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Carver drops his attention back to the ledger, putting on a show of being extremely interested in what’s inside. “Consider my ass out of this conversation.”
I grin, figuring that while we’re on the topic, what better way to fuck with them? “So … you know, I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you guys about this whole ass thing.”
Every single one of their heads snap up with nothing but sheer horror across their faces. Now, I know they’ve all claimed that they’d do absolutely anything for me, but I have a feeling that they draw the line if it means their asses getting involved.
Cruz violently shakes his head. “No. Absolutely not. Whatever it is, the answer is no. My ass has suffered enough. Just the shock of my finger penetrating my … no. I can’t. I’m going to need at least a week to recover.”
Ember leans back in her chair, her eyes dropping to Cruz’s hands. “I mean, those fingers of yours sure are thick.”
Cruz glares back at her. “Don’t you have a new boyfriend that you could be bugging right now?”
“I sure do,” she grins wide, more than up for talking about Corey every little chance she gets. “And for the record, he’s confident enough in his masculinity to admit that he fucking loves it when I shove my finger in his ass.”
King swallows hard, looking at Ember as though she’s speaking another language. “I really could have done without that piece of information. Next time you want to play with your man’s ass, keep that shit to yourself.”
“You sure?” she teases. “I could teach Winter a few tricks that would have you guys worshipping at my feet.”
“Alright,” Cruz says, looking across at Carver. “This conversation is over. Pass me that ledger. I was working on something.”
Carver instantly tosses the ledger across the room and Cruz collects it in his capable hands and treats it as though it’s liquid gold, and he’s right to. This ledger is the one clue we have that could lead us back to hundreds of girls who are all scared and desperately needing to come home. This ledger is everything, and to lose it would be a crime.
While all the guys like to spend hours scanning through the pages of this ledger, Cruz spends, by far, the most amount of time agonizing over it. We quickly worked out that many of the names written in the ledger were fake, and so Cruz has made it his personal mission to figure out each and every one of them. We should have known that it wasn’t going to be that easy.
He has a notebook that he uses, trying to make connections between the girls on the ledger and the profiles listed on the missing persons websites. Honestly, I think he’s doing an incredible job. We can’t confirm anything without seeing what these girls actually look like, and we wouldn’t dare contact their parents and give hope when there’s a possibility that we could be wrong.
Cruz has managed to match at least ten missing persons profiles of girls who were stolen near the Mexican border nearly three years ago to entries in the ledger, and judging by the way he drops everything that he’s doing, forgets about his ass issues, and focuses on the papers before him, he might be about to match another.
Cruz gets agitated and gets up from the couch, taking his notebook and the ledger with him as he storms out of the room. We all watch him go, knowing that he’ll be heading for his laptop that’s been sitting open on the dining table for the past few weeks.
Hating that look on his face, I get up and walk out behind him, following through the kitchen and out to the dining room table. He doesn’t bother sitting, just slams the notebook down and presses the spacebar on his laptop to bring it out of sleep mode.
Cruz braces himself against the table and hangs his head. As my hand drops to his shoulder, I can’t help but glance over the box of jewelry and mementos that’s been sitting right next to Cruz’s laptop since the day we blew up Sam Delacourt’s house.
This box has been acting as motivation, and it’s doing a damn good job. Every little bracelet, every pin, shoelace, ring, or hair clip is something that Sam took off his victims—trophies of his. There are hundreds of things in this box, and I have every intention of returning each little piece to its original owner once we save them and bring them back home.
Dwelling on the box is only going to send me into an intense depression, so instead, I focus on Cruz. “What’s the matter? Can I help?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, pulling his head back up and looking directly at the missing persons notice on his screen. A gorgeous six-year-old girl, Maddison Atwell, went missing from her bedroom in the middle of the night nearly two years ago. He points down at the ledger, showing me the entry for a five-year-old girl who was sold around the same time. “It’s just this girl. The ages don’t match up, but my gut is telling me that this is her. This is Maddison. It’s just … I can’t be wrong, not about this. It’s too important.”
