A Liberated Decision - COMPLETED!

Chapter 12

Ashley hadn't slept much in the last few weeks after her run in with Trent. He hadn't tried talking to her much since then, but Ashley had been avoiding him as well. She didn't want to push his uncomfortable advances toward her. She didn't trust him. And frankly, she was scared to be alone with him – not that she'd let him or anyone else know that. She hid that feeling under her tough skin and put up a front that made the other gang members think that she was just angry with him about something. They knew better than to ask Trent, or her for that matter, about what was going on. The others just ignored the situation, although, Ashley couldn't help but notice the occasional glances exchanged between the guys when they saw her. She knew they were talking about it.

She had wanted to go and talk with Dom again, but she had been avoiding that too. She wanted to keep a low profile that drew as little attention to herself as possible. Most of all though, she wanted more sleep. Not sleeping was wearing her down and making her a lot more jumpy then usual. It was dangerous. She didn't want to accidentally kill someone because she was delusional from exhaustion.

Ashley sighed at her thoughts. She was going over some plans for a robbery that Trent was insistent on going through with. It was stupid and dangerous, but she did as she was told.

"Since when do we have building plans for a random robbery?" Stan snuck up behind Ashley.

She jumped and turned around faster than a rattlesnake. "What the hell are you doing?" She glared at him.

"Whoa Ash!" He put his hands up in the air and stopped mid-step. "Trent wanted to know how the plans were coming along over here. Are we good?" He was surprised at her edginess as he inched closer.

Ashley's voice went dangerously low. "Don't ever sneak up on me." She made sure he knew that she was serious before she turned back to the plans in front of her.

"Okay." He replied as he went around the table and sat down on the other side. He looked down at the plans and back up at her. "You didn't answer my question though." He pushed the subject.

Ashley looked back up at him. She tried to mellow out her attitude and play nice. "I haven't went to school for this. I don't know building plans as well as Trent wants me to."

Stan could see the exhaustion in her expression. It surprised him. "Ash, are you okay? You look really tired." He knew that it probably wasn't the best way of commenting on her, but he wanted to know how she really was.

Ashley ignored the comment and put her focus back down on the building plans. "It looks like there are cameras here, here, and here. That pretty much covers the overview of the store. There's not many cameras, but they're well placed with not much room for blind spots." She explained and flipped the page. "It looks like they have two or three different security alarms, which really surprises me. I have no idea what kind of a place he's looking at robbing, but it's a really bad idea. The alarms are set at all the doorways with motion sensors. On top of that, there's a state of the art motion sensor throughout the whole building and they have several buttons throughout the building that if they're bumped the police are immediately notified. I think a few of the areas have heat sensors of some sort, but it's not labeled on here properly enough to know for sure." She looked up at Stan before continuing. "We've never robbed a place like this before."

Stan made eye contact with her. "Because it looks like the design of a jewelry store. He's after diamonds." He didn't like this idea. Trent was crazy if he thought that his gang was articulate enough to be able to rob a decently high class jewelry store.

"What's he thinking!" Ashley snapped in irritation. "We're not capable of robbing a stupid jewelry store!" She ran her fingers through her hair before slamming her fists on the table.