Page 278 of Lorenzo

The third opens.

The room is dark, and I can't see much, except cardboard boxes, plastic bins, and shelving stacked nearly to the ceiling.

Donna makes to walk in there, but I catch her wrist. She looks at me.

“Let Mocha check first.”

She nods.

“Mocha. Search.”

The dog moves ahead, sniffing around the shelves before circling toward the second door. He pauses there, alert but quiet.

Donna watches him closely.

“He doesn’t smell anyone close.”

“Good enough for me.”

We enter. I close the door behind me and lock it. This way, Greco will have to break through multiple locks and waste more time trying to find us.

A second door sits on the opposite wall.

My eyes are just starting to adjust to the complete dark, so I see Donna cross to the door and pause to look back at me.

I step up behind her and flex my grip on my gun before I give her a nod back.

She eases the door open a few inches first, then widens it when nothing moves on the other side.

Another storage room lies beyond, this one filled with racks of clothing covered in clear plastic and stacks of boxes marked with sizes and inventory numbers. A narrow passage runs between the racks toward what has to be the sales floor.

Mocha steps through ahead of us, checks the room, then looks back at Donna without alerting.

She gives me a small nod. “Clear.”

I follow her inside and close the door behind us, locking it before we move deeper into the store.

We're halfway to the storefront when Greco's voice suddenly comes from somewhere in the distance.

“CONTl!”

It is dulled by concrete walls and closed doors, but there’s no mistaking the rage in it.

Donna glances at me. “Someone found the service corridor.”

“Yes,” I say. “Let's keep moving.”

We keep moving through the stockroom until the darkness gives way to the faint glow spilling in from the sales floor ahead. The store is larger than I expected, with rows of clothing racks, display tables, and mannequins creating enough obstruction that we can move without being immediately visible from the windows.

Donna slows as we reach the edge of the sales floor and studies the front of the store.

“We’re far enough from where they last saw us that they won’t know which storefront we came through,” she murmurs.

“That buys us something.”

“Especially if they’re still searching behind the stores.”

I look back toward the stockroom door we locked, then toward the dark windows facing the parking lot. Greco may know we escaped into the service corridor, but he has no reason yet to know we abandoned it here.