Chapter Thirteen
Tam
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WE MET SLY DOWN INthe bar. Leo hadn’t shown up with Jodie yet. I hoped the two of them hadn’t fallen asleep after their fuck-fest. I didn’t want to have to go banging on their door like I was their goddamned babysitter. But no sooner had I started getting myself riled up at the thought, the two of them appeared, smug expressions on their faces.
Maybe I should have screwed Hallie before we’d come down as well. I could have bent her over the bed and fucked her hard and fast from behind, if only to get it out of my system, but something told me I needed to play things out better than that.
The forgers weren’t based in the city but out in the forest, an hour or so drive from here. They used logging as a cover for their real business. We’d need to drive out there to see them, which was part of the reason I’d made sure I’d hired a car in a name that couldn’t be traced. If something went wrong, and the car was caught on camera, I didn’t want it coming back to me. Estonia, especially rural Estonia, was nothing like London, though. There weren’t CCTV cameras on every corner. What happened in the back arse of nowhere, stayed in the back arse of nowhere.
“You both ready?” I asked my brother and cousin.
Sly got up from the barstool and knocked back the shot of dark-brown alcohol, that smelled something like rum, that he’d been drinking.
Leo leaned in and kissed Jodie, a long and sensual one where she wound her body around him, their tongues visible.
“See you soon, baby,” he told her.
“Be careful,” she said in return.
I shot Hallie a glance. She did look gorgeous tonight, but there was a challenge in her blue-green eyes.
“Behave yourself,” I told her instead, and almost kicked myself. Jesus fucking Christ. She was right when she said I sounded more like her father than her husband.
She flashed me a sarcastic smile. “Don’t I always?”
I turned from her, shaking my head. Someone was fucking with us, and I didn’t need my head clouded with thoughts about Hallie Wynter, no matter how hot and tight her pussy had felt when I’d pushed my finger inside her.
Leaving the girls at the bar, the three of us men went out to the car.
I drove, with Leo taking shotgun this time and Sly in the back. I knew without having to ask that each of the men were armed. You didn’t go into this kind of situation without a gun. I had no doubt the men we were about to question would also be armed.
It took me a few minutes to adjust to driving on the opposite side of the road, and the gears and hand clutch being on the wrong side of the seat. The sun had already been low on the horizon, but as we left the city, it sank fully, and dusk turned to night.
The route took us through dense forest, pines, firs, their trunks thick, the upper branches reaching up into a moonlit sky. The forest was so thick, that beyond the first row of trees, it looked just like a wall of black. The headlights of the car cut a swathe through the darkness. We barely saw another vehicle. No wonder the forgers could do whatever they wanted out here. It occurred to me that this was also the perfect place for someone to die and the body to vanish.
After an hour, we were close to the location.
“The turning should be on the left,” Leo said.
All that seemed to be on either side of us were yet more endless trees, but I slowed and remained vigilant. Sure enough, a narrow track appeared, and without bothering to signal—there was no one around who would see it—I swung the car down it.
I kept the car at a crawl, unsure what we were going to come across. The men we were here to visit had no idea we were coming, unless word of the switched bank notes had made it all the way back to them. That was a possibility, but I doubted it. Our appearance would most likely be a surprise.
We reached a gate and a barbed wire fence.
“Looks like this is as far as we’re going,” Sly said.
I stopped the car, but before I got out, I addressed the two men.
“We need to be smart about this, okay? We’re here asking questions, that’s it. Let’s find out who they’re using to transport and store at the port on this side and then we go to find them. These men have no reason to rip us off with shoddy work when they’re more than capable of producing the real deal.”