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“Hey, Tyler,” Maya said as she approached. “I’m so glad you didn’t run into any trouble. With Levi busy at the hospital, we would have been no help.”
“Has Billie had the baby yet?” I asked.
Maya and Aria looked at each other, shaking their heads.
“Don’t worry, he’ll call us.” Maya playfully punched her own hand. “He better. Or he’ll be hearing from me.”
The tractor finally drove out of the warehouse with the additional two men riding on the sides. As silence settled over the old building, Ryder returned to us.
Aria smacked her hands together. “Now that we’re all here, I want to get this going ASAP. You all know each other, right?”
I shook my head and offered my hand to the man with the prosthetic leg. “I’m Tyler Kingsley.”
He met my grip. “Cole Tanner. I’m with Aria.”
“We call him Cobra.” Maya smacked the back of her hand to his chest. “And it’s not because of the size of his you-know-what.”
“Maya.” Cobra rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile.
Everyone but Ryder and Watts laughed. It was a good icebreaker.
I chuckled. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“Cobra’s my cyber expert,” Aria said. “If we find any computer equipment on this heap, Cobra’s the man to crack it.”
He raised his hands. “Hang on. That depends on what state it’s in. There’s not much chance anything survived being underwater all this time.”
He swept a pack off his back and unzipped it.
“Well, whatever is on there, somebody tried to kill us to get to it,” Whisper said.
“Precisely,” Aria said. “So, if they think there’s a possibility that it’s still viable, then we need to hope it is, too.”
Cobra pulled flashlights out of his pack, and as he handed them out, we all checked they worked.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Lacey tucked her short blonde hair behind her ear, and the tiny gold moon-shaped stud in her ear twinkled in the stark lights.
“No idea,” Aria said. “We know of two secret compartments that Chui had built into this yacht, so there may be more. I want every inch of that thing searched.”
She nodded toward the yacht which was still dripping onto the bare concrete. “Captain Watts and Ryder have brought a pile of equipment with them.” Aria nodded at Ryder to elaborate.
He pointed at a couple of crates a few feet away. “Yes, help yourself to anything in there. I tried to think of everything, but it was such short notice.”
“Should have brought Viper’s C4?” Maya joked.
“Hell no. Viper already did enough damage,” Aria said. “So, we have nine of us here. Blade and Viper are coming later. But for now, we’ll break into teams of three.”
She pointed at me. “Kingsley, you’re with Whisper and Maya. Watts, you have Cobra and Jeff, and that leaves Lacey and Ryder with me.”
Knowing how brilliant Aria was, I’m sure it was a tactical move that each threesome had a person from the Police, Border Force, and Alpha Tactical Ops.
“Let’s get to work,” Aria said, clapping her hands. “Time is not our ally.”
As we all marched toward the tools, Aria said, “Kingsley, your team can start searching in Chui’s stateroom at the rear.”
I grabbed an ax from the selection of tools.
“Watts, your team is on Chui’s office, situated on the second level in the middle of the yacht. The rest of us will search the bridge.”
