by C. L. Stone
Maybe it was better. I deserved it.
We were quiet for a long while as Blake punched the gas, zipping through town, listening to the GPS give him directions.
“Say,” Blake said after a few minutes. “I don’t want to get in the middle of this—”
“Then don’t,” Corey said.
“I just don’t know what our plan is. What are we doing? What’s going on?”
This forced me to start talking about Luanne, that she had been at the party, and the phone call and Sara. “Henry called saying he was picking up Fred. He must have taken him, and took Sara to her mother. They acted like they were still looking for them though. I don’t understand why they were waiting.”
“They waited until the check cleared,” Blake said. “And then a couple more days so it doesn’t look too suspicious.” He shook his head. “What a bastard. And that woman…”
“How do we get the money back?” I asked.
“One thing at a time,” Blake said. “We need to get Fred first. If they deliver him to the cops, with Henry, he may not have a chance. Henry may have convinced him to go with the plan or they kill him or something.”
“Is it a dead or alive thing? If they kill him, can they collect?”
“It’ll be the last thing they want to do,” Blake said. “There’s more questions when they show up with a dead body. Fred might not know that, though, and may believe anything when he’s been held against his will this long.”
“What do you know about the storage unit place?” I asked Corey.
Corey rolled his head back against the seat and sighed. “It’s about a hundred units. If we get there before Henry does, I won’t know which one. He could have him inside any of them.”
“Either we get lucky and find the right one before Henry shows up,” Blake said, “or we take a chance waiting for Henry to show up and confront him.”
“Can we go up against Henry?” I asked.
Corey breathed in deeply. “We don’t know if he’s got other people with him. We don’t know if he’s armed, which he probably is.”
“We need backup,” I said.
“Oh no,” Blake said. “You’re not calling…”
“Blake,” I said. “If you want to go head to head with armed law enforcement, be my guest.”
“They can’t arrest us,” Blake said. “They can only take him. They aren’t cops. If they want to deal with us, they’d have to do something illegal, and they’re already doing that.”
“So they don’t mind doing more, probably,” Corey said. “We need a plan. And we need one now. They may not have time to get there if I don’t send word out.”
“Call them,” I said.
Corey looked back at me. His eyes met mine, silently asking, Are you sure?
I understood why he was asking. When they showed up, there’s no way they’d miss the fact that Blake was here. They’d want to know why. I was probably sacrificing my chance at the Academy to do it this way.
I nodded. “Please. For Sara.”
Corey twisted his lips, and typed into his phone. “Texting Axel and the others where we’re at, and that we need backup.”
“We can’t rely on them showing up on time, though,” Blake said.
I drew quiet, trying to think up something else, but I didn’t know the layout, and I didn’t know so many other details, so coming up with a solid plan wasn’t going to work. I had to rely on winging it.
That was more my style, anyway.
FINDING FRED
Ten minutes later, we were just outside of town. The storage unit complex was a brand-new structure, set a good distance away from everything, sitting under the shadow of a billboard advertising albino alligators.
“It’s a white croc,” Blake said, pointing to the sign.
“Alligator,” Corey said.
“Oh yeah. I keep forgetting: American Alligator, Chinese Crocodiles. What’s the difference anyway? They look the same. Is it just location?”
The corner of Corey’s mouth lifted a little. “One’s more badass.”
I smiled. They may not like working together, but Corey seemed a little better than before. Maybe he wasn’t mad at me anymore.
Corey studied his phone, and then listened to it. “Looks like we’ve got a bit of time,” Corey said.
“What do you mean?” Blake asked.
“Henry’s at his office right now. Hearing him on the bug Kayli dropped in his office.”
“So it is working?” I asked.
“Yeah. Loud and clear. But he’s leaving soon. Had to drop off something apparently.”
Blake pulled into the storage unit’s driveway. We were stopped by a gate. The front office appeared empty, even though it was in the middle of the afternoon.
“We’re here first,” Blake said.
“Security cameras,” Corey said, and pointed out one near the entrance.
They were angled so you could see who was coming and going. “Think anyone’s watching from somewhere else?” I asked.
Corey tapped his fingers on the dash. “I think we can use these,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
He turned to me. “If we break into the office, we could use—”
“Hang on there,” Blake said. “We’re not breaking into anything.”
Corey made a face. “You’re okay with getting into the storage units…”
“There’s a line somewhere,” Blake said. “You cross over that illegal line, and we’re all in jail in a heartbeat.”
“You can’t—”
“Just tell me what you were going to say,” I said over them.
Corey looked at Blake and then at me. “I was just saying, I bet those cameras are fixed on storage units. If we can record Henry taking Fred out of the storage unit, and maybe even record the conversation following…”
“We’d have evidence Henry plotted all this?” I asked. “I know the law is kind of twisted when it comes to people who run out on a bond. They can do lots of weird things like break into houses without a warrant, can’t they?”
“Last I checked,” Blake said, “kidnapping is still illegal.”
“Funny you should be saying that,” Corey said.
“I didn’t kidnap her. She went with me.”
“Shut up!” I cried. “Okay, Corey, let’s break into the office. Do we have any…any of those bugs around? The ones you guys had?”
“In the SUV,” Corey said. He tapped his fingers. Suddenly he changed and sat up quickly. “Wait. Don’t you still have that cell phone I gave you?”
“Why mine?” I asked, pulling it from my pocket. “Why not yours?”
“Yours has… uh…”
I stared at him. “You bugged my phone?”
“It was bugged before we knew you. It was an emergency phone before.”
“With a bug in it?”
“We never know what type of emergency…”
Blake grabbed Corey’s arm hard. “Are you telling me you’ve been listening to her phone calls?”
Corey tried tugging his arm back. “What?”
“Did you know I was here before she said anything? Are you monitoring her?”
“I…”
“Yes or no?”
“Guys!” I slapped at Blake. “Hands off each other. We can argue later. Blake, figure out how to get inside and check the units, see if you can find Fred. Make sure a camera is on that unit, and then stash the car and get out of sight. Corey…”
“Go with him,” Corey said. “I can handle the office.”
“But…”
He leaned back to look at me and touched my face. “Listen, I’m okay. It’ll be faster if I work alone. And I can be the lookout in case Henry shows up, maybe even slow him down. Find Fred. That’s who we need. I’ll start recording. Plant your phone as close to that storage unit as you can without drawing attention to it.”
I nodded slowly, listening, but from the moment he touched me, I was floating. I was asking him questions
with a look, begging for answers to things that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. Do you not hate me now? Can you ever forgive me? Can we ever go back to being what we were before?
Corey, slowly, lifted the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t his full smile, but it told me what I needed to know; Corey and I were still friends, we just had a lot to talk about later.
I loved him before, but if he could forgive me this, I swore I’d make it up to him, and he and I could be best friends for life. Maybe even family.
“We need to hurry,” Blake said.
“Let me get you inside,” Corey said. He jumped out of the car. There was a box beside the unit’s guard gate. He looked at it for a couple of minutes, until I thought he might have been stumped.
“What’s he doing?” Blake asked.
Corey tapped the box, typing something into the number pad. In an instant, there was a green light and the storage unit doors rolled open.
“Being a Data,” I said.
Blake drove forward, and I waved at Corey. He waved back and jogged toward the office.
“I have to admit,” Blake said as he rolled to the first row of units and stopped the car. “I didn’t think he’d go with us so easily.”
“He’s going for Sara.”
“No,” he said, looking at me. “He’s not doing it for just her.”
My cheeks heated up, but I breathed in, trying to relax. “You know he’s gay. He’s not…not in that way, you know?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Him? You sure?”
I shrugged. “His brother said.”
He was still for a long moment, and then shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
“I didn’t think so, either,” I said, “at first. But who knows better than his brother?”
He smiled. “Well, that’s good. I thought I was going to have to brawl and I don’t know if I’d win that one. He’s pretty tall. Maybe I’d have to challenge him to something else. What was that other part you said? Something about measuring? Pretty sure I’d win that one.”
I rolled my eyes and crawled into the passenger seat so I could let myself out.
Blake grabbed his walking stick and managed to open the door before I could finish wedging myself into the front seat. I hauled myself out, scanning the units.
“How many are there?” I asked. “How do we find him?”
“Knock?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure if that would work. If other people had access to this place, it wasn’t like he’d leave Fred where people could hear him.
It was more than likely Fred was tied up somewhere.
The storage units were one-sided, with metal doors and plain brick concrete walls.
“We can eliminate the ones without padlocks,” Blake said, pointing to the rows.
“Good point.”
There was a whole row we could skip, the ones closest to the gate. After that, the locks skipped mostly every other one, sometimes two. The inside of this place was a maze. I stood at the end of one row, calculating.
Blake looked around and then went for his car.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Going to find some sort of tool. Maybe a hammer.”
“We can’t break locks. Even if we find Fred, Henry might notice his lock is broken.”
“Maybe we should be prepared to bust him out. Have a better idea?”
I went to one of the units, checking the padlock on the side of the door.
Padlocks usually either come with one or two grooves that lock the system into place. For a storage unit out in the middle of nowhere with a razor wire fence and security cameras, it’s easy to go for the cheap end of the spectrum.
Schools generally go for cheap, too. I had enough experience in high school to know not to trust a locker, not even the gym ones with padlocks. Padlocks are too easy to break into. You can make a shim out of a soda can. Wedge the shim into the lock and with a little bit of wiggling, the lock will open. Take what you want, lock it back into place, and no one knows what happened until their stuff is missing.
For someone like Henry who works in security and knows better, I imagined he was very paranoid, and used the toughest, two groove lock he could find.
But those were still grove locks; they just needed two shims.
“I need a soda can,” I said. “Go find me one and a pair of scissors.”
Blake blinked at me for a minute before he spoke. “You’re pulling my leg. You’re going to do a magic trick with a can?”
“Go and I’ll find the ones we should try.”
Blake sighed but took the Mercedes back to the front office. I started jogging up and down the rows, looking for ones that stood out.
I had never really been the athletic sort, so I ended up wheezing by the time I got to the last row. It was a series of smaller units, narrow doors, and fewer locks on the doors.
The one at the furthest corner had a big fat padlock on the outside.
I shifted the lock, feeling the weight, looking at the key slot.
Two grooves, for sure.
I knocked gently at the unit, and then put my ear to the door.
It was silent.
I tried again.
My heart was beating hard against my chest as loud as could be, but I still heard it. Shifting. It was either a really big rat, or someone was stirring inside.
Bingo.
I didn’t want to spook Fred by yelling at him, so I checked around for cameras. Sure enough, all the cameras were turned away from Fred’s. Henry didn’t want any record of what he was up to.
Blake’s Mercedes rolled up. He stopped short of the unit, got out and showed me the soda can and the scissors. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “Corey says Henry’s on the way now.”
“Fred’s in here,” I said, pointing to the last unit. I opened the can and started draining the contents.
“What are we waiting for then?” he asked. “Let’s just bust him out.”
“We should get Henry on camera,” I said. I pointed to the cameras that were nearby. “Can you angle those toward the unit?”
“You want to show yourself breaking in?”
“Corey can handle it.” I was pretty sure Corey could erase us ever being there, if he wanted.
“You trust him? He seemed pretty pissed at both of us.”
His question made me pause. I shook my head slowly. “No. He’s not like that.”
Blake sighed, rolled his eyes. “If we end up in jail, you owe me a night in Hawaii.”
“I’ll give you two if you shut up and turn those cameras.”
“On it,” he said, and he started up the car again, rolling it just under one of the cameras. Once it was positioned, he parked it and got out, climbing onto the hood. With his weight on top, the car started denting in. “You owe me a new yacht, you know,” he said. “And now a car hood.”
I ignored him as I started cutting two shims out of the soda can, trying not to slice my fingers on the aluminum. Once I had two, I bent over the lock and jabbed two sharp ends in, wedging it between the hook latch and the pad. Slide in. Twist. I pulled the lock arch. Nothing. Slid in further, and twisted the shims deeper in. Pull. Still locked.
Blake returned while I was still fiddling. “You sure you got it?”
“Shut up,” I said. I had the concept right, but the lock was tricky. Doing two shims at once was harder.
“Can I do it?” he asked.
“You don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, stuffing the shim deeper into the lock.
“I can figure it out.”
I grunted, breathed in deeply and then let it out slow. Despite my effort, I wasn’t that strong. Pushing the shims in was hurting my fingers. It didn’t help that he was breathing down my neck.
“Here,” he said. He took the lock from me, nudging me aside. He tested the shims, twisted them back and forth, testing. “You need to start out here,” he said. He showed me how he slid the tip of the shim around. T
o the front of the lock. “Start on the side of the grooves and then slide over.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“I’ve had locks,” he said, wriggling the shim deeper to the side and then twisting it around. “And did I mention I’ve got this thing for science? Simple engineering. This is the first time I’ve seen one opened with a cut up can, though. Not exactly my area of expertise.”
“So you don’t know what you’re doing?”
He smirked, twisted the shim and then jerked the base down hard. The lock opened, and one of the shims flew out, landing on the ground. He caught the other one. “Doing pretty good for a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Just help me open the door.”
We bent over, caught the handle and pulled up together.
Florida was humid, and the inside of the unit was sweltering. The smell was worse. I touched my nose, as if that could ward off the smell.
Inside, the room was barely five feet wide, but at least ten feet deep. It was dark but my eyes adjusted as we stepped inside.
On the far side, against a corner, was a pipe.
Tied to the pipe, was Fred. I barely recognized him from his pictures at his apartment. His hair was hanging over his face, the same shade as his daughter. His face had the start of a scraggly beard.
Blood stained his twisted shirt.
His eyes went wide at Blake first, then his head turned toward me. His mouth moved, but it was then I realized he had something stuffed into his mouth. He couldn’t talk.
“We should hurry,” Blake said. “Henry’s on the way.”
At this, Fred started shaking his body, glaring at us, fighting his restraints.
A fighter. I loved him so much right then. This was the parent of Sara, the four-year-old spelling, foul-language knowing, sweet little princess. I could tell right off he’d do anything for his daughter, and he’d fight to find her.
Totally worth the trouble I was about to get in.
“Fred,” I said, holding up my hands. I crept forward slowly. “We’re not with Henry.”
He shook his head rapidly, didn’t believe us.
“Look,” I said, tiptoeing closer. I didn’t want him to lash out trying to defend himself. I don’t know what they had done to him, but there were bruises all over his body and dried blood on his face and along his arms and legs. I squatted close to him, and eased forward, trying to look non-threatening. “We’re going to get you out of here, but we need your help. For Sara.”
