Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 76881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
It's just a bathroom, but the fanciest I’ve ever seen. An executive Mafia bathroom. There's even a shower.
“Here.” She pushes a button hidden behind the toilet, and the back wall of the shower slides away on silent wheels. A dark hallway extends behind it.
“What are you doing? We’re supposed to wait in here. How do you even know that was there?”
“I heard Mr. Fabbri talking about it to his guards when they were getting ready for you to come. It’s a safe room that he can hide in if things go bad. Come on.” Heather seems to have recovered a little, now that she has a purpose.
“No, I think—”
She disappears into the hallway behind the shower.
“Aunt Heather! Stop being stupid. We need to stay here!” I step into the strange hallway, intending to grab her and drag her back, but as soon as I’m inside, the door slides shut behind me and automatic lights come on. “You told Crank that there was only one door.”
“Well I’ve never really been in here before, have I?” she says, like a toddler caught lying.
I look back at the closed door. I feel along the edges, but there’s no way to open it that I can see. “Are we stuck in here?”
She shakes her head. “No, I think we need to follow the hall.”
That feels like the last thing we should do, but she stays ahead of me and I feel obligated to follow. This is closer to the Aunt Heather I remember, always having to do things her own way.
“If we make it outside, we have to find the other bikers. They’ll keep us safe.”
She ignores me until we get to the other end of the hall. There’s another locked door. She knocks and a pit opens in the bottom of my stomach.
The door slides open and rough hands immediately grab me, covering my mouth and hauling me into a man’s chest. Cold steel is pressed against the side of my head. I try to scream, but it just comes out a muffle.
“Excellent, darling. You did a wonderful job.” Stefano Fabbri's voice is as oily as ever.
32
SAVAGE
The gunfire outside the office gets louder. Sounds like someone is making headway, hopefully it’s our guys.
The longer Paige is out of sight, the less I fucking like this situation.
One of Fabbri's goons pokes his head out, and it's the last thing he does. I pull my gun back, kick out the magazine and replenish with a new one. Glad I brought extras.
There’s no more movement. Are we out of targets? Seems that way. “Poe, Crank, any on your end?”
“Think we're clear,” Crank replies. “They've either run or died.”
There's still plenty of action going on outside the office, but in here we've cleared out. Poe looks at the door at the end. “Time to get Paige and Heather out?”
“Yeah.” Fuck, every second I don't see her, I fucking worry. Burton’s involvement was always a crapshoot for us. We went along with it to see if he was worth having as a contact, but that played out about as expected. I nudge his body with my boot. “The cops are fucking amateurs. He had one shot to be something more than a desk jockey and couldn’t even get that off.”
“What about the money?” Crank eyes both the bag we brought and the little suitcase that got knocked to the floor.
“Take what you can put in your pockets and leave the rest. It's just a distraction. We're getting the girls the fuck outta here.” I throw open the door to the bathroom, only to find… no one. “What the fuck?”
Crank pushes past. “Shit. Look around. We woulda seen them come out so there has to be a hidden door here somewhere.”
I'm liking this less and less, and I already fucking hated it. “Well, this is fucking bullshit. I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her.”
We spread out, searching for anything that might operate a hidden door. Buttons, switches, loose tiles, anything. I rap my knuckles on the wall of the shower, moving systematically from spot to spot. It pays off.
“It’s hollow here. Listen.” I rap on the wall, slowing to map out the area that sounds different. “Question is, where’s the mechanism?”
“I am the mechanism,” Crank declares. “Outta my way.”
I move just in time for him to come barrelling.
He slams into the shower wall and bounces right back off. “Ow! Fuck!” The wall slides smoothly from left to right, revealing a dark hallway. “I did it!”
“No, I found the button,” Poe says dryly, his hand near the back of the toilet. “But I appreciate your enthusiasm.”
“Faith trusted her,” Crank growls, rubbing his shoulder
“No one fucking betrays you like family,” Poe says bitterly.
Usually I'm pretty fucking collected, and I’m not a fan of hurting women, but if her aunt led Paige into a trap either on purpose or through pure stupidity, I might make an exception. “Let’s go. They had to have gone through here, and the more time that passes, the worse our chances get at finding her.”