Chapter 9 - Unit 318
Mara drove.
She refused to let Ethan take his own car in case someone was watching the house.
At 2:41 a.m., they pulled into a twenty-four-hour storage facility beside the interstate.
Unit 318 was at the far end of a concrete corridor.
Ethan still remembered the code.
His father’s birthday.
The lock clicked open.
Inside were three old chairs, a broken lamp, two plastic bins, and a metal toolbox.
“That’s it?” Mara asked.
Ethan stepped in.
He could smell dust and machine oil.
His father had smelled like that after work.
For a second, grief hit him in the chest.
Then he noticed scrape marks on the floor beneath the toolbox.
They moved it.
A small steel cash box was taped underneath.
Inside were envelopes, copies of loan documents, and a flash drive.
Mara whistled softly.
“Your father kept records.”
Ethan unfolded the first document.
The name at the top made him stop.
VICTOR DANE.
His father had borrowed money from Victor twelve years earlier to keep Parker Roofing alive during the recession.
Ryan’s name appeared later as an employee and then as an authorized representative.
“This started before Ryan,” Ethan said.
Mara nodded. “Looks like your father got out. Ryan may have gotten back in.”
A car door slammed outside.
Both of them froze.
Footsteps entered the corridor.
Mara shut off her flashlight.
A man’s voice echoed between the units.
“Three-eighteen.”
Ethan whispered, “Back exit?”
“No.”
They looked around.
The only cover was behind a row of stacked furniture.
The footsteps got closer.
A flashlight beam swept past the opening.
Ethan tightened his grip on the metal cash box.
Then another voice said, “If it’s gone, Victor says we check the brother’s house again.”
Mara leaned close to Ethan’s ear.
“We are not fighting them.”
He nodded.
The first man stepped into the unit.
May you like
His flashlight stopped on the empty space where the toolbox had been.
Then he said, “Somebody beat us here.”\n\nFor a moment, crouched in the dark storage unit, Ethan remembered helping his father sort tools in the garage as a kid. Tom Parker had labeled every drawer because, he used to say, chaos charges interest. Ethan almost laughed at the memory. Apparently his father had understood disorder better than he had understood honesty.
