My heart warms at this strange man. He seems misunderstood. Like some kind of giant teddy bear that somehow landed himself in a bad spot and just needs someone to have his back.
“No, Doc. I’m not planning on raping her.”
I can’t help but scoff. “You’re still planning on killing me, though. Maybe I’m better off staying with Doc here.”
“Go right ahead,” Stone says, fixing himself in front of the industrial refrigerator with a strange reluctance. “But just because he doesn’t want to rape you like every other fucker in this building, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have his own plans for you.”
My gaze shoots straight back to Doc, noticing how a slow smile creeps across his lips, and suddenly he doesn’t look like a giant teddy bear anymore. He looks like a fucking maniac. “Wait. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Doc chuckles to himself and gets to his feet. “Pleasure to meet you,” he says, holding out his hand toward me. “When was the last time you ate, pretty girl? Are you hungry?”
“I, ummmm . . .” I find myself inching closer to Stone, suddenly very unsure of this man, but still not wanting to be rude, I go to shake his hand, only Stone smacks it away.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” he questions me. “I just told you this guy has his own plans for you, and you go to shake his hand? Where’s the common sense?”
“Well, excuse me,” I snap back. “I must be a little rusty on my prison etiquette.”
“Yeah, and so’s the fork Doc’s planning on harvesting your organs with,” he says, watching as my eyes bug right out of my head. “He’s not trying to be a gentleman. He’s trying to calculate how much shit is making its way through your digestive track.”
Doc chuckles and sits his ass back down, while having the audacity to look bashful. “It’s true,” he chimes, making me wonder if it’s actually an asylum he should be in, strapped into a straitjacket.
“For what it’s worth, she hasn’t eaten anything,” Stone says, assessing the massive refrigerator as though it’s somehowstanding in our way. “My guess is that she stress-ate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups the whole way here, only to throw them back up in the parking lot.”
I gape at Stone. “How the fuck could you possibly know that?”
Stone smirks to himself. “A mint before trying to get in my face during your bullshit interview wouldn’t have gone astray.”
My jaw drops. Absolutely mortified. But judging by the way he continues to focus on the fridge, my vomit breath seems to be the last thing on his mind.
“Alright,” he mutters to himself, cracking his neck. “Here goes.”
I stare at him, having no fucking idea what he’s talking about, when he stretches his arms out wide like the fucking giant that he is and grabs hold of either side of the walk-in fridge before pulling as hard as he can. He strains as the veins in his arms protrude like snakes curling around his massive forearms. His face turns red, and just when I think it’s impossible, I hear a sharppop pop popof the bolts behind the fridge breaking out of the wall.
“Holy fucking shit,” I breathe, watching as he shifts the fridge just enough for us to be able to squeeze behind it.
Stone releases his hold on the fridge, shaking out his arms before bracing his hands on his knees, needing a second to catch his breath. “What’s behind there?” he grunts, nodding toward the back of the fridge.
I glance back there with a cringe, seeing a mess of old cobwebs and dead rats, and as I creep closer and peer around the corner, I pause, finding a piece of sheet metal that’s been bolted to the wall. “There’s something there,” I tell him. “It’s a piece of metal screwed to the wall, like it’s covering something up.”
Stone grins, his eyes lighting up like fireworks, and for just a moment, everything stops.
“We’re getting out of here, Menace,” he says, whipping around and searching the kitchen drawers. He comes up with a butter knife, and shit, his happiness is so contagious that I don’t even bother reminding him that I’m not this menace he keeps referring to. “Fuck yeah.”
He strides around me, his hand coming down in the perfect arc over my ass and shocking the crap out of me, then he disappears behind the massive walk-in fridge.
I stare after him.
Did that really happen?
My ass is still stinging from his firm spank, so it must have happened. But the question is, why the hell did I like it so much?
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Are you staying with me, pretty lady?” Doc murmurs, slowly getting to his feet.
“Oh, fuck no!”
I hurry around the back of the fridge, having to duck and weave past all the shit that’s accumulated back here over the past forty years. Stone is already getting to work, jamming the butter knife behind the metal sheet and popping the little rivets out of the wall one by one.
