Quiver & Burn (Surrender to Them 5)

“I can’t believe someone left a brand new mattress in a storage locker.” Brylee shook her head in disbelief. “Why buy it if you’re just going to toss it in a locker?”

“It’s hard to say.” I shrugged and walked back into the locker. “It could have been someone who owned a furniture store, or maybe they got it on sale and never used it.”

“There’s a clearance tag on this bed frame,” Rand grunted and picked up the headboard. “People love to buy stuff they don’t need when it’s on clearance.”

“I’ve been guilty of that a few times.” Brylee nodded quickly. “Especially shoes.”

After a couple of hours, we had everything sorted. There was a couch and chair that didn’t have much wear, so we put those in Maria’s pile. The boxes that we found were mostly loaded down with household items, which we also set aside for Maria. Luckily, it wasn’t all in vain on our end though, because we did find a box that appeared to be full of collectible figurines. I didn’t recognize any of the names, but I definitely wasn’t an expert. We always got stuff like that checked out just to be sure, so we loaded it on the truck to sort through at home. A few pieces we had found over the years that looked like junk ended up being worth a lot more than expected. If we couldn’t find anyone locally that wanted to buy them, we could always put them on eBay. There were usually collectors on there willing to bid.

“Alright, we can’t do much more with this stuff, so let me make a call and then we’ll get started on the next one.” Rand pulled out his cell phone and started dialing our friend at the Salvation Army.

“Sounds good.” I nodded and walked towards the next locker.

“This one looks like it’ll be a lot more exciting—tons of boxes.” Brylee put her hands on her hips and grinned.

“Yeah, we always try to buy the ones with a lot of boxes if we can.” I grabbed the first box and pulled it out.

The storage locker had a really nice desk that I saw the first day, and I assumed based on the quality, that there would be some decent stuff inside the boxes as well. We could usually theorize what kind of stuff we would find based on what we saw. Sometimes it worked out, but we had been duped a few times. We had also found treasure in lockers that looked like they were full of junk, so it wasn’t a perfect formula. It took us some time to get everything out of the locker, but the desk did not disappoint. It was made for an office and looked like it was worth a decent amount of money. Office furniture, especially pieces that were in good shape, usually brought a fair price. The real mystery was going to be in the boxes though. They weren’t labeled, so the three of us picked our own, and started opening them up.

“They’re packaged nice. That’s usually a good sign.” Rand ripped off a piece of tape and tore the box open.

“This one was in the area that’s climate controlled too—another good sign.” I nodded and dug my fingers into the cardboard.

“Movies,” Rand grunted and reached inside his box.

“My box is full of office supplies.” Brylee pushed her box aside and walked over to Rand. “Did you find any good ones?”

“Um, maybe.” He grinned and held one up.

“Oh wow.” My eyebrows raised. “Porn!”

“Yeah, a whole box of it too.” Rand pulled out another stack and I saw that he was telling the truth.

“Apparently the person who owned this locker didn’t like the movies well enough to keep them at home.” Brylee rolled her eyes and walked over to another box.

“We can still sell them—I mean after we make sure they work.” I winked at Rand.

“Yeah, we’ll have to check every single one of them.” Rand nodded aimlessly and threw the stack he was holding back in the box. “We can’t really sell someone a movie that doesn’t work.”

“I bet.” Brylee giggled and shook her head.

“Don’t worry, we won’t be watching them tonight.” I walked over to Brylee and put my hands on her hips. “You’re all we need.”

“Is that so?” Brylee leaned back against me.

“Definitely.” I pressed my lips to her neck.

We moved through a few more boxes and it wasn’t looking like we were going to hit any buried treasure. The porn movies would fetch a decent price, especially since there were so many of them. They weren’t the best, but we had found a few over the years and sold them fairly quick. The locker was a random array of stuff once we started going through more of the boxes. There were several boxes of office supplies, a box of kitchen stuff, a box of bathroom stuff that just needed to go straight in the garbage, and a lot of decorations. None of the decorations looked valuable, but we would definitely get them checked out before we just sold them off in bulk. We were down to a few boxes and making great time, so I let Rand and Brylee finish opening them while I took some stuff to the truck. When I turned around, I saw Brylee staring into a box with a perplexed look on her face.

“What did you fi

nd? Anything good?” I walked back to the front of the locker.

“I’m not sure exactly.” She tilted her head to the side. “And I’m not sure I want to touch any of this to find out.”

“Uh oh.” Rand walked over and then started laughing. “You found someone’s collection of sex toys.”

“Not the first time.” I chuckled under my breath. “Let me spread out one of the blankets and we can just dump the box. I doubt we can sell any of it.”