It was like the darkness outside the plane was looking at her through that blind man’s eyes.

She did not like that feeling. No, not one little bit.

Her fingers pressed the crucifix against her skin.

CHAPTER 25

WORLD-A-WAY SHIPPING AND STORAGE

THE PORT OF HOUSTON, TEXAS

Eve limped down the warehouse aisle, flanked by Cain and Abel. The rest of the Righteous—her special cadre of elite Fixers—were back at the Pavilion in Washington State. These boys, though, had become her constant bodyguards, and they’d passed the intense background checks imposed on them by Daddy.

She wished Rafael Santoro was there, but Daddy preferred to stay in Canada with Kuga. He was always so busy, and she missed him.

“Miss Eve?” called a voice, and a man’s head and shoulders popped out from between two stacks of crates. “I think I found them,” said the logistic supervisor.

“You think or you have?” she snapped back. It was the kind of thing Kuga said, putting people on the spot, making them jump.

“I … well … I, um, found the crates with the correct—ah—markings,” fumbled the supervisor. “We’ll need to actually open them to see.”

Eve went over to where he stood and peered at the labels stenciled on the heavy pine boxes. There were four, and each had AO/G-K, and then three smaller, narrower crates with AO/G-C.

She tapped Cain. “Open them up, and let’s look.”

“Ma’am,” said the Fixer and jogged off, returning quickly with two long-handled crowbars and a smaller pinch bar. The supervisor got a forklift, and soon all the boxes were sitting in a row on the floor. Cain and Abel set to work opening the big crates, while the supervisor used the pinch bar on the smaller ones. The wood was green, and it cried out in protest as the long nails were pulled out.

Once the lids were off and the packing straw tossed away, Eve peered inside to see a device that looked like a hunchbacked robot. She used a portable scanner to read the bar code on the back of the cowling, and a small light on her device flashed green. She repeated it with the three other units. All green.

“Those are good,” she said. “Repack it.”

The contents of the smaller crates took longer to inventory because there were many objects—gallons of chemicals, large bottles of capsules, and mechanical devices wrapped in bubble paper. There was no way to hurry the job, because the scanner was uplinked to Wi-Fi and sent the scan results directly to HK at the Pavilion and Daddy in Canada.

Tasks like this were tedious but necessary, and Eve knew that it was part of her training to be an executive within the Kuga organization. Daddy was watching, and so was Kuga himself.

Eve did not disappoint.