The Fight In Us: A Brother's Best Friend College Romance (The Four Book 4) by Becca Steele (little readers .txt) 📕

Over to the right of the screen, past Christine, was what looked like the back of a head with red hair, partially obscured by a balding man. “If it is her, Martin could be looking at her, not at Christine. I don’t think we can say for definite, though.”

“There goes that plan, then.” Winter heaved a sigh. “But if this is her, she’s going to be there tomorrow. Wherever ‘there’ is.”

“We know where it is.” I remembered the info Lena had forwarded me from the dark web group. “Now we know that Martin, Portia, and Jaroslaw Milosz are all going to be there. They’re the three major players, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. They mentioned the buyers, too, so we need to be careful. We don’t know who these people are.”

“Thom!” Cassius suddenly shouted, making everyone turn to him. “Thom… Thompson. Portia Thompson.”

“Yeah, we got that, mate,” Cade told him.

“Well—”

Lena came strolling in, stopping whatever Cassius was going to say. Probably for the best. Her eyes arrowed straight to mine, and her lips curved into a smile. My stomach flipped. I was so gone for this girl. Come here, I mouthed.

She came to me straight away, dropping down into my lap and turning her head to speak into my ear. “You look so fucking sexy in those glasses. Just thought you should know.”

“Yeah?” I kissed the side of her face, sliding my hand up her leg.

“Please. Stop.”

We broke apart at Cassius’ plea. I threw him an apologetic look, and he rolled his eyes in return.

“Okay. I have this.” Lena was all business again, sitting up straight and tapping at her phone. “West? Just added a video to the server.”

When I hit Play and it came up on the TV screen, I leaned forwards, not quite able to believe what I was seeing. I knew that Portia was involved based on what we’d just been discussing, but it was one thing knowing it and another actually believing it. Couldn’t ignore the video evidence, though.

“So. Tomorrow,” I began.

“Tomorrow,” Lena echoed.

According to the intel we had, the exchange was set for 10:00 p.m. that night. We hadn’t had any other information that would tell us otherwise, so we had to hope for the best. Cade and I had agreed not to get our dad involved in this, but we’d update him afterwards, as long as everything went to plan.

We were going in with caution. We needed video and photographic evidence, and to catch the actual exchange taking place. Proper shit that could be documented, so there was no question about who was involved.

“Remember. No confrontations. This is just about getting the evidence,” I reminded everyone, catching my brother’s eye as we crowded into Cassius’ SUV to drive to the exchange point. Cade was sitting back and letting me take the lead on this, which honestly fucking shocked me. He gave me a reassuring nod, settling back in his seat and tugging Winter against him.

We were arriving an hour earlier than the arranged meeting time so we could scope out the place and find the best vantage points. Thanks to Google, we had an idea of the general layout, although we couldn’t be sure of anything until we were actually there. I was bringing my drone—it would give us instant, up-to-date coverage which would help us with the layout and also provide additional video footage from above.

Yet another industrial area. This one was a lot more run-down than the others, and there didn’t appear to be any security to speak of. No cameras, no security. Probably why they’d chosen the place. After driving around in circles for a while, Cassius pulled over next to a small, dilapidated warehouse with half a roof. All the windows had been smashed, and the walls were plastered with graffiti. After grabbing a pair of bolt cutters from the boot, he snapped the heavy-duty chain and padlock across the doors, then shoved them open, his muscles straining with the effort. The doors scraped along the ground but eventually slid open.

“Lucky I brought the bolt cutters,” he commented when he hopped back in the car, looking far too pleased with himself. He drove inside, bumping over the bits of junk that littered the floor. The space was mostly empty other than the litter, except for a pile of wooden pallets stacked in one corner.

Once we were out of the car and had all our equipment in hand, we filed out of the warehouse, and Cassius closed the doors, looping the chain around them so they looked as if they were still locked.

“That’ll have to do. Nowhere else to hide the car unless we want to park miles away.” He took one last glance at the doors, his mouth twisting, clearly unhappy about leaving his SUV behind.

“Hey, mate. It’ll be okay.” Stepping up to him, I clapped my hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah. Hope so.” He gave me a small smile. “Thanks.”

“Come on. Let’s do this.”

We headed to the open area that the trade was supposedly taking place. The info had mentioned “warehouse 4” which was easy to spot, a large black painted 4 above the doors. Stopping a safe distance away, behind a stack of rusting metal crates, I launched my drone into the air, holding the controls, complete with a small viewing screen, in front of me.

My eyes were drawn to movement in the corner of the screen, and my stomach dropped.

Fuck.

“We’ve got problems.” My voice remained calm, though inside I was fucking panicking. Everyone crowded around me, watching as figures appeared and the warehouse doors began to open.

“Everyone into position, now. We’ll have to do what we can. Get as much footage as you can, but don’t let yourself get fucking caught,” Caiden hissed, taking over while I concentrated on directing the drone over the area, looking out for anything we might have missed.

I remained where I was, holding the drone steady, and everyone else spread out, keeping to the cover of the crates and buildings around the immediate