AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maybe it was better. I deserved it.
We were quiet for a long while as Blake punched the gas, zipping through town, listening to the GPS give him directions.
“Say,” Blake said after a few minutes. “I don’t want to get in the middle of this—”
“Then don’t,” Corey said.
“I just don’t know what our plan is. What are we doing? What’s going on?”
This forced me to start talking about Luanne, that she had been at the party, and the phone call and Sara. “Henry called saying he was picking up Fred. He must have taken him, and took Sara to her mother. They acted like they were still looking for them though. I don’t understand why they were waiting.”
“They waited until the check cleared,” Blake said. “And then a couple more days so it doesn’t look too suspicious.” He shook his head. “What a bastard. And that woman…”
“How do we get the money back?” I asked.
“One thing at a time,” Blake said. “We need to get Fred first. If they deliver him to the cops, with Henry, he may not have a chance. Henry may have convinced him to go with the plan or they kill him or something.”
“Is it a dead or alive thing? If they kill him, can they collect?”
“It’ll be the last thing they want to do,” Blake said. “There’s more questions when they show up with a dead body. Fred might not know that, though, and may believe anything when he’s been held against his will this long.”
“What do you know about the storage unit place?” I asked Corey.
Corey rolled his head back against the seat and sighed. “It’s about a hundred units. If we get there before Henry does, I won’t know which one. He could have him inside any of them.”
“Either we get lucky and find the right one before Henry shows up,” Blake said, “or we take a chance waiting for Henry to show up and confront him.”
“Can we go up against Henry?” I asked.
Corey breathed in deeply. “We don’t know if he’s got other people with him. We don’t know if he’s armed, which he probably is.”
“We need backup,” I said.
“Oh no,” Blake said. “You’re not calling…”
“Blake,” I said. “If you want to go head to head with armed law enforcement, be my guest.”
“They can’t arrest us,” Blake said. “They can only take him. They aren’t cops. If they want to deal with us, they’d have to do something illegal, and they’re already doing that.”
“So they don’t mind doing more, probably,” Corey said. “We need a plan. And we need one now. They may not have time to get there if I don’t send word out.”
“Call them,” I said.
Corey looked back at me. His eyes met mine, silently asking, Are you sure?
I understood why he was asking. When they showed up, there’s no way they’d miss the fact that Blake was here. They’d want to know why. I was probably sacrificing my chance at the Academy to do it this way.
I nodded. “Please. For Sara.”
Corey twisted his lips, and typed into his phone. “Texting Axel and the others where we’re at, and that we need backup.”
“We can’t rely on them showing up on time, though,” Blake said.
I drew quiet, trying to think up something else, but I didn’t know the layout, and I didn’t know so many other details, so coming up with a solid plan wasn’t going to work. I had to rely on winging it.
That was more my style, anyway.
FINDING FRED
Ten minutes later, we were just outside of town. The storage unit complex was a brand-new structure, set a good distance away from everything, sitting under the shadow of a billboard advertising albino alligators.
“It’s a white croc,” Blake said, pointing to the sign.
“Alligator,” Corey said.
“Oh yeah. I keep forgetting: American Alligator, Chinese Crocodiles. What’s the difference anyway? They look the same. Is it just location?”
The corner of Corey’s mouth lifted a little. “One’s more badass.”
I smiled. They may not like working together, but Corey seemed a little better than before. Maybe he wasn’t mad at me anymore.
Corey studied his phone, and then listened to it. “Looks like we’ve got a bit of time,” Corey said.
“What do you mean?” Blake asked.
“Henry’s at his office right now. Hearing him on the bug Kayli dropped in his office.”
“So it is working?” I asked.
“Yeah. Loud and clear. But he’s leaving soon. Had to drop off something apparently.”
Blake pulled into the storage unit’s driveway. We were stopped by a gate. The front office appeared empty, even though it was in the middle of the afternoon.
“We’re here first,” Blake said.
“Security cameras,” Corey said, and pointed out one near the entrance.
They were angled so you could see who was coming and going. “Think anyone’s watching from somewhere else?” I asked.
Corey tapped his fingers on the dash. “I think we can use these,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
He turned to me. “If we break into the office, we could use—”
“Hang on there,” Blake said. “We’re not breaking into anything.”
Corey made a face. “You’re okay with getting into the storage units…”
“There’s a line somewhere,” Blake said. “You cross over that illegal line, and we’re all in jail in a heartbeat.”
“You can’t—”
“Just tell me what you were going to say,” I said over them.
Corey looked at Blake and then at me. “I was just saying, I bet those cameras are fixed on storage units. If we can record Henry taking Fred out of the storage unit, and maybe even record the conversation following…”
“We’d have evidence Henry plotted all this?” I asked. “I know the law is kind of twisted when it comes to people who run out on a bond. They can do lots of weird things like break into houses without a warrant, can’t they?”
“Last I checked,” Blake said, “kidnapping is still illegal.”
“Funny you should be saying that,” Corey said.
“I didn’t kidnap her. She went with me.”
“Shut up!” I cried. “Okay, Corey, let’s break into the office. Do we have any…any of those bugs around? The ones you guys had?”
“In the SUV,” Corey said. He tapped his fingers. Suddenly he changed and sat up quickly. “Wait. Don’t you still have that cell phone I gave you?”
“Why mine?” I asked, pulling it from my pocket. “Why not yours?”
“Yours has… uh…”
I stared at him. “You bugged my phone?”
“It was bugged before we knew you. It was an emergency phone before.”
“With a bug in it?”
“We never know what type of emergency…”
Blake grabbed Corey’s arm hard. “Are you telling me you’ve been listening to her phone calls?”
Corey tried tugging his arm back. “What?”
“Did you know I was here before she said anything? Are you monitoring her?”
“I…”
“Yes or no?”
“Guys!” I slapped at Blake. “Hands off each other. We can argue later. Blake, figure out how to get inside and check the units, see if you can find Fred. Make sure a camera is on that unit, and then stash the car and get out of sight. Corey…”
“Go with him,” Corey said. “I can handle the office.”
“But…”
He leaned back to look at me and touched my face. “Listen, I’m okay. It’ll be faster if I work alone. And I can be the lookout in case Henry shows up, maybe even slow him down. Find Fred. That’s who we need. I’ll start recording. Plant your phone as close to that storage unit as you can without drawing attention to it.”
I nodded slowly, listening, but from the moment he touched me, I was floating. I was asking him questions
with a look, begging for answers to things that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. Do you not hate me now? Can you ever forgive me? Can we ever go back to being what we were before?
Corey, slowly, lifted the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t his full smile, but it told me what I needed to know; Corey and I were still friends, we just had a lot to talk about later.
I loved him before, but if he could forgive me this, I swore I’d make it up to him, and he and I could be best friends for life. Maybe even family.
“We need to hurry,” Blake said.
“Let me get you inside,” Corey said. He jumped out of the car. There was a box beside the unit’s guard gate. He looked at it for a couple of minutes, until I thought he might have been stumped.
“What’s he doing?” Blake asked.
Corey tapped the box, typing something into the number pad. In an instant, there was a green light and the storage unit doors rolled open.
“Being a Data,” I said.
