Page 2 of Frankie and the Fed (Untamed Rascals #3)

Guilt pricked my conscience. Lily had been my friend for years, and I never even asked if she wanted to go on any of my trips.

God, she probably thought I was a terrible friend. I would have loved to have her with me for them. I might have avoided some trouble if she had been there.

“Do you think we should turn the lights on?” I asked.

“No. Hold on.” She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. I wasn’t sure if it would be enough when we got to the machine, but we’d figure that out.

We took three steps into the room and then half the lights flickered on, one row at a time.

“Well, there’s that,” I said, straightening out of the crouch I had dropped into for sneaking.

Lily laughed and shoved her phone in her pocket.

“It should be this way.” She waved to the left, and we wound our way through shelves of boxes.

“It looks… small,” I said as we stared at the wooden box that sat where the robot should be.

“Definitely. I thought it would be…” she waved vaguely above her head. “The pictures made it seem at least as big as a person.”

I poked the box, hoping the top was pried open already. It moved an inch .

“It’s open,” Lily whispered, like it was some voice-activated bomb. An uneasy feeling crept up my spine, one that told me that woman was the one to open this box. Whatever was inside, it wasn’t the robot Lily had hoped for.

I picked up the top and set it aside, hoping to find some answers

We both stared down at what we saw.

“Do we have the wrong box? Why is there a shipment of purses sitting in a museum? Is this a new exhibit? I don’t remember this on the list.” Lily twirled her hands, clearly nervous about the purses buried beneath a layer of brown crinkle paper in the box.

“I’m sure it’s a new exhibit. Wanna keep looking?” I put the lid back on it, straightening it out so there wouldn’t be evidence we were here. I didn’t believe my own words, but maybe Lily would.

Whatever was going on, she didn’t need to get mixed up in it. I, on the other hand, have found exactly the mystery I needed to keep me sane. A little thrill went through me at the prospect.

I would need more than just an open box and a glimpse of a person, but now I knew now to keep a lookout, and I couldn’t wait to figure out what was really going on.

“Yeah.”

We searched the large space and didn’t see a single box that looked big enough for a book scanning robot.

“I don’t—did I get the wrong day?” A little crease formed between her eyes, and her shoulders slumped.

“Tom told you it was here today.” I reminded her before she could gaslight herself.

“Right, and that it was housed here for processing. Maybe they finished, but then why wouldn’t it be here? Or out in the department somewhere?” She spun on the spot, like the answers were here and just out of sight.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we’re going to find out tonight. Let’s go.” We snuck back through the museum to the glittering, rain-soaked parking lot.

A car sat across the street from the museum’s back lot, and I eyed it as we climbed into mine. When nothing happened, I took a deep breath and relaxed my shoulders. It could be nothing.

“Even though we didn’t find anything, this was fun,” Lily said as she buckled herself into my car. The little thread of guilt returned, and I resolved to open up to her more.

“Lily, I’m—” headlights flashed behind us, distracting me from what I was going to say. “What the… look.”

I hit Lily’s arm and pointed to the back of the warehouse we were just in.

“We shouldn’t be getting midnight deliveries,” she said as a beat up old van parked at the loading dock for the museum’s warehouse.

We ducked when a tall white man dressed in all black jumped down from the passenger seat of the truck and opened the back. We couldn’t see well from here, but it looked like he had loaded up a box.

“Is that the same—”

“Hey, that’s—”

We both spoke at the same time.

“Yeah.” I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the scene in front of us.

They were grainy and unclear, but it was still evidence.

Of what, I didn’t know, but this was the most exciting thing to happen here since we got the unidentified bone in the lab.

Though maybe that was only exciting for me .

The same box that we had just opened disappeared into the back of the van. Lily didn’t sat frozen while I took as many photos as I could, hopefully getting the license plate.

“Well,” I said when the truck disappeared around the corner.

“Should we tell someone?” Lily asked, her eyes wide and trained on the museum, like somehow it would hold all the answers.

“Not yet,” I said as I shoved my phone into my purse with shaky hands.

“What? Why not?”

“Tell me something. Why would Tom lie?” We needed to get out of here, and I needed to do some research. Most importantly, I needed to protect Lily from her already hostile boss.

“I don’t know. Should I ask him about it again tomorrow?”

“No!” I said in a rush. “I’ll ask a few questions, poke around a bit, maybe call in a favor or two and see what I can find out.”

“People owe you favors?”

“It’s an expression.” I waved her question away, my mind reeling with everything that happened tonight.

I committed to memory as much of it as I could—the woman in shadows, the box of purses, the mysterious van, nothing about tonight made sense, and I couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of it.

I pulled into our neighborhood, not even bothering to ask Lily where she was staying tonight. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house… or think about how alone I really was.