Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Because, really, what the hell?
What was in those totes?
Why was it worth breaking laws and pushing a woman onto her ass to get them?
Was it linked to the weird charges at the garage somehow? If so, did that mean that the person who’d stolen from me and had knocked me over was one of the mechanics?
I mulled that over for hours before I finally fell asleep, racking my brain to try to remember any detail about my attacker that I could use to disqualify the men at work.
In the end, though, it had all happened too quickly.
I felt reasonably comfortable saying it wasn’t the two older guys. But there was no way to rule out anyone else.
Which meant that my stomach was in knots and my heart was firmly lodged in the back of my throat at the idea of going into work, of being alone with those men.
I’d dragged my feet all morning, spending too much time on my hair and makeup, packing my lunch, lingering over my morning coffee—anything I could do to excuse not arriving before the men, before the inevitable customers.
When the trip to the storage unit to check out the footage showed me nothing but a man in a black hoodie and jeans who was clever enough to keep his head ducked to avoid being directly seen by the cameras, I was even more anxious as I strolled into the garage.
I beelined for my office, closing and locking the door before sinking into my chair, feeling like I’d worked a full day just from the stress alone.
And as I sat, poring over the various graphs and notes I’d drawn up about the weird charges for basic servicing, something occurred to me.
While I hadn’t seen the face of the thief, I had noticed something.
He’d been a reasonably average-sized man.
But he’d struggled to not only lift the totes off of the shelves, but he’d needed to drag them out of the door.
The cameras had caught his vehicle.
Which meant nothing.
Because he’d brought a damn rental truck to clear out my storage unit.
My storage unit with several very heavy totes.
What could have been in them?
I’d assumed it was just all junk, given my uncle’s house and office.
But what if it wasn’t junk?
What if it was something valuable?
Something worth stealing.
My gaze slid to the key ring on my desk, seeing it with new eyes.
Half of those keys? They weren’t for buildings or cars.
Those were padlock keys.
My hand shot out, dragging the ring closer, flicking through the keys, counting.
Twelve.
There were twelve padlock keys on the ring.
Sure, it was entirely possible that he’d just had twelve different padlocks for his one storage unit over the years.
But…
But what if they were all for different units?
What if he had more units full of heavy garage totes?
The only reason I knew about the one was because a bill for it had arrived when I’d first moved to Navesink Bank.
Could there be others? Ones I didn’t have the bills for yet? Ones that were maybe paid for through autopay or paid up front for the year?
If so, where could I find the information for them?
Before I even finished thinking the thought, though, I knew my answer.
The mess of the house, that’s where.
The basement wasn’t only full of busted furniture and old junk he hadn’t gotten around to throwing out; there were boxes upon boxes of paperwork. It seemed as though Uncle Phil had never heard of a shredder or recycling bin.
Which sucked for me as the one to deal with it all.
But it also worked in my favor if my suspicions were right and there were other units to track down.
Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get the workday done.
Not because I was afraid of the mechanics—though, yeah, that was a factor—but because I had a mystery to solve.
It was the first time in days that I wasn’t obsessively thinking about Santo.
Until, as I went through the mindless task of sorting through endless piles of paperwork, the thoughts came back.
Namely of him coming to the units with me.
Each and every one of those thoughts ended with him or me on my knees. Sometimes, both of us, him behind me, hands on my breasts, hard length settled deep inside me.
I was heavily into one of those fantasies when I finally found one.
A contract for a damn storage unit.
Two towns away.
“Gotcha.”
CHAPTER TEN
Dasha
I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
There was no way I was going to be careless enough to go to the storage unit straight from work or from my house. Where anyone could, you know, track me.
Was that borderline crazy?
Yep.
But so was having twelve storage units.
So I went from work, driving around until I was sure no one was following me, then took myself two towns over, going into the office, showing them the death certificate and proof that I’d inherited my uncle’s estate, being given the code for the gate, then taking myself in.