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“Up and over, and then wait.”
Shaw made a distressed noise, but then he spun and launched himself at the chain-link fence. It rattled, the metal chiming softly as Shaw climbed. He cleared the fence so quickly North thought he might have broken the sound barrier. Maybe there was a genetic component, North wondered. Maybe they could sell this shit to the Army. Super-soldiers fueled by Coke and pony princesses. Profiles in courage and all that.
It took North longer, and by the time he dropped on the other side of the fence, Shaw was sprinting in short bursts and doing flying kicks. It reminded North of the karate shows the kids had been putting on for the officers, only a little more…manic. North glanced back, but no one was looking in their direction. Maybe he should have brought a brass band, hired a drum line. The next time one of the kicks brought Shaw within range, North caught his collar again and yanked him around a few times. Then he held a finger to his lips and pointed toward the self-storage building.
They walked a circuit of it, and Shaw, panting with excitement, was the one who found the open door. To a casual glance, it would have appeared closed and presumably locked, but when North tugged on it, it opened easily, and he could see where the latch had been taped back to keep it from locking when it fell shut.
Inside, the building was a maze of corrugated steel panels and roll-up doors. Emergency lights pushed back enough of the darkness for North to lead them deeper into the building, but shadows pooled between the spaced-out lights, and more than once North stopped, his heart speeding up as he squinted and listened, trying to decide if something lurked in the darkness ahead. Shaw appeared to have channeled his Coke-head energy into something useful for once because he moved silently behind North, the only sign of the buzz his restless scanning of the space around them.
A whiff of cheap weed made North stop. Shaw breathed deeply a few times and whispered, “He’s here.”
“Or the night clerk is having a toke.”
Shaw didn’t answer. He took more of those deep breaths and started walking toward the next intersection, and when North followed, the fug grew stronger. Someone was here, or had been here recently, and the last time North had seen Philip Welch, he’d been trying to shoot Eric Brey. It had been an ambush, and Brey had walked right into it. North wanted to reach for his waistband, but that was pointless; the CZ was still locked up in the trunk of the GTO. Maybe if they went back, North could explain that he wanted to do some target practice. Hell, maybe Eaton would think that was why he’d wanted the Coke in the first place, like he and Shaw were lining up cans on fence posts like a couple of good old boys.
North spotted light behind one of the roll-up doors. He caught Shaw’s arm to stop him and pointed. Under North’s touch, Shaw was vibrating with caffeine and adrenaline. Thirty seconds passed, and nothing happened. Then a minute. Then two. North tried to make a map of the building in his head. They were near the back, about as far from the RV park as you could get, and the unit was located at the end of the corridor. For a moment, North considered climbing—or, more realistically, sending Shaw up. The interior of the building was divided up by more of the corrugated paneling, but the walls ended a couple of feet below the ceiling. North guessed that, like other storage units he’d been in, the tops of the units were closed off by some kind of mesh paneling—it allowed for air flow through the units, and, of course, for the fire sprinklers. But North dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it came; up there, Shaw would be a sitting duck.
Still nothing. The silence inside the building grew in North’s ears like a kind of white noise.
“Maybe he’s not here,” Shaw whispered.
North shook his head. “No lock. He’s here.”
“Should we go get John-Henry and Emery?”
North shook his head again. He considered the unit. The light around the door was barely anything—if the rest of the building hadn’t been so dark, he probably wouldn’t have been able to see it at all. The weed smell was stronger, but there was something else too—a stink that made North’s hackles rise, and a hint of something else, something like rubbing alcohol.
“I’m going to check,” Shaw said. When North opened his mouth, Shaw said, “I’ll be careful.”
North fought the same fight he always had with himself and, as usual, lost. He squeezed Shaw’s arm once, and Shaw crept forward.
In the dark clothes, he was quickly swallowed up by the shadows. His sneakers made no noise on the concrete slab. A moment later, North caught a glimpse of Shaw silhouetted against the light bleeding out from around the roll-up door. Shaw was motionless for a minute. Then his silhouette passed in front of the light again, and after several long heartbeats, he emerged from the gloom to stand in front of North.
“He’s not in there.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“I could see between the tracks and the panel. There’s a little battery-powered lantern, and there are some clothes and a camp cot. I think he ran while we were sitting out there, like you said, and he was in such a hurry he forgot to turn off the lantern.”
North weighed his options. Then he said, “Keep an eye out.”
His mind went back to the missing padlock. In North’s opinion, it was another sign of a hasty flight; Welch must have torn out of there as soon as he caught wind of them. More likely, the same person who was letting him stay here had also tipped him off. North guessed the manager was going to be having some long, painful conversations with law enforcement sooner rather than later. North raised the door. Metal screeched against metal as it slid up its track, and he winced and stopped.
Shaw’s silence was a condemnation.
“How the fuck was I supposed to know?” North whispered furiously.
More silence. But, of course, now it was simply amused.
He ducked under the partially raised door. As Shaw had described, the furnishings were simple: the cot, with a sleeping bag pushed to one end; clothes strewn across the floor; the battery-powered lantern. North found a box of Blazer 9mm, with enough cartridges missing for him to guess this was what Welch had been firing at the hot springs. He crouched to pick through the clothes—they looked like they’d come from a resale shop or a from a box in somebody’s basement, but when he got closer, he saw the bloodstains—when he heard a sound from the corridor. It took him a moment to identify it as rubber soles slapping concrete. Shaw, of course. Probably practicing his parkour or channeling his inner cat or doing ballet—
Movement behind North made him turn. Shaw slipped under the roll-up door, and North opened his mouth to say something about keeping watch, but the mixture of fear and anger on Shaw’s face stopped him.
Then he saw the second pair of legs standing out in the hall, and North had long enough to remember that the last time anyone had seen Welch, it had been a trap.
The roll-up door screeched down, and the slide lock hammered home.
17
