Saving Grant Ward

Chapter Nineteen

A/N: Oh my gosh you guys 1k reads!!!! Ahhh thank you so much!!! Also, sorry this one took so long!

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"I wish they'd just hurry up and get here already," I mumbled to Grant. We'd been crouched behind a stack of crates for a few hours now, and a glance at my watch told me it was going on midnight.

We'd arrived at the Port of Málaga while it was still light out to search for the orb. We'd managed to track it down with no problems, but unlike the last two, we left this one alone. Our goal this time was to find the people going after the orb, not the orb itself.

Which was why Grant and I were tucked into a cramped hiding space, with Phil and Garrett staking out the entrance to the docks, waiting for one of those people to finally show up.

"Be patient," said Grant, looking around the dock again. "They'll show up."

"We've been waiting for hours."

"Some stakeouts can last days. If you want to be a spy, you have to have patience."

I rolled my eyes. He was right, but that didn't mean I had to be happy about it.

Just as I was getting ready to say something else, mostly to break the silence, I heard the comm crackle in my ear.

"Hey, come in." Garrett's voice.

"We're here," replied Grant.

"We've got some movement at the entrance to the docks. Looks like your friends from the beach. Don't intervene, just listen. See if they'll let anything slip now that they're alone."

"Got it. Over and out."

The comms went silent again as Grant and I listened for the signs of someone approaching. Moments later, we heard the telltale creak of footsteps on the wooden boards of the dock. Voices followed a moment later, low, but still loud enough to hear.

"Lo está aquí," one of the voices said. (It's here.)

"Bien. Lo vamos a mover a Maw' Tej immediatamente," said the second voice. (Good. Let's move it to Maw' Tej immediately.)

I glanced at Grant, and he raised his eyebrows in response. We stayed as quiet as possible, waiting for them to say something else, but they didn't. We could hear them pulling up the false dock board the orb was hidden under, and then they exchanged a few words that amounted to "good, let's go" before their footsteps retreated back the way they'd come.

I sighed. It would've been nice to get some more information from all of our efforts to eavesdrop, but that hadn't been our only plan.

Grant and I had dug up the orb as soon as we'd gotten here to stick a tracking device on it. Obviously, that was a pretty big risk, since electronics didn't particularly work around the orb. But SHIELD had decided to take the chance that the tracker would fall off when the orb reached its destination, then get far enough away from the orb to turn itself back on and activate a signal. A long shot, for sure, but one that would pay off massively if it worked.

Grant and I waited in our hiding spot even after the men's footsteps faded. One of the best ways to make our slim odds even worse would be having our covers blown by the people we were trying to spy on.

Another pair of footsteps approached us, but this time, they belonged to friends.

"They're gone!" called Garrett. He and Phil had come to a stop just about in the same place the orb had been hidden.

Grant stood, then held out a hand to pull me to my feet. We'd been crouched in a cramped space for long enough that my body ached a little, but I shook it off as we joined Phil and Garrett.