Page 77 of Unhinged Cravings
He glared at me, but it was Riley who said, “I wouldn’t let Ava hear that. She’d surely lecture you about how insulting that was.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “All while standing with her hands on her hips.”
“Exactly,” she said, giving me another smile. I suddenly knew why my brother loved her. The warmth of that smile bled through layers of ice that only Ava had ever melted.
“Does the warehouse shut down for the day?” Raines asked, his finger moving between the warehouse and the home that was marked on the map.
“No. Twenty-four-seven, so we have to contend with civilians. Although they run on a skeleton crew at night.”
“Smart,” Greyson observed. “What do they make?”
I rubbed my head. “Furniture. Mostly tables and chairs. Some overly ornate bed frames specialty made. All their furniture isoversized and almost gaudy. They call the beds princess frames so you can tell the clientele they cater to.”
“Oh! I have one of those!” Angie Donelli had a pitch to her voice that reminded me of nails on a chalkboard when she hit the right tone. She was a true mafia princess. Spoiled by her father. Beautiful by any standard, with freckles that splashed over her cheeks and a distinct birthmark that gave her character. But as beautiful as any of these women were, they weren’t Ava and didn’t hold a candle to her in my eyes.
The thought had that ache in my chest growing. I wanted her back so badly it was almost debilitating.
“You do?” Raines asked her.
“Yeah, Daddy bought it for me years ago. I told him I didn’t want that style because it was too frumpy, but he insisted, saying I needed it because of what it did. I had to get a pink bed skirt to cover it so no one would know it was so ugly on the bottom.”
“Focus, Angela,” he said to her. “What do you mean, what it did?”
“The bottom is a hiding place.” She looked at us like we should have known that, but we all just stared at her. “He said if anyone ever stormed the house, I was to run to my room and hide in it. There’s a tiny hole at the end of the frame to slip your finger in and slide it open. He had me try it over and over until I could do it in under two minutes. But it’s tiny and so cramped.”
My heart pounded, my skin getting clammy. “That’s how they’ve been shipping the girls out.” Ava was terrified of enclosed, dark spaces. The thought of her in one had me gripping the table so I didn’t stumble.
“The perfect hiding spot,” Mason mused as Greyson held my gaze, keen to my emotions. “Ensure the truck is temperature regulated, there’s enough air for breathing, and you’re doing nothing more than delivering furniture. No questions from the authorities. No suspicion turned to the buyer if there are any witnesses.”
Riley moved closer to Greyson, whose sight was still on me.
“If we don’t get to her in time, they’ll put her in one of those,” I told him. “It will kill her.” The need to get to her spiraled, climbing through my limbs and causing the blood to thrum through my veins.
“I know. We’ll get her in time, Mer.”
I couldn’t answer.
Mason flipped through the pictures Rudy had given me. Pulling out one of the tables being loaded into a delivery truck, he said, “The compartments are in the tables, too.”
He tilted the picture, studying it before he put it down and pointed to the space where the tabletop extended down in thick pieces of wood. To the untrained eye, they looked like expensive maple tables with an inside lip with decorative engravings on it. But in reality, that space contained one, maybe two women, cramped into the box until they could get them to the buyer.
I rubbed my hand over my chin. Light was fading, and the warehouse was an hour from our location.
“What’s the plan?” Mason asked, looking up at me.
“One they won’t expect,” I answered, shaking off the fear and remembering who I was, who we were dealing with, and what was at stake.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
AVA
Ididn’t know how long I laid there, but the longer I did, the more the room closed around me. The light flickered often, leaving me in the pitch black for seconds that lasted an eternity. Suddenly I was young again and thrust into that basement, my nails breaking against the door, then just as quickly, the sensation was gone. Over and over, this continued until I squeezed my eyes tight. All my years of training fled, leaving me as helpless as a female character in a bad horror movie. Not that I could do much. My hands kept falling asleep because the binds were so tight and there was no hope of freeing my ankles from the rope that bound them.
I dozed, the exhaustion of the last few hours getting to me, but the sound of a lock jolted me from my sleep. Raising my eyes toward the door, I watched as the flirty guy from Emerson’s house strolled into the room.
“Hello cutie.” He waved a bandaged hand. “Remember me?”
“You’re vile,” I spouted as he stooped down in front of me.
