Page 49 of Girl, Sought

Silence stretched again. Ella’s blood pressure spiked.Come on, you son of a bitch. Take the bait.

‘And they’ve already been appraised for two-hundred?’ Thorne asked.

‘Yes. I’m looking to sell them to the right buyer too.’

Thorne hemmed and hawed. 'Interesting. My fee structure is straightforward. Ten percent of final valuation for items under fifty thousand, eight percent for anything higher. Our appraisal process can take several weeks, but we offer a lifetime certificate of authenticity. I might also be interested in taking those shoes off you myself for the right price.'

Got him.Ella clenched her fist in triumph, then turned it into akeep goingmotion. They still needed this bastard’s location.

‘Perfect,’ Luca nearly shouted. ‘Want me to come to you? I’m on the road right now, and these Jordans are already packed up nice and tight, got 'em nestled in one of those fancy-shmancy display cases and everything. Just point me in the right direction and I'm there.’

‘Well, I suppose I could squeeze you in. I'm over at the Chesapeake U-Stor at the moment, doing an on-site appraisal for another client. Unit 1121. If you can meet me there in, say, an hour?’

Chesapeake U-Stor. They might have just located their killer.

‘We’ll see you there,’ Luca said.

‘We?’

‘Uh…I’llsee you there,’ Luca corrected.

‘Very well, Mr. Cross. See you shortly.’

Luca jabbed theEND CALLbutton, then looked at Ella with a grin. She was already on her feet before the echo faded.

‘Jesus jumped up Christ,’ Luca said. ‘That was…’

‘The most half-assed bit of improv I’ve ever seen, but damn if it didn’t work.’

‘It’s harder than it looks. You try improvising collectibles under pressure. Now we’ve got an hour to get to the U-Stor before he disappears.’

‘Ready to go?’ she asked.

Luca checked his weapon and gave her the nod. ‘Let’s nail this guy today and get back to D.C. before nightfall.’

Ella wished she shared his optimism. But optimism was for people who hadn't spent their careers crawling through humanity's darkest corners. She'd learned the hard way that hope was just disappointment that hadn't happened yet.

Still, they had a name. They had a location. They had a chance to catch their collector between transformations - in that vulnerable space between the mask he showed the world and the monster he'd become.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Storage units were strange places, Ella thought. They were liminal spaces where people kept things they couldn’t let go of but couldn’t live with. Places where past lives got packed in cardboard and memories gathered dust behind shutter doors.

The Chesapeake U-Stor was one such place. It was a five-acre lot surrounded by concrete walls crowned with razor wire. Up above, a gunmetal sky hung low in its post-rain comedown. Ella threw the SUV in the parking lot and killed the engine. Somewhere in this maze sat a person who might just be their homicidal collector.

‘Still got thirty minutes before our official meeting,’ Luca said.

'Then let's give Gabriel Thorne a surprise. Are you ready to go in?

‘Try and stop me. I forgot the Air Jordans though.’

‘Did they exist in the first place?’

‘Sort of,’ Luca said. ‘I do have a pair, but Michael Jordan never wore them.’

‘Maybe Thorne will buy them off you while he’s in prison.’ Ella checked her ammo levels, but bullets were best avoided in a place like this. Stainless steel doors and people wandering in and out. A stray bullet could take out an innocent bystander. ‘Let’s go.’

They exited the car and strode towards a glass booth that housed aparticularly bored specimen of security guard. His nametag read EARL, and his expression suggested they were interrupting his very important business of reading a newspaper.

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