Smuggled Trust: A Smuggled Wild Romantic Suspense Standalone

by Belle Knight

  Except she wasn’t ten anymore.

  Heald moved closer, almost, but not quite letting his arm touch hers.

  Definitely not ten anymore.

  A devilish grin played across Heald’s lips. “You got to see mine, does that mean it’s time to show me yours?”

  “Uhh, funny.” Laura handed back his badge, but as she did, she felt the edge of it. “Oh, that’s probably why it won’t work.” She held the card out to him and fingered where the lamination had already begun to separate. “That’s weird because I’ve had my badge for almost five months and its fine.”

  When he didn’t take the badge from her, she looked up and drowned in his gaze. His eyes were ocean blue, flecked with brown spots and she felt somehow like she could see into his soul and the storm he kept locked inside.

  Shaking her head, done playing security guard, she pushed the badge at him. “Here. Take it.”

  “Maybe they went cheap this time,” he said.

  She turned away to give herself a break from this…this drowning.

  She swiped her badge through the door’s card reader. It flashed red, beeped, and turned green. The latch unlocked and a gush of cool air rushed out as she opened the door, bringing the goosebumps back out on her skin. She congratulated herself on regaining control.

  Heald grabbed the door and held it open so she could walk through. Diffused light from the ceiling cast everything in a soft white glow as antiseptic smells washed over them. Her steps echoed down the hallway.

  The door clicked close behind them. She wondered whether she dared ask where he was volunteering and did he need her to show her around?

  A giddiness rose up inside her. Why not?

  She turned around, allowing a smile to play across her lips as she twirled her lanyard badge around a finger in a way that she hoped was flirty instead of silly. “Need me to unlock any more doors today?”

  Heald was carefully surveying the hallway like—she didn’t know. Almost like a predator.

  He flashed her a smile, but headed past her down the hall. Whatever connection she had imagined outside the building had vanished. It was like he had forgotten she was there.

  “What? Sorry, I’m already late.” He turned, walking backwards a few steps while facing her. “Next time, okay?”

  “No, I wasn’t—” asking you out on a date.

  But Heald had fled down the hallway and she stood there, embarrassed again. She had pretty much thrown herself at the guy and the imagined boner in his jeans. All he had wanted to do was get into the damn building for his first volunteer shift.

  Laura sighed. Right. Alone and lonely, that was her life now.

  She became aware of the museum noises from the main area outside the hallway—the quiet adult voices ushering a few kids along here and there, the shuffling feet, the solemn air of education. The aliveness she had felt—at his touch, his smell, his attention—drifted away.

  The museum would be open for another two hours or so, but she would be working in the basement archives the entire time. The intercom would sound a bell at the five minute mark and then Judy at the Welcome Desk would speak over the intercom to remind patrons in her most pleasantly professional voice that the museum was closing and please visit again soon.

  Laura planned to work through the closing bell at her basement station, losing herself in her work. She would pretty much be alone at that point, all other volunteers and researchers gone home for the night.

  After the museum closed, it felt like she had the entire place to herself, which was both her favorite and least favorite part of her volunteer work.

  Chapter 3

  His body sizzled, and even though he was running late, he stopped as soon as he caught sight of a bathroom sign. If he wanted to have a chance of getting through this job without getting caught, he seriously needed to clear his head.

  Splashing water on his face at the bathroom sink, he let the cold drops drip down his neck and inside his collar. Laura Mannings had taken him by surprise.

  That shouldn’t have happened.

  The badge should have worked. What else had Station fucked up? It worried him that the very first step in tonight’s plan had already gone so wrong.

  Or so right.

  Heald looked at himself in the mirror and noticed a wolfish grin was plastered onto his face. Laura was hot, even all covered up like she had been in that long skirt and shirt. Her clothes couldn’t hide her curves, especially when she had accidentally brushed against him. She had felt so soft and warm.

  He couldn’t have stopped himself from caressing her arms if he had tried. He was thankful she had liked it instead of turning on him like he was a pervert.

  She had smelled like honey and something fresh and alive. He was glad he had covered up his spontaneous touch as if helping to steady her on her feet. He couldn’t hide the boner she had given him, but she had been kind enough not to call him out on it.

  At that thought, his boner returned with new force. He winced, reached down, adjusted his jeans, but it didn’t relieve much of anything at that moment. He groaned. This was not the night to be distracted by a hot, nerdy museum volunteer.

  This was his night to save his younger brother and get the bounty removed from his life once and for all. His manhood throbbed in protest, but he told it to go take a hike.

  As if in mutiny, his brain brought back the way Laura’s delicate fingers had rubbed the edge of his badge as she held it out. He considered taking care of his not-so-little problem right then in one of the bathroom stalls. There was no way he could focus like this.

  As if the universe were truly out to mock his luck in every way tonight, two men with a boy in tow entered the bathroom. Heald clenched both sides of the sink with his hands. He kept a casual eye on them in the mirror.

  They talked quickly and efficiently. Clearly a family. Just two dads taking their five year old to the museum. One dad used a stall and the other dad helped the kid use another stall and then wash up. Then they traded so the other dad could use the bathroom next.

  Kids freaked him out and also made him feel an ache he could never quite label. Their little trio brought back cold memories and wiped away any desire he had felt. Heald had never had anything like that in his life. The quiet efficiency of family. The day to day living with someone you could rely on, share responsibilities with, know they would always have your back.

  He had always watched his own back.

  And the one time he had allowed someone in? She taught him a lesson he would never forget.

  Heald sighed, splashed more water on his face, and let himself air dry as he headed out of the bathroom. He headed down the hallway, away from the too cute family, away from where he had left Laura and her delicate fingers and stern voice demanding to see his badge.

  The map that Station had given him to memorize flashed through his mind as he walked with purpose. It was a trick he had learned through a lifetime of stealing. People didn’t notice anything was out of the ordinary if you acted like you belonged and looked like you were going somewhere.

  They were the lies that ruled his life. He had faked it all for so long, he didn’t know if he was capable of anything else.

  He’d sworn off this life and tried to put together a newer, better one. No more stealing. No more working in the shadows for bad men. He had no idea where he was going or why he was doing any of this anymore.

  Words his brother had spoken after the meeting with Station last week repeated in his mind—

  Because otherwise they’ll kill you, you idiot.

  Chapter 4

  Laura hunched over the desk, surrounded by power tools and a large wooden crate. She used a magnifying lens to zoom into a section of the ivory.

  Technically ivory wasn’t bone, but it still needed identification. Director Stone had asked for her help because of her keen eyesight and willingness to work after hours.

  A huge shipment of ivory had come in, caught by customs and channeled here for inspecti
on. There wasn’t anything special about it, except that ivory wasn’t actually allowed to cross international borders anymore, not with anti-poaching laws and the endangered status of the only two species of elephant remaining in existence on the entire planet.

  But this wasn’t elephant ivory.

  It was supposed to be mammoth ivory.

  It made a strange sort of sense—mammoths had already gone extinct—their ivory was legal to sell and trade.

  Elephants were on the verge of extinction—their ivory was illegal pretty much everywhere because you had to kill the elephant to get it.

  A pain in Laura’s neck made her tear her gaze away from the specimen.

  She glanced at the clock. Judy had put out the closing call a while ago. The museum had long closed. She’d taken a bathroom break once, visiting the vending machine, and, if she wanted to be honest, hanging around a bit, hoping to run into Heald. But she had finished her snack with no further Heald-sighting and there was nothing left to do except go back to work.

  A little lamp shined a cone of bright light on the wooden surface of her desk. The rest of the room was in shadows. Big and cave-like here on the bottom floor, the basement storage where she worked was underground. The stacks and shelves of artifacts and fossils disappeared into the darkness like they went on for an eternity. Climate-controlled, huge, sealed security doors, stacks and stacks of precious, irreplaceable objects waiting to be discovered, remembered, and shown the light of day.

  She searched out the Schreger lines to determine whether she was looking at mammoth or elephant ivory. Everything in this lot was supposed to be mammoth, but mistakes were made, and sometimes mistakes were intentional. This lot had been confiscated at customs because customs suspected the lot contained elephant ivory.

  Mammoth ivory was legal. Elephant ivory was not.

  Either way, the pairs of tusks around her represented a monstrous amount of money. A pair of ivory tusks, kilogram for kilogram, tracked with gold in terms of price on the open market. So each pair around her was probably worth $40-$60,000.

  Several dozen pairs had been confiscated.

  She helped document, tag, and confirm the tusks. So far all the Scherger lines had matched and been identified as mammoth ivory except for one pair of elephant tusks. She was only halfway through the lot, but she thought she knew what must have happened.

  Someone had been trying to bring in legal mammoth ivory, but an illegal set of elephant tusks had ended up in the mix.

  Maybe the original sellers had known about it, maybe they hadn’t.

  She didn’t see the sense of mixing elephant in with mammoth. Mammoth ivory was worth a decent amount of money after all, so the risk of it getting confiscated like what had happened here—by mixing elephant ivory in with it—didn’t make sense.

  Someone had made a mistake.

  That mistake had cost them an entire shipment of mammoth ivory.

  Still, she was only two-thirds of the way through the lot. Maybe she didn’t yet have the full story.

  So she took up her magnifying glass again and tried not to think about Heald and the way her skin had sparked at his touch.

  She catalogued, marked, identified, wrote her notes, and moved onto the next specimen.

  And then the next.

  And then she found it.

  The discovery froze her for a second. Moving her light a fraction of an inch to increase the focus, she puzzled through what she saw.

  Ivory should have Schreger lines which were cross-hatched marks.

  Mammoth Schreger lines formed an angle of less than 90 degrees. Always. Elephant Schreger lines formed an angle of greater than 115 degrees.

  It was so simple and straightforward a process, the museum could trust a volunteer like Laura to conduct the initial identifications.

  What Laura saw in front of her didn’t match either elephant or mammoth.

  She set down the magnifier lens and sat back in the chair. It creaked under her movement, echoing in the warehouse-like room.

  Laura bit her lip, thinking about her next step. The museum had closed. The building was quiet. The specimen had pit marks and little channels running through it. Laura thought she knew what that meant, but needed to be sure.

  She shuffled to a nearby desk, rummaging through its drawers until she found what she wanted.

  There.

  She pulled out a little cigarette lighter. It’s bright red case shined in the light that escaped from her desk. She was in a bubble of light, surrounded by mountains of tusks. Boxes and shelves of bones and other museum artifacts surrounded her and the tusks.

  She grabbed the lighter, found a safety pin, unhooked the pin and headed back for the examination desk. Flicking on the flame, she heated the pin with it, and remembering the museum director’s coaching, waiting long moments for the pin to get well and truly hot. While she waited, she examined the supposed ivory tusk with new eyes.

  It was long and tubular, yellowed like a mammoth tusk, though shorter than many of the others she had already identified. She had thought it must have come from a juvenile mammoth or elephant, but then she had caught the little channels in the grain of it, and even thought she could see seams, as if the tusk was made of separate sections laminated together.

  When she figured the pin was hot enough for the job, she flicked off the lighter, leaned over the specimen and found an indiscreet place to push in the heated tip of the pin.

  If this piece were true ivory, the pin wouldn’t cause any damage.

  If the pin stained or otherwise marked the specimen, then she was looking at something fake, maybe made from resin or plastic.

  She took the pin away.

  No mark.

  Huh. So it wasn’t fake. But it wasn’t like any ivory she had seen before. Then she sniffed.

  She leaned closer and took another sniff, right at the spot where she had pressed the pin.

  It smelled like burnt hair. She wrinkled her nose and her thoughts clicked into place.

  Bone.

  Bone made to look like tusk.

  She set the pin aside and picked up her magnifying lens again. She saw the seams more clearly now. Examining the end of the counterfeit tusk, she saw there was a sort of cap nestled inside the hollow.

  Laura’s heartbeat began to race. She should stop what she was doing and call Director Stone.

  They had asked her to identify, nothing more. Numerous trainings had instilled the careful nature of museum conservancy and the importance of not damaging museum items.

  But the inside cap was already askew, as if the rough ride through customs had knocked it out of place. She could just reach in and snag the edge of it and see if it moved.

  She told herself she wouldn’t try to force it, no, of course not, but if it opened at her touch then she would just—

  Her fingers skirted the edge of the cap. Her heart climbed into her throat as she nudged it. At first the cap didn’t move, but then she pulled a little harder while holding her breath. The cap released and fell out onto the table.

  Laura grabbed a flashlight, not trusting herself to hold the opening up steady enough to the light. She shined the light inside the cavity, wondering what she would find.

  There was definitely something inside.

  Drugs, maybe. People found all sorts of creative ways to smuggle drugs into the US, but wouldn’t the drug dogs have caught that at customs?

  She reached in because there was no going back now, not with her curiosity driving her forward. She would call the director as soon as she had pulled out the contents. She would go back to her volunteer training and follow the rules, but first she had to see—

  The contents were removed easily enough. She laid them out on the table.

  Two curved pieces of something hard that was wrapped with canvas cloth.

  Her hands shook as she began unwrapping the pieces. Part of her mind was already five steps ahead of the rest of her, recognizing what she was likely to find before she had fully unve
iled the contents.

  The cloth revealed yellowish, curved horns. The flat end of the horn liked like a tight bundle of hair. Just to be sure, she took up her magnifying lens and examined one of the ends.

  The truth settled into Laura’s stomach like poison.

  Rhino horn.

  It would take a DNA analysis to be absolutely sure, but now everything made so much more sense.

  If the DNA analysis confirmed her hypothesis, then the two horns she had just discovered were together likely worth half a million dollars—at least.

  She got up from the table, flashlight and magnifying glass in hand. Gram for gram, rhino horn was worth more on the black market than gold, silver, cocaine, opium….

  Goddamn rhino horn.

  She quickly went through the rest of the lot, no longer bothering to confirm which tusks were mammoth or elephant.

  No, she looked for the tusks that weren’t tusks at all, but rather, bone seamed together.

  She found seven more.

  She pulled the rhino horn out from each counterfeit container, not bothering to be careful. Seamed bone like this was worth nothing.

  As she opened up tube after tube, unwrapping and laying out the rhino horns side by side on her work station, horror filled her stomach until she felt like throwing up.

  20 rhino horns.

  20 rhinos dead.

  10 million dollars worth of rhino horns.

  Rhinos were even more rare than elephants. One rhino species had less than five members left in the entire world, including in zoos.

  Rhino horns were often poached to sell to those who believed the horn powder could cure cancer, increase fertility, or just create an expensive high. Laura stood up. These horns needed security and DNA analysis to figure out where they had come from. The police needed to be notified. Maybe they could track this all back to whoever had done such a horrible crime in the first place.