Chapter 11: The Warehouse

Warehouse nine stood alone at the end of Pelham Street, a long grey box behind a chain-link fence.

Ingrid's master badge opened the side gate on the first try.

"Stay behind me," Cavan said.

"No."

"Ingrid."

"She's seven, and she's mine too," Ingrid said, and went in first.

Inside, rows of pallets stretched into the dark.

At the back, a light burned in a glassed-in office.

Two men sat on folding chairs outside it, eating from a pizza box.

Cavan went down the aisle between the pallets without a sound.

The first man heard something and turned.

Cavan hit him once, under the ear, and caught him as he fell.

The second stood up with his mouth full and his hand going to his belt.

Cavan took the gun from the holster before it cleared.

He folded the man's wrist back and laid him on the concrete with a knee in his spine.

It took only a moment.

Ingrid had seen him in the alley and in the garage.

She had never seen him without the joke in his face.

His eyes were cold as a winter lake, and she understood, for the first time, that the laughing man in the Corolla was the costume.

"Door," he said.

She pulled it open.

Posy sat on a cot inside, with a juice box in one hand and a half-eaten slice of pizza in the other.

A man in a grey coat, the lanyard man, stood over her with a phone to his ear.

"Daddy!" Posy shrieked.

The man spun around.

He lunged for Posy's arm.

Ingrid saw a red fire extinguisher on the wall and had it in both hands before she'd decided anything.

She swung it.

It caught the man across the side of the head with a sound like a dropped pot.

He folded onto the cot, and the juice box bounced.

Cavan was across the room and had Posy in his arms before the man hit the floor.

"Hi, Bean," he said, and his voice shook for the first time. "I'm here."

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