I pass through a room scattered with empty spray paint cans, the white walls tagged with various gang signs and puffy-lettered slogans whose meanings I can never seem to discern. The teens left their mark and vanished, nothing but cigarette butts and empty beer cans as evidence of their presence.
I’m about ready to give up this crazy crusade and turn back when I cross through a wide archway and find the main assembly line. It’s a cavernous room with staggeringly high ceilings — probably where they built the engines — and my pathetic little light barely illuminates the space around me. The dark seems to encroach from all sides. Shadows slither along the walls, the silence pushes back at me like a weight against my eardrums.
I’ve only made it a few steps inside when I spot them. Footprints, disturbing the dust coating the floor. I stifle a gasp as I make out the distinct shape of a man’s boots, their treads perfectly in tact. They look crisp, fresh — no dust dulling their edges or filling in their borders. It’s clear they’re recent.
Someone’s in here.
The panicked thought bursts into my mind without warning. I bite my lip and hold my breath, trying to regulate my racing heart. It’s no use panicking. If someone really is in here with me, they’ve already seen my flashlight. The damage is done.
You used to be a badass, Zoe Bloom. What happened?
Swallowing hard, I grip the phone tighter in my suddenly clammy fist and start to follow the boot prints across the room. They’re concentrated almost entirely in one area, around a wall of pipes on the far side of the room.
If I had to wager a guess — which I wouldn’t because I’m not a gambler — I’d say it’s some kind of cooling unit. Dealing with superheated steel, molding engine parts, they’d sure as hell need one in here, somewhere.
The room doesn’t look vandalized, like the graffitied space I was in earlier. In fact, the pipes are shiny silver steel, so bright they reflect my flashlight beams back at me when I approach. It’s the oddest thing… they look almost new compared to everything else in the crumbling factory.
In the email Lancaster sent to Linus, his Head of Security, he talked about clean up. I don’t know why but I get the unshakeable feeling that this, right here, is exactly what he was talking about.
I just don’t know what any of it means. Which really pisses me off.
Following the footprints, I see they lead from the pipes to a window. I peer through the foggy glass and make out the shape of a fire escape in the alley outside, its metal corroded with rust, its ladder crumbling from disuse. Just looking at it inspires the need for a tetanus shot.
With a careful sweep of my flashlight, I turn back to glare at the gleaming pipes, willing the answers I’m seeking to materialize like a genie from a bottle.
Think, Zoe. What the hell is so special about these fucking pipes?
I’m staring at a puzzle, holding the final piece in my hand, but no matter how long I look I can’t quite seem to figure out where the hell it goes.
My nonexistent knowledge of industrial factory equipment is exceedingly useless. So, eventually, I do the only thing I can do — snap a few pictures with my phone and high-tail it out of there before whoever was messing with the pipes comes back.
My pace is faster on my way out. I keep my legs moving and my eyes forward, suddenly desperate to be out of this place, out of this town, back in my safe, comfortable bed. I haven’t felt like this for years — this nervous, haunting nausea swirling in the pit of my stomach. Some innate instinct is telling me run, go, quick! Get out of sight.
As though everything I’ve worked for could be snatched from my grip with a rogue gust of wind.
Feeling like that made sense when I was living on street corners. It makes almost no sense, now.
Still, I’m relieved when I burst through the back door into the light of day, blinking at the sudden brightness. I practically run through the alley and across the parking lot. I don’t look back until I hit the street, nearly out of sight – just a quick glance over my shoulder at the factory, silhouetted by the sun sinking over the water.
Every muscle in my body goes tense.
Someone is standing in the shadows at the mouth of the alley, watching me leave. I can’t see his face, but I know it’s a man from his clothing, his build, his height. I’d bet my ass he’s wearing size-nine boots with deep, dust-covered treads on his feet.
Maybe you’re wrong, I tell myself. Maybe he’s just a homeless guy. Maybe he’s a teenage graffiti artist. Maybe he’s doing something totally innocent in that alley, like conducting a drug deal or soliciting a prostitute. Just because he’s watching you now doesn’t mean he’s been watching you since you got here.
My reassurances fall flat. This guy isn’t some teenage derelict. He isn’t a dealer or a creepy cheating husband.
He works for Lancaster.
As I watch, he takes a few steps into the abandoned stretch of parking lot, closing a tiny bit of the distance between us.
It’s close enough.
I don’t stick around another second to see what he plans to do about my trespassing. I turn on one heel and bolt toward civilization, never stopping until my ass is planted firmly in a plastic train seat and I’m barreling back toward Boston.
* * *