“I’m sorry.” Andy stuffed the scribbled directions to Idaho into her pocket. She tried to smile at the old man as she left. He did not return the gesture.
Outside, the intense sunlight made her eyes water. Andy had to find some sunglasses before she went blind. She guessed Walmart would be the best place to go. She would also need to purchase some essentials like underwear and jeans and another T-shirt, plus maybe a jacket in case Idaho was cold this time of year.
Andy stopped walking. Her knees went wobbly.
Someone was looking inside the truck. Not just glancing as he walked by but looking with his hands pressed to the glass the same way Hoodie had peered through the garage door a few hours ago. The man was wearing a blue baseball cap, jeans and a white T-shirt. His face was cast in shadow under the brim of his hat.
Andy felt a scream get caught up in her throat. Her heart boxed at her ribs as she walked backward, which was stupid because the guy could turn around any minute and see her. But he did not, even as Andy darted around the back of the building, her throat straining from the scream that she could not let out.
She ran into the woods, frantically trying to summon up the Google Earth view, the high school behind the library, the squat storage facility with its rows of metal buildings. The relief she felt when she saw the high fence around the football field was only dampened by the fear that she was being followed. With every step, Andy tried to talk herself out of her paranoia. The guy in the hat hadn’t seen her. Or maybe it didn’t matter if he had. The black truck was nice. Maybe the guy was looking to buy one. Or maybe he was looking to see how to break in. Or maybe he was looking for Andy.
You think I can be scared?
Depends on how much you love your daughter.
The Get-Em-Go office lights were off. A sign on the door read CLOSED. A chain-link fence, even taller than the one at the high school, ringed around the storage units. The low one-story buildings with metal roll-up doors looked like something you’d see in a Mad Max movie. There was a gate across the driveway. A keypad was at car-window height, but it didn’t have numbers, just a black plastic square with a red light.
She unzipped the make-up bag. She found the white, unlabeled keycard. She pressed it to the black square. The red light turned green. The gate screeched as it moved back on rubber tires.
Andy closed her eyes. She tried to calm herself. She had a right to be here. She had a keycard. She had a unit number. She had a key.
Still, her legs felt shaky as she walked into the compound. There would be answers inside the storage unit. Andy would find out something about her mother. Maybe something that she did not want to know. That Laura did not want her to know—not until now, because they were after her.
Andy wiped sweat from the back of her neck. She checked behind her to make sure she was not being followed. There was no way of knowing whether or not she was safe. The complex was huge. She counted at least ten buildings, all of them about fifty feet long with rolled doors like dirty teeth. Andy checked the signs until she found building one hundred. She paced down the aisle and stopped in front of unit one-twenty.
Her birthday.
Not the one she’d had all of her life, but the one Laura told her was real.
“Christ,” Andy hissed.
She wasn’t sure what was real anymore.
The padlock looked new, or at least it wasn’t rusted like the other ones. Andy reached into the make-up bag and retrieved the tiny key. She could not keep the tremble out of her hands as she opened the padlock.
The smell was the first thing she noticed: clean, almost sanitized. The concrete floor looked like it had been poured last week. There were no cobwebs in the corners. No scuffs or fingerprints on the walls. Empty particleboard shelves lined the back. A tiny metal desk with a lamp was shoved into the corner.
A dark blue station wagon was parked in the middle of the space.
Andy found the light switch. She closed the rolling door behind her. Instantly, the heat started to swelter, but she thought about the man looking inside the truck—not her truck, but the dead man’s truck—and figured she had no choice.
The first thing she checked out was the car, which was so boxy it looked like something Fred Flintstone would drive. The paint was pristine. The tires had to be brand new. A sticker on the windshield said the oil had been changed four months ago. As with everything else inside the unit, there was no dust, no grime. The car could have been sitting on a showroom floor.
Andy peered inside the open driver’s side window. There were rolly things, like actual cranks that you had to turn to open and close the windows. The seats were dark blue vinyl, one long bench, no center console. The radio had thick white punch-buttons. There were big silver knobs and slider controls. The gearshift was on the steering wheel. The dash had stickers on the flat parts to simulate woodgrain. The odometer showed only 22,184 miles.
Andy didn’t recognize the logo on the steering wheel, a pentagon with a star inside, but there were raised metal letters on the outside of the car that read RELIANT K FRONT WHEEL DRIVE.
She went around to the other side and reached in to open the glove box. Andy reeled back. A gun had fallen out; a revolver, the same type that Jonah Helsinger had pointed at Laura’s chest. There were scratch marks on the side where the serial number had been shaved off. Andy stared at the nasty-looking weapon sitting on the floorboard, waiting, like it might suddenly twitch.
It did not.
She found the owner’s manual.
1989 Plymouth Reliant SE Wagon.
She flipped through the pages. The graphics were old, the illustrations clearly placed by hand. A twenty-nine-year-old car with barely any miles on it. Two years younger than Andy. Stored in a place that Andy did not know about in a town that she had never heard of before her mother told her to go there.
So many questions.
Andy started to walk around the back of the car, but stopped. She turned around and stood by the closed door. She listened to make sure a car hadn’t pulled up, or a man wasn’t standing on the other side. Just to be extra paranoid, she lay down on her stomach. She looked under the crack to the door.
Nothing.
Andy pushed herself up. She wiped her hands on her shorts. She continued her walk around the station wagon to check the license plate.
Canada. The plate design was as boxy as the car; blue on white with a crown between the letters and numbers, the words Yours To Discover at the bottom. The emissions sticker read 18 DEC, which meant that the registration was current.
Andy knew from her work at dispatch that the NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, shared information with Canada. The thing was, the system only checked for stolen vehicles. If a cop pulled over this car, all they’d be able to verify was that the registered owner’s name matched the driver’s license.
Which meant that for the last twenty-nine years, her mother had kept a secret, untraceable car hidden from the world.
From Andy.
She opened the wagon’s hatch. The springs worked silently. She rolled back the vinyl cover obscuring the cargo area. Navy-blue sleeping bag, a pillow, an empty cooler, a box of Slim Jims, a case of water, a white beach tote filled with paperbacks, batteries, a flashlight, a first aid kit.