Chapter 15: The Trunk

Nolan drove, and I drew the cold-storage building on the back of a shipping invoice, in four lines.

"Loading gate on the west wall," I said. "Two doors on the dock side. A catwalk over the freezer floor."

"How do you know?"

"I sketched the whole pier the week I got here." I did not look up.

"Your mother is in a car trunk on the freezer floor. That's where he'd put her."

"Why?"

"Because it's the only place in that building with no windows."

His hands tightened on the wheel.

His mother was sixty-one with a bad hip, and she had been in a trunk for two hours.

He had not said that out loud, and I had not made him.

"I go in through the dock door," I said. "You take the roof."

"No."

"Nolan."

"I go in with you," he said. "It's my mother."

I finally looked at him.

"Then you do what I say, when I say it."

"Yes."

"Every time."

"Yes," he said, and I saw him realize he meant it.

The Pier Twelve building stood alone at the end of the planks, with one yellow light over the gate.

We left the car a block back and went in along the water.

I picked the dock door lock in under a minute.

Inside, the freezer floor was cold enough to smoke our breath.

Four men stood around a black sedan with the trunk shut.

Gerard's men.

Nolan knew two of them by name.

"Four on the floor, two above," I breathed. "Wait for the lights."

"What lights?"

"The ones I'm about to make go out."

I stepped to the breaker panel and pulled the main.

The building went black.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Chose the Wrong Daughter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.