Chapter 3
Chapter Three
One of the things I loved most about my island was that there was never a lack of hiding spots.
We prided ourselves on our natural landscapes, dense foliage, and captivating scenery.
So, the problem wasn’t where to hide to stakeout the storage yard, but which place was better.
We ended up taking the SUV due to the armor it provided and parked it over a ridge that looked down upon the yard from the east.
Tangaloa and I knew these woods, so we were on scouting duty while Red and Aftermath stayed up at the SUV.
We grabbed some of my higher-tech cameras to try to get better pictures than my people had been able to grab last night.
Most of my guys had scrapes with the Law in one way or another.
Some were still doing petty shit, but I had a hard rule that they were to bring none of it back to my farm or house.
What they chose to do on their own time and dime was their business, and I did not want to be mixed up in it.
In my opinion, if the police knew your name, you weren’t that good of a criminal.
After we ran the Bloody Scorpions off my island, I was going back to my boring life.
Well, not boring. Well…I guess it was. I mean, I fucked a lot and I…
Okay, all I really did was fuck. I rode Koa, ate, shit, slept, surfed, and fucked.
I blinked, when had my life turned boring?
That wasn’t me. I wasn’t bored. At least, I didn’t think I was, but maybe I was.
I loved fucking, and the variety of shoots we did kept things entertaining at the very least.
Maybe ‘boring’ wasn’t the right word. ‘Complacent’ worked better. I’d become complacent in my life. Day in and day out, it was the same thing. Over and over and over again. I was thirty-five years old. When had I turned into an old fuddy-duddy?
Shit. I glanced at Tangaloa to my left. We were crouched near the docks under a broken streetlight.
I hadn’t expected the Bloody Scorpions to use this yard, because it was generally for businesses.
It wasn’t an official port, but a lot of businesses shipped to the other islands from here.
When Kemi had said ‘storage unit’, I’d anticipated them to be using one of the self-storage facilities.
I almost hadn’t sent my guys this way last night, but had figured ‘why not’ when I had two come up empty nearby.
“Why are you staring at my ear like you want to kiss it?”
I reached over and flicked his ear instead.
Then I faced forward again. The night vision binoculars were on the grass in front of me.
Both of us were lying on our stomachs on a small uphill.
Directly in front of us was the broken lamplight pole, a concrete sidewalk, and a green trash can.
The ocean crashed softly to our left, trying to lure me into the waves like the call of a wahine hi?u i?a, or a mermaid.
I wanted nothing more than to grab my board and head into the sea.
“We need to change some things, brother.”
Tangaloa put his binoculars down, turning his head to look at me. “Did you have something specific in mind?”
That was the problem. I didn’t. I just knew that I needed something to change. Ever since Jameson had called, I’d been feeling on edge, like I was walking on a tightrope over a volcano poised to erupt.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to see it was a message from Aftermath asking if there was any activity on our end yet. I answered back that the three Bloody Scorpions guarding one of the trucks were still present, but nothing new.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I didn’t like it, but I was wearing my one pair of sneakers, a pair of jeans I hadn’t even known I owned, and a white tank top.
I felt confined, like I was wearing a three-piece suit and tie.
My nipples kept rubbing against the cotton like it was made of sandpaper.
And my feet were screaming at me to set them free.
I kept reminding myself that I just had to make it through tonight, get the Bloody Scorpions and the Royal Bastards off my island, call Jameson to tell him we were even, and then I could take a long fucking nap.
I needed to be refreshed and at my best for tomorrow night.
The shoot at the nightclub was going to be a long one, and I was going to need all the stamina I could get.
When I didn’t answer him, Tangaloa picked his binoculars back up.
“I don’t understand what they’re doing or why here.
It doesn’t make any sense. The Yakuza own the drug trade, though The Company still has a small portion.
They’re mostly into counterfeiting nowadays.
A lot of organized crime has turned cyber.
B14 is upping their identity theft trade.
And the Triad will always have the monopoly on the flesh trade, money laundering, and such. ”
He put the binoculars down again to look at me. The moon was waning, but still provided some light. Its reflection cast a glow on the dark ocean waves behind Tangaloa. “What are the Bloody Scorpions trying to build here? They’re a long way from the Mainland.”
“They’re expanding. Recent years, they went international. From what I picked up, they seem to appear wherever the Royal Bastards are too.”
“But there aren’t any Royal Bastards here,” Tangaloa argued. “At least, not before they arrived.”
“Maybe we’re like a halfway stop?” I offered, not having any other idea.
“I still want to know what’s in those boxes.”
I tapped my finger on the grass. “Do you still have Hiro’s number?”
Tangaloa raised both of his eyebrows. “They said they didn’t want to talk to you after last time.”
I nodded. “That’s why you are the one who’s going to do the talking.” I slapped him on the back. “Come on. Let’s go. You can talk and walk.”
In the thirty-ish minutes since Tangaloa got off the phone with Hiromasa Ito, a local thief and tech genius, two boats had shown up at the docks, each driven by a Bloody Scorpion.
I hadn’t seen that cut in a long time, but I’d recognize that orange scorpion surrounded by a silver rope anywhere.
The two from the boats met up with the three guarding the truck.
All of them lit up while passing around a bottle.
One even took a piss on the front tire of the truck they were guarding.
None of them noticed the small figure in all black slip onto the roof of the truck from the storage building behind them. We all had our binoculars raised.
“So who is this guy?” Aftermath asked, causing me to wince.
“They,” I corrected. Tangaloa and I were outside the SUV while Red and Aftermath were inside with the windows down. “They’re nonbinary. And if you call them ‘he’, your entire life savings might one day vanish and you suddenly find yourself entirely penniless.”
Red lowered his binoculars and looked at me through the windshield. “Wait, that’s what happened to your money?”
I snorted humorlessly. “That’s what happened to my money. Took me nearly six years to regain what I lost, but yeah. Hiro stole it.”
“Shit, man,” Red breathed out under his breath.
“So why are you working with him now?” Aftermath asked. “Fuck. I mean them.”
“Because Hiro is the best,” I said with a forlorn sigh. “And they don’t know I’m here. I’d like to keep it that way, if possible.”
The Bloody Scorpions were completely unaware as Hiro sliced through the thin top of the truck and then slithered their way inside.
“Um,” Red cleared his throat, “how old is Hiro? Call me crazy, but they look like a kid.”
Tangaloa snorted. “Don’t say that in front of them either. I don’t know how old they are, but they’re an adult. Trust me.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find a text message from an unknown number with a bunch of pictures. “Fuck. They know I’m here.”
Tangaloa chuckled. “Did you really think you could hide from them?”
I let out a defeated sigh. “No, but now I’m wishing I’d kept some extra cash under my mattress. I really don’t want to live off of Ramen again, dude.” My stomach clenched in memory. “That sucked.”
I opened the message to look at the pictures. “They’re clothes. A lot of clothes. Nothing matches. What the fuck did the Bloody Scorpions do, raid a Goodwill?”
I passed my phone inside the SUV so Aftermath and Red could take a look. At the same time, a small figure popped themselves out of the hole in the top of the truck, made their way silently across, and hopped onto the roof of the storage building.
“Why clothes?” Tangaloa asked no one in particular. “That makes even less sense. I expected guns or drugs.”
“Hiro isn’t a drug-sniffing dog. Maybe there’s drugs in there that they missed and the clothes are just hiding them.”
“I’ve heard of produce, especially potatoes, to hide drugs,” Aftermath said as he handed me my phone back. “But not clothes.”
“Well, we’re not going to figure it out standing up here with our thumbs up our asses,” I snapped, pocketing my phone. “Red, anything on the other trackers?”
He’d been monitoring the two other trucks as they’d been moving around the island all day.
The truck here was the only one that remained stationary.
We’d staked out the other trucks earlier, but they were just driving.
Only stopping for gas and piss breaks. Towards dusk, we gave up and came to the storage yard to see if there was any activity going on here.
There wasn’t.
I swear these fucking Bloody Scorpions are just yanking our balls.
What were the chances that this whole fucking thing was just some fucked up joke just to waste my time?
If it was anyone other than Elrik Jameson who called me, I’d consider that train of thought more seriously. But Jameson didn’t fuck around.
“They’re both headed in this direction,” Red said just as something landed on the roof of the SUV.