Chapter 9: Cold Storage

We went the next night, after dark, in Etienne's truck with two milk crates and a stack of towels in the back.

Lise packed us sandwiches.

"If you get arrested, call me first," she said. "I'll bring bail and boudin."

"We're not going to get arrested."

"You're breaking into a freezer, cher."

"It's her seed," Etienne said. "We're carrying it home."

The causeway was open one lane at a time, with a deputy waving cars through.

Bayou State Cold Storage was a long white building behind a car wash, with a chain-link gate and a glowing keypad.

The gate was open.

The office was open too.

It was ten o'clock, and a young man with a mustache he was still working on sat behind a desk watching a ball game on his phone.

"Help you?"

"I need to get into my unit," I said. "Fourteen."

"Name?"

"Arceneaux."

He typed.

He squinted.

"Mrs. Arceneaux?"

"Mrs. Arceneaux," I said.

It was true.

I've been Mrs. Arceneaux for seven years.

He looked at Etienne.

"And you are?"

"Her husband," Etienne said.

Which was also true, if you counted hers.

The kid shrugged.

"Code's on you. Unit's down the cold hall, left at the end. Bring a jacket, it's thirty-eight in there."

We walked down a long white hallway lined with steel doors, and it got colder with every step.

"How do you know the code?" Etienne said, low.

"I don't."

"Josette."

"She uses one code for everything. You lived with her five years. What does she use?"

He thought about it.

"Our garage was her birthday. Her phone was her birthday. Her birthday's in June."

"That was before."

I took out my phone and played the start of the barn video with the sound turned low.

Luc's voice came out small and tinny in the cold hall.

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