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Blake drove forward, and I waved at Corey. He waved back and jogged toward the office.
“I have to admit,” Blake said as he rolled to the first row of units and stopped the car. “I didn’t think he’d go with us so easily.”
“He’s going for Sara.”
“No,” he said, looking at me. “He’s not doing it for just her.”
My cheeks heated up, but I breathed in, trying to relax. “You know he’s gay. He’s not…not in that way, you know?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Him? You sure?”
I shrugged. “His brother said.”
He was still for a long moment, and then shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
“I didn’t think so, either,” I said, “at first. But who knows better than his brother?”
He smiled. “Well, that’s good. I thought I was going to have to brawl and I don’t know if I’d win that one. He’s pretty tall. Maybe I’d have to challenge him to something else. What was that other part you said? Something about measuring? Pretty sure I’d win that one.”
I rolled my eyes and crawled into the passenger seat so I could let myself out.
Blake grabbed his walking stick and managed to open the door before I could finish wedging myself into the front seat. I hauled myself out, scanning the units.
“How many are there?” I asked. “How do we find him?”
“Knock?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure if that would work. If other people had access to this place, it wasn’t like he’d leave Fred where people could hear him.
It was more than likely Fred was tied up somewhere.
The storage units were one-sided, with metal doors and plain brick concrete walls.
“We can eliminate the ones without padlocks,” Blake said, pointing to the rows.
“Good point.”
There was a whole row we could skip, the ones closest to the gate. After that, the locks skipped mostly every other one, sometimes two. The inside of this place was a maze. I stood at the end of one row, calculating.
Blake looked around and then went for his car.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Going to find some sort of tool. Maybe a hammer.”
“We can’t break locks. Even if we find Fred, Henry might notice his lock is broken.”
“Maybe we should be prepared to bust him out. Have a better idea?”
I went to one of the units, checking the padlock on the side of the door.
Padlocks usually either come with one or two grooves that lock the system into place. For a storage unit out in the middle of nowhere with a razor wire fence and security cameras, it’s easy to go for the cheap end of the spectrum.
Schools generally go for cheap, too. I had enough experience in high school to know not to trust a locker, not even the gym ones with padlocks. Padlocks are too easy to break into. You can make a shim out of a soda can. Wedge the shim into the lock and with a little bit of wiggling, the lock will open. Take what you want, lock it back into place, and no one knows what happened until their stuff is missing.
For someone like Henry who works in security and knows better, I imagined he was very paranoid, and used the toughest, two groove lock he could find.
But those were still grove locks; they just needed two shims.
“I need a soda can,” I said. “Go find me one and a pair of scissors.”
Blake blinked at me for a minute before he spoke. “You’re pulling my leg. You’re going to do a magic trick with a can?”
“Go and I’ll find the ones we should try.”
Blake sighed but took the Mercedes back to the front office. I started jogging up and down the rows, looking for ones that stood out.
I had never really been the athletic sort, so I ended up wheezing by the time I got to the last row. It was a series of smaller units, narrow doors, and fewer locks on the doors.
The one at the furthest corner had a big fat padlock on the outside.
I shifted the lock, feeling the weight, looking at the key slot.
Two grooves, for sure.
I knocked gently at the unit, and then put my ear to the door.
It was silent.
I tried again.
My heart was beating hard against my chest as loud as could be, but I still heard it. Shifting. It was either a really big rat, or someone was stirring inside.
Bingo.
I didn’t want to spook Fred by yelling at him, so I checked around for cameras. Sure enough, all the cameras were turned away from Fred’s. Henry didn’t want any record of what he was up to.
Blake’s Mercedes rolled up. He stopped short of the unit, got out and showed me the soda can and the scissors. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “Corey says Henry’s on the way now.”
“Fred’s in here,” I said, pointing to the last unit. I opened the can and started draining the contents.
“What are we waiting for then?” he asked. “Let’s just bust him out.”
“We should get Henry on camera,” I said. I pointed to the cameras that were nearby. “Can you angle those toward the unit?”
“You want to show yourself breaking in?”
“Corey can handle it.” I was pretty sure Corey could erase us ever being there, if he wanted.
“You trust him? He seemed pretty pissed at both of us.”
His question made me pause. I shook my head slowly. “No. He’s not like that.”
Blake sighed, rolled his eyes. “If we end up in jail, you owe me a night in Hawaii.”
“I’ll give you two if you shut up and turn those cameras.”
“On it,” he said, and he started up the car again, rolling it just under one of the cameras. Once it was positioned, he parked it and got out, climbing onto the hood. With his weight on top, the car started denting in. “You owe me a new yacht, you know,” he said. “And now a car hood.”
I ignored him as I started cutting two shims out of the soda can, trying not to slice my fingers on the aluminum. Once I had two, I bent over the lock and jabbed two sharp ends in, wedging it between the hook latch and the pad. Slide in. Twist. I pulled the lock arch. Nothing. Slid in further, and twisted the shims deeper in. Pull. Still locked.
Blake returned while I was still fiddling. “You sure you got it?”
“Shut up,” I said. I had the concept right, but the lock was tricky. Doing two shims at once was harder.
“Can I do it?” he asked.
“You don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, stuffing the shim deeper into the lock.
“I can figure it out.”
I grunted, breathed in deeply and then let it out slow. Despite my effort, I wasn’t that strong. Pushing the shims in was hurting my fingers. It didn’t help that he was breathing down my neck.
“Here,” he said. He took the lock from me, nudging me aside. He tested the shims, twisted them back and forth, testing. “You need to start out here,” he said. He showed me how he slid the tip of the shim around. T
o the front of the lock. “Start on the side of the grooves and then slide over.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“I’ve had locks,” he said, wriggling the shim deeper to the side and then twisting it around. “And did I mention I’ve got this thing for science? Simple engineering. This is the first time I’ve seen one opened with a cut up can, though. Not exactly my area of expertise.”
“So you don’t know what you’re doing?”
He smirked, twisted the shim and then jerked the base down hard. The lock opened, and one of the shims flew out, landing on the ground. He caught the other one. “Doing pretty good for a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Just help me open the door.”
We bent over, caught the handle and pulled up together.
Florida was humid, and the inside of the unit was sweltering. The smell was worse. I touched my nose, as if that could ward off the smell.
Inside, the room was barely five feet wide, but at least ten feet deep. It was dark but my eyes adjusted as we stepped inside.
On the far side, against a corner, was a pipe.
Tied to the pipe, was Fred. I barely recognized him from his pictures at his apartment. His hair was hanging over his face, the same shade as his daughter. His face had the start of a scraggly beard.
Blood stained his twisted shirt.
His eyes went wide at Blake first, then his head turned toward me. His mouth moved, but it was then I realized he had something stuffed into his mouth. He couldn’t talk.
“We should hurry,” Blake said. “Henry’s on the way.”
At this, Fred started shaking his body, glaring at us, fighting his restraints.
A fighter. I loved him so much right then. This was the parent of Sara, the four-year-old spelling, foul-language knowing, sweet little princess. I could tell right off he’d do anything for his daughter, and he’d fight to find her.
Totally worth the trouble I was about to get in.
“Fred,” I said, holding up my hands. I crept forward slowly. “We’re not with Henry.”
He shook his head rapidly, didn’t believe us.
“Look,” I said, tiptoeing closer. I didn’t want him to lash out trying to defend himself. I don’t know what they had done to him, but there were bruises all over his body and dried blood on his face and along his arms and legs. I squatted close to him, and eased forward, trying to look non-threatening. “We’re going to get you out of here, but we need your help. For Sara.”
