Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Somehow, the three working for me, one woman and two men, had also gotten into debt with them, so the assholes had come to cause some damage to scare them into paying up. At the same time, Asher had discovered we were down almost eight hundred dollars from the night before, and it’d all merged into one massive shit storm.
After the police had arrested and removed the men, they’d gone to pick up the three Shingle workers to question them about the incident and the missing money. As there wasn’t any evidence, we had to go through weeks of security footage to get proof of the stock theft, and we’d also found evidence for the money.
It hadn’t been as straightforward as watching it and seeing them pick it up and walk away on our screens like they did in the movies. No, we’d had to play and rewind it multiple times until we could isolate the time and dates when they’d walked out of the stock room with bottles hidden in hoodies, uniforms, and garbage. Fortunately, we had high-quality footage, otherwise, we likely wouldn’t ever have been able to see the outlines of it all.
We had hours of video footage that I’d handed over to the police. The idiots had even used our garbage bags, semi-transparent ones with a recycling logo on the side of them for the paper and cardboard waste only, which showed them carrying multiple bottles at a time.
It was a pain in the ass. Sure, we were insured, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth that some of the people I’d trusted had done this to the club.
That wasn’t the only thing leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. Picking up my phone, I braced myself for what Harry had said.
H: She has a storage place. Did you know?
H: Am sending you the location.
H: We need to go and see it.
Glancing at the clock, I tried to recall what hours Eva was working today, but I was so tired, and frankly so fucking over all of the shit going on, that I couldn’t do it.
Just then, my phone rang, and his name popped up on the screen. I’d blame my stupidity for not texting her to double-check on exhaustion and a pissy mood. It wasn’t a lie, but even then, I should have just done it. It would have saved me going into another messy fuck up blind and unprepared.
Snatching my car keys up off the desk, I walked out with my phone pressed against my ear.
Not even saying hello, I walked blindly down the stairs. “The police have just left. I didn’t know about a storage place, Eva never mentioned it, but I’m just leaving to go there now.”
“Good. I’ll meet you there.”
The whole way, my mind was torn into so many directions, and my focus was in the wind. How I didn’t crash, I don’t know, but my mood was even worse by the time I got there.
Seeing Harry standing next to a door with 32 on the front, I shoved my hands in my pockets and stared at it, wondering what was on the other side. Knowing Connie was in prison, it could be all of her stuff. Then again, maybe Eva kept things in it that she didn’t want to get rid of but also didn’t want to have in her house. People did that.
A man I’d never met before walked forward to where the lock was and opened it with a zip tie— a freaking zip tie—and then stood back for us after he pushed the door open.
Looking around us, I frowned. “Isn’t there a manager for this facility?”
“Gave him two hundred to look the other way,” Harry shrugged. “He also showed me the paperwork for the place. She started renting it two months after Connie was sentenced and pays it every month on the same day.” He turned and moved through the door, hitting the button for the light. “The guy said she doesn’t come very often, but she was here yesterday and only spent about twenty minutes in it before she left.”
Following him inside, I looked around. I’d half expected there to be piles of money around the place, maybe even some safes or whatever other shit was associated with thieves. The reality was underwhelming.
Couches, furniture, and boxes with the names of rooms or items written on them were piled neatly around the space.
Walking over to the dining table placed in the middle of the room, I rubbed my finger over the grooves in the top of it, an image of a young Eva and her siblings making those marks as they did their homework on it in my mind.
“What are we looking for?”
“Files, papers, banking records, random numbers,” Harry reeled off as he squatted in front of a box and lifted one of the flaps on the top of it to peer inside. “Boxes can hide folded pieces of paper, so can pockets.”