North’s Nikki Read online

  Carl and his buddy, Phillip, who now North could see full-on, stared at him suspiciously. He pulled out his phone and said, “I can call Nikki, if you like. She’s the one who gave us permission.”

  “Who is she?”

  “One of the higher-ups in the company. Being a weekend, we had to get special permission to come in. We couldn’t make it yesterday.” North’s voice was easy and relaxed, but his gaze never left the two of them. “You two work for the company that subleases here?”

  Both men nodded slowly.

  “So we’ll consider whether we need the full amount or just half, before we decide to cancel your lease,” he said with a neutral tone.

  The two men’s faces darkened.

  “But of course we don’t own it yet, and we haven’t had a chance to scope out the volume,” he said. “Perhaps you could show us which portion you’re currently using, so we might see if we can utilize the rest of it without having to change the existing agreement.”

  The two men exchanged glances; then Carl nodded slowly and said, “We can do that, but I can’t have you checking out any of our products.”

  “Of course not. Trust is essential in a business like this. I’d hardly want to keep any of our valuables here if I can’t trust you. So that’ll come into play as well. Presumably you’re all bondable and have a high security clearance.”

  The two men again exchanged glances.

  Anders gave a half snort under his breath as he followed behind the group, walking toward the shelving the men claimed were all of their products.

  “How long have you had the lease here?”

  “Almost five years,” Carl said. “I think anyway.”

  “Interesting.”

  At that response the men walked to where about one-third of the warehouse was partially cordoned off. They stopped and pointed. “Everything on that side is ours.”

  Maintaining his role, North crossed his arms over his chest, studied the volume, looked the space back and forth, and said, “And one of the offices up in the front is yours as well?”

  Carl nodded. “Yes. There are two shipping bays which we both use. Sometimes we have to use the second one because it’s higher. We do have one truck that comes in which requires a slightly larger door.”

  North was quick to give him a frown at that. He turned and studied the space and nodded. “And you work weekends?”

  “We’re here most days,” Carl said with a shrug, as if to say it was none of their business.

  “We might have to use it almost twenty-four hours ourselves,” North said. “Weekends are a definite. And of course we’ll have twice the staff here.”

  Carl looked alarmed at that.

  North kept applying the pressure. “I presume we’ll be able to talk to your boss about the lease agreement?”

  Carl shrugged. “I don’t know nothing about it. But I’m pretty sure it’s for at least ten more years,” he said.

  “My understanding is it’s five.” North’s frown deepened. “I’d have to take a closer look at that obviously, as part of the business deal.”

  The two men once again looked at each other, and both backed away.

  “That’s fine. Carry on,” North said with a dismissive wave. He pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

  The men called out behind him, “You can’t take any pictures of our stuff.”

  North glanced over. “Of course not. Why would I care? I’m looking for volume, size, whether our shelving and our bigger items will fit in here. I am definitely concerned about the lack of space.”

  He moved over to the next aisle, walking away from the men, very carefully taking as many photos as he could justify. When he stood at the far back, he turned and took several photos of the room at large, not close enough that they could tell what these men were protecting, but as if to give him and his company an idea of the amount of space available if the men no longer had the sublease there. When North was done, he kept walking around, muttering. He had a notepad in his hand now and a pen, talking with Anders back and forth.

  Finally he walked to the loading bays and stopped, taking a look outside. “It’s not a bad location,” he said to Anders.

  Anders gave a clipped nod. “Right in the heart of the industrial section. Good access, decent size, alleyway large enough that our trucks can come and go with an easy turnaround space. If we had the whole warehouse, we could do two trucks at a time. If we only have half, it would depend on this other company’s loading and unloading schedule as well.”

  “Right.”

  They pulled down the loading bay doors to check what kind of security was in place. It was just a locking mechanism that could be found anywhere. North reopened them and then turned and headed toward the front. At the offices, he stopped, tried the door again, but it was still locked.

  He pulled out his phone and called Nikki again. “We’ve checked out the bulk of the warehouse. Two men are here, apparently working for the other company that subleases some of the warehouse space.” His voice was suspiciously neutral.

  She gasped. “Is it them? Is it Carl and Phillip—the men I saw before?”

  “Yes, it does appear to be,” he said. “The office itself is locked. Is there any reason I need to go in there and check it out?”

  “Well, you can’t if it’s locked,” she said in exasperation. “If I’d come with you, however, that would have been a different story.”

  “If you give us permission, then we’ll be in it in two seconds flat,” he said drily. He turned to see the other men weren’t around. He stepped slightly in front of Anders, pulled out his little tool kit, and within seconds they had the door unlocked and were inside. He took several photos and said, “Standard office, file cabinets on the right side, an old monitor desktop computer, which probably is ancient, old newspapers. Nothing much here.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “We’re not the crooks.”

  He chuckled at that. “Sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, but generally the crooks don’t need much more either.”

  “It’s a sad state of affairs when that’s the truth,” she said. “Chances are, they’re even smarter than we are. We don’t suspect anything illegal, so we don’t look to hide anything. But, once you are involved in something illegal, you watch every piece of paper.”

  “Hang on while we check out the office.” While North stood in the doorway and kept an eye out for the other men, Anders walked in and did a quick check of the paperwork on the desk. Packing slips, manifests, manila folders.

  Seeing the physical folders, North asked Anders, “Files by company?”

  “True enough.” Anders lifted a hand and said, “I don’t see any reason we need to go into their personal stuff. Nikki can always access whatever we need from the database.”

  “Speaking of which,” Nikki added, “I already have a lot of information. Nothing is suspicious, as far as I’m concerned, which is really too bad, because I’d feel a whole lot better if we could find something illegal,” she said with a heavy sigh.

  “How is Charles?”

  “He’s gone to lie down,” she said, lowering her voice. “After you left, he look really peaked.”

  “Keep an eye on him,” North warned. “He does have a mild concussion. We want to ensure he doesn’t sleep too long or too deep.”

  “I know. He probably shouldn’t be asleep at all, but no way I could stop him. I finished up the dishes and cleared the kitchen. I’m now in the living room, working, with a pot of tea beside me.”

  He chuckled. “You and your tea.” Anders was leaving now, and North followed him out of the office.

  “You and your coffee,” she snapped back, but she was laughing.

  Smiling, he said, “Okay. I’ll hang up now.”

  “So why haven’t you hung up already?” she teased.

  “There’s just something about the sound of your voice,” he murmured.

  Anders shot him a disgusted look, rolled his eyes, locked up the off
ice and led the way to the front doors again.

  “Anders thinks I’m being a schoolboy.”

  “Well, you are, kind of,” she said with a delighted laugh. “And it’s cute.”

  “You think I’m cute, huh?”

  “Well, that tone of voice is cute,” she hastily said. “I’m not saying you’re cute.”

  “You don’t think I’m cute?” He stopped outside, his expression one of mock hurt. “That’s terrible. I’ve never been told that I’m ugly before.”

  “I didn’t call you ugly,” she argued. “Just the opposite, in fact.”

  He grinned. In a smug voice he said, “So you think I’m handsome then? That’s good to know.” He was laughing out loud as she couldn’t get words out, just fluttering noises on the other end. “You hold that thought. We’ll be home in a little bit.”

  “You take care,” she said anxiously. “There have been enough injuries already.”

  “More than that, considering we have two dead men,” he said quietly. “Keep the doors locked, and keep an eye on your grandfather.”

  “Okay. You come home though too,” she said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I’m much harder to kill than the average man.” He took one last look around the district and noted Carl standing at the window watching him. “Speaking of which, Carl is inside the warehouse watching us at the vehicle now. So I’m getting in the car, and we’ll drive away to make him feel better. Stay safe.” He clicked off the call and got inside the car.

  Anders already had the engine running. He looked at him and said, “So is your love life okay?”

  “Well, it isn’t much of a love life yet.” North chuckled. “But I can always use help.” He nodded toward the window. “We’re being watched.”

  “Yeah, we sure are. Let’s leave so they don’t feel so bad,” Anders said. “We want them to relax and to calm down. Then we want them to call in some of the bosses.”

  “We could plant bugs?”

  “We could,” he said with a grin. “But in a space that size, we’d have to have a half-dozen and could still miss out on three-quarters of the conversations inside there.”

  “Yeah, but they seem to have a favorite spot at the very back of the warehouse. They get to keep an eye on everybody coming and going without anyone aware of their presence.”

  “Yeah. I planted one down there at that corner. The other one I planted up by the offices. So no worries. We’ve got it covered enough.”

  North settled back. That was the thing about working with someone like Anders. They were always on the same wavelength because they were both pros and knew the score. Now all North had to do was get through the rest of the day without any more surprises, so he could head back to Charles’s and pick up the conversation with Nikki. And maybe, just maybe, take it a little bit further.

  Chapter 9

  The hours passed slowly as Nikki worked away on her laptop. She had some of her own business-related work she wanted to tidy up, and then she pulled the information North had asked for. She’d gotten up twice to check on her grandfather, but each time his breathing had been slow and steady, his color normal. He murmured several times as he shifted in bed, as if not sleeping well. But at least he was asleep, and that was way better than the unconscious look she’d seen on his face last night.

  She must have lost ten years off her life when she’d seen her grandfather collapsed on the floor like that. She was still angry that these men had attacked him in his own home. North had said she needed to stay behind locked doors. But she had forgotten to check the kitchen door. She got up and walked around to the back, relieved to see it was bolted. She glanced out the window, unable to see much, then checked the front every ten or fifteen minutes to see if the guys were home or if anybody else was approaching the house.

  The phone rang. She walked into the hallway and picked up the old relic of a phone that Charles loved. “Hello?”

  “Is your grandfather there?” asked the stranger on the other end.

  “I don’t know who you are,” she said, her voice hard. “And why you would assume I’m a granddaughter versus any other woman.”

  There was an awkward silence on the other end, then the man said, “He wasn’t answering his cell phone or his work lines. I was hoping to reach him on this phone. I meant no insult. I’m a good friend of your grandfather’s. I’m fully aware you are staying with him.”

  “And yet, you still haven’t identified who you are,” she said, not giving an inch.

  The stranger sighed. “That’s something I can’t do. However, when he wakes up, or when you’re ready to pass on this message, you can tell him that I’m looking for him.”

  “How can I tell him that,” she said in exasperation, “if you don’t tell me who you are?”

  The man laughed. “That’s all right. He’ll know. Tell him that I called on this phone, and he’ll know.”

  She hung up and slowly walked toward her grandfather’s room. She rapped lightly on the door, pulled it open and stuck her head around the corner.

  Her grandfather smiled up at her. “Not to worry, child,” he said in a low voice. “I’m feeling fine.”

  Her heart lightened with joy at those words, and she entered his room. “I’m so glad to hear that. I’ve checked in on you a couple times. And you always seemed to be sleeping but a little disturbed, like maybe you were having a nightmare or were reliving last night’s events. I didn’t want to interrupt your sleep, but I also didn’t want to let you sleep too long.”

  He shifted so he was propped up against the headboard.

  She sat down beside him. “You just had a very strange phone call.”

  His gray eyes stared at her steadily. “Oh? Tell me more.”

  She explained what had happened and what the unidentified man had said.

  Her grandfather’s lips twitched. “He always did like the cloak-and-dagger stuff. Not to worry. I’ll call him and reassure him, when I feel like it.”

  “How about I put on the teakettle? We’ll have a cup once you’re up and showered.”

  “I’ll shower now,” he said. “Then we’ll put on the tea.”

  She nodded in agreement and backed out of his room. As she walked past the phone in the hallway, she wondered who it was who had left such a cryptic message. But the caller had been correct. Her grandfather had known exactly who had called. It made her even more curious about her granddad’s activities. Apparently MI6, and maybe other departments, knew all about him. And, in that case, maybe they were also keeping an eye out for him.

  That made her feel a little better about all the secrets.

  Jonas’s visit this morning had been less-than-stellar, and her grandfather apparently wasn’t in any rush to mend any fences. Maybe that was good too. Maybe they should wait. And maybe, like Jonas had said, the higher-ups could grovel back into her grandfather’s good graces.

  Back in the kitchen she realized it had been hours since they’d eaten. She didn’t know when the men would return, but she figured her grandfather would need something to eat now that he was awake. She rummaged around in the fridge and found some leftovers. It looked like roast beef from the previous night. She pulled it out and sliced it up for sandwiches.

  She heard him walking down the hallway, so she put on the teakettle and turned on the flame underneath it. When he stepped into the kitchen, he looked so much better. She gave him a gentle hug. “I figured we could have a couple roast beef sandwiches for lunch.”

  His eyes lit up at the thought. “Let’s see if we have some fresh horseradish for it too.” He searched the fridge, pulled out a small glass container with a little bit of horseradish left in it and said, “We should be able to make this stretch for two of us.”

  While the tea was brewing, they made the sandwiches, then carried the teapot and sandwiches into the dining room. With the two of them sitting at one end, she brought her grandfather up to date on what the guys had found.

  “That does
n’t sound good,” Charles said. “Whether it’s someone using your company or the men who work for them doing a gig of their own on the side, somebody is importing something they shouldn’t be.”

  “I was so hoping we would get the results back by now on that vial we sent in for testing.” She studied her grandfather. “I mean, maybe they’re importing something completely innocuous.”

  “In which case there would be no need to hide it,” her grandfather said firmly. “Innocuous things are allowed to be imported all the time. It’s just paperwork.”

  She knew that, but it was an easy thing to forget. “I pulled the information they wanted me to gather, but I haven’t heard from them in at least an hour, maybe more.” She frowned, trying to remember the last time she had spoken with North.

  “I’m sure they’ll be just fine,” her granddad reassured her.

  She shrugged self-consciously. “I feel like I’m constantly checking my phone to see if North called,” she confessed.

  “Young love is like that,” he said smoothly.

  She shot him a startled look. “He is a nice guy and all, Granddad, but this is hardly young love.”

  “I think the thing about young love is that it sneaks up on you and catches you unaware,” he said with a beaming smile. “And I approve. North is a good man. I’ve already discussed him with Levi, to confirm he was okay for you.”

  Dumbfounded she stared at her granddad, unsure of what to say. She reached for the glass of water in front of her and took a big drink and swallowed, considering what he had said. “Really?” she squeaked out.

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “There’s no of course about it,” she said gently. “It’s not that way between us.” But inside she wondered. She really liked him; she just didn’t know him very well. They’d hardly had any time together, and, if she wanted to spend more time with him, well, that would be a little more than awkward while she was here, staying at her grandfather’s home.