Chapter 7 - Dock Six
At 2:10 a.m., Dad told me to stay home.
At 2:12, I was in Tessa's SUV.
Dock Six sat behind an abandoned Whitmore warehouse near the river, a place the company had stopped using years earlier.
Rain hammered the windshield.
"If this is a trap," Dad said from the back seat, "we leave."
"You don't get to become protective after hiding half my life."
He said nothing.
Inside the warehouse, our flashlights moved across rusted shelving and plastic-wrapped machinery.
Tessa found fresh tire tracks.
I found blood.
Not much.
Three drops near an office door.
The lock had been forced.
Inside, a folding chair sat beneath a hanging work light. Zip ties lay on the floor.
My stomach turned.
"Adrian was here."
Tessa crouched beside a trash can and pulled out a torn shirt sleeve.
Then Dad noticed the wall.
Someone had written numbers in black marker.
17-4-9-22.
"A code?" I asked.
Dad stared at it.
"No. Storage coordinates. Old archive system. Building seventeen, row four, cabinet nine, drawer twenty-two."
"Where?"
"Our records center in Cicero."
A phone began ringing.
We all froze.
The sound came from beneath the chair.
Tessa picked it up with gloves.
The screen showed one incoming call.
DANIEL.
I answered.
"Where is Adrian?"
Daniel breathed once into the phone.
"Mara, listen to me. Reed is not working for me anymore."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I don't care what you believe. If Marcus knows you're at Dock Six, get out now."
A red dot appeared on the wall beside my shoulder.
Tessa slammed me to the floor.
The office window shattered.
Dad shouted.
We crawled behind a steel cabinet as another round struck concrete.
Daniel's voice was still on the phone.
"Mara? Mara!"
Tessa dragged us toward the rear exit.
May you like
And for the first time, I heard something in my husband's voice I had not heard all day.
Fear.
