“We need to go to the cannery,” I say. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
Kez grabs me by the arm as I pass her, heading for the driver’s seat. “Or—and hear me out—we wait for Sam to get real boots on the ground here to back us up.”
“He said ten minutes.” I gently pull free. “Ten minutes until there are consequences. Whose pictures did he send you?”
She doesn’t answer. She just stands there, fists clenched, and then nods.
We get in the Honda and drive.
23
GWEN
We see not a soul on the way out of town. Not a single person behind a window, not a car, nothing. The town feels artificial now, like a movie set.
The whole day feels wrong. Sweatily humid, but cool. The reek of rot gets worse as we drive with windows open, and the Honda’s nonexistent suspension bounces on every bump and crack. The sound of seagulls crying rings in the air like bells.
The smell is worse the closer we get to the beach. I wonder if a whale has beached in the area. It’s that bad, a rancid, fishy smell that makes me want to gag. I breathe it deep instead in the hopes I’ll get used to it. Humans are adaptable, that’s our real strength. We can adapt to anything, given enough time and resources. Jonathan—clever, strange Jonathan—isn’t going to give us that.
I park the Honda near the back fence of the cannery. Kez looks at me, and I look at her, and neither of us speaks. We finally just get out. Kez opens the trunk and hands me a shotgun; she keeps one for herself. We’ve each got our usual sidearms, but she gives me a hunting knife, and I snap it on my belt. She’s got two police-issue body armor vests, and we put those on too. The weight feels smothering, but comforting too.
“Just so we’re clear,” she says, “this is the end of both our careers if we do this and it turns out we were wrong. And that could be exactly what he wants too.”
“We’re not wrong,” I tell her. But she’s also correct. It probably is the end of her career as a detective, regardless; she’s out of her jurisdiction, armed to the teeth, ready to kill. And so am I. I’ve skated out of a lot of close calls. I’m due for a bad fall.
“Okay. Just wanted to be clear about it. Stay together. We don’t split up.”
“Agreed. Kez?”
She slams the trunk and gives me her attention.
“You don’t have to do this. Please think about the baby.”
She shakes her head. “I love you, too, Gwen, but fact is, the next person he comes after could be Javier, since I came this far. I don’t want my baby growing up without a dad because I backed off. Besides . . . it might be you he really wants. But I want him. Prester deserves that much.”
Choices. I’m not sure it’s right, if any of this is right. But in one sense, Jonathan’s correct: everything is a choice. And everything we do will have consequences.
“You got any bolt cutters?” I ask her, and she shakes her head. “Ladder in your pocket?”
“Shut up and pop that hubcap,” she says. “Y’all don’t know how to improvise.”
I smile and use the knife to get the Honda’s hubcap off. She catches it and goes to the fence, kneels down, and starts digging. The soil’s soft and sandy, and she scoops out a big pile, then flips on her back and slithers under. “Good thing about body armor,” she says. “It also keeps you flat for things like this.”
Not that I need a ton of help in that department. Kez and I are otherwise of a size, so the hole she’s dug works for me too, with some creative wriggling. I roll up to my hands and knees and take a step onto the bare ground. It’s harder packed here, but it was used as some kind of outdoor lunch area; there are still a few rusting metal tables and some yellowed plastic molded chairs scattered around. I can’t imagine it would have been too pleasant out here in the summer, but no doubt better than inside the cannery.
There’s no door on this side, so we head around to the parking lot, which faces a loading dock with six roll-up doors. The pavement is buckled and cracked like dry mud; we watch our footing and head up the steps at the loading dock. Kez tries the metal back door. Locked. We work our way down the line of dock doors. One moves, but not much. Maybe six inches up before it sticks fast. It’s a gap, but it’s tight. I don’t ask, I just go first, and push myself underneath. My belt catches, and for a second I panic, thinking that the door’s coming down, that it’s automatic and going to crush me, cut me in half . . . but then I suck in my breath and fumble at my belt buckle and am able to fit through. I roll to my knees, shotgun heavy in my hands, and scan the area.
It’s empty. An empty warehouse that once would have held pallets of canned food shipping out to the area, if not the country. Very still, concrete the shade of mist and ghosts. It’s been cleaned out completely. I don’t even see spiderwebs or broken windows. There are windows, up high toward the ceiling, which is a blessing because it’s otherwise dark. I have a flashlight, but I’d rather save it.
My heart’s pounding. My head’s throbbing. The reek of dead fish is stronger in here, an almost tangible odor, like it’s radiating from the bare concrete. How did people stand it, day after day? They must have never been able to wash the stench out of their hair, their skin, their clothes.
Kez slips under the door and joins me in silent appraisal for a second. “Well,” she says. “This might have been useless.”
“This room is,” I say. “But let’s take a deeper look.”
She coughs into her elbow. “Should have brought Vicks. This is as rank as any crime scene I’ve ever been to.”
She’s right, but we push on. We cross the bare concrete to the far-left wall, where a broad double door stands, big enough to admit forklifts. It’s closed. I try it, and the knob turns easily in my hand. When the door swings open, it doesn’t make a sound. I’m ready. Ready to fire on him if he’s standing there. I will not hesitate.
I’m so focused on that, it doesn’t occur to me to wonder why the door moves so smoothly. And then I’m blinded by a white-hot glare of light and a wall of sound so chaotic, so loud that it stuns me like a physical blow. The noise is crippling, astonishing; it drives me to my knees. I’ve dropped the shotgun and clapped my hands to my ears and I don’t care, anything to stop the noise, though even that doesn’t stop it, only muffles it the slightest bit. I can’t see either. Blinding strobes in my eyes. By that time, I realize I’ve triggered a trap and drop flat, which I should’ve done in the first place, and try to roll away. The farther I get from the doorway, the better I feel, but I can’t see. My ears are bells ringing with incoherent noise. Kez. Where’s Kez?
Someone’s pulling me away from the chaos, hands under my arms. Taking me farther from the torture. Thank you. Thank you, Kez. I try to say it, but I don’t know if I’m actually speaking, shouting, screaming. My ears don’t work yet.
I can’t see anything. Just blindingly white ghosts of strobes that persist and twist and move.
The noise gets fainter. The strobes get less blinding. I feel myself being pulled into a dark, quiet area, and I suddenly need to throw up. I roll on my side and do that, horrified and ashamed and wildly out of control, and I can hear myself sobbing and gagging now, but as soft and distant as a memory.