicated in the whole drug mess, it was worth the risk to get out of my engagement.

"We need numbers of men and names, if we can overhear them," Samson went on, walking around to the side, like we would approach the shipping crates from a different angle. "Keep your eyes peeled for any details that would connect Clyve and his father to this scene. You can't just knock off a few of the minor players in things like this and expect to defeat the bad guys, you have to cut the head off the snake."

I agreed with a nod, following Samson on as we circled around to the left. I took my lead from him and kept quiet, searching for forest for the sort of clues and evidence that would help the police to catch Mr. Ingraham. And maybe Remmington, too, whoever that was.

I didn't really know what I was doing, but a sense of wary confidence filled me all the same. That had to be the bond. Samson had done things like this before, I was sure. He knew how to deal with criminals. He knew how to defeat them.

Maybe that confidence made me cocky. I wasn't as careful about staying quiet as I needed to be, I was sure. I just wanted to make certain Clyve was caught red-handed so that my life as I knew it would change for the better. The closer we got to the back of the shipping crates, shifting from walking fast to crouching low and creeping, the more I felt as if everything in my life depended on one tiny spot in the forest.

"Stay low," Samson whispered once we were close enough again that we could make out snippets of conversation. "And remember who we're dealing with."

I nodded. It was the reminder I needed. Well, that and seeing one of the drug guys lift and check his gun. I didn't know the first thing about guns, but the monster weapon that guy had was more like the sort of thing I saw in news stories that complained about how average citizens had no need for powerful, military-grade rifles. That was enough to tell me just how serious the shit we'd stepped in was.

"I don't like all this waiting," the guy with the monster gun said to his buddy, who walked around the back of the shipping crate just then.

The other guy snorted. "It gives me a fucking bad vibe," he said.

"This whole deal has been cursed from the beginning," the first one said. "You heard that Collins was killed in a car crash last week, right?"

"No, shit."

"Yeah. He lost control of the car and veered of the road and straight into a tree."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

"Not a coincidence."

I was riveted to the conversation, sick dread spilling through me, but Samson touched my arm and pulled me back to the moment.

He gestured for the two of us to continue on, and with a quick glance I saw why.

There was a small path that cut through the forest from the area where the shipping containers were and across to what I could just make out as a house in the distance. It wasn't a big house, but it was bigger than Samson's cabin. I couldn't make out any details about the house from where we were.

That wasn't what had caught Samson's attention, though. As we moved around the back of the shipping containers, he pointed out the numbers on plates that had been riveted to their backs. He then pointed to his eyes, to the containers, then tapped his head.

I nodded in return, assuming he was telling me to memorize the numbers. It made me wish I had my cell phone with me, but my phone was miles away with?—

Shit. I was supposed to meet Hayden an hour and a half from when I'd called him. That hour and a half had probably already passed. Hayden wasn't prone to freaking out for no reason, but this wasn't exactly no reason. For all he knew, Samson had actually kidnapped me and was holding me somewhere.

I would have to worry about that later, though. Samson tugged on the sleeve of my t-shirt, nudging me on.

There was a lot to look at and a lot of things that needed remembering if we were going to have a snowball's chance of giving the police enough details to make a case against Clyve and Mr. Ingraham. The problem was, the more we checked out the site, the less I felt any of the details around us were specific enough to nail Clyve and his father unambiguously.

The only vehicles at the site were my car, some other, late-model car, and Clyve's SUV, and it was impossible to see the SUV's license plate from the position Samson and I ended up stuck in. If we wanted to move all the way around to the back of the SUV, we would either have to step out into the open and cross the path that led from the shipping containers to the house, or we would have to go all the way around the house.

Not that circling the house was a bad idea. I wanted to know more about it—how big it was, whether it was fortified, if more people were in the house or if we were only dealing with the six or seven armed men around the shipping containers. I wanted to know how those guys had gotten to that particular spot in the forest, if they had vehicles, and if they did, where they were stored and what their plate numbers were.

I wanted to know a lot of things, but it wasn't looking particularly likely that I'd find out anything.

"Enough," Samson whispered, tugging me back once we'd gotten as close to the shipping containers as we were going to get.

It was just one word, but I felt so much from him through the baby bond that I somehow knew he'd come to the same conclusions about our chances of discovering more, and he wanted to head back to his house as quickly as possible to contact the local authorities.

I nodded to him and shifted so I could creep as quickly and quietly away as possible. We were just two guys, and I didn't really know what I was doing. This was definitely a job for the police.

As soon as I thought that, the low, buzzing sound of an ATV engine being fired up split through the otherwise quiet forest. I flinched like someone had fired a gun next to my ear. Worse still, a second ATV engine turned over a moment after that.

"Shit," Samson hissed.

He grabbed my hand and picked up his pace, pulling me away from the clearing with the shipping containers.

"Move fast," he said, still keeping low and trying to stay quiet.

I nodded, afraid I'd start shaking so hard that I'd get clumsy and reveal where we were. All I could think about was that we had to get far enough away so that the gun guys wouldn't find us if they drove out our way.

There was still a chance that they wouldn't find us. They didn't know we were there, after all. I had the impression from the slow way they started their patrol that they were just doing a routine check instead of going after us. I was pretty sure Samson had come to the same conclusion.

"We need to get back to my place as fast as possible," Samson said, choosing speed over stealth as the hum of the ATVs rolling into motion grew louder. "They don't know we're here yet. We can still get back without being seen."

I nodded tightly, too scared to comment on that.

Of course, there was no need to comment when, a few seconds later, a shout of, "Hey! There's something over there!" sounded through the rustling foliage.

"Shit," Samson said, his grip on my hand tightening. "Run!"