Lucas made his way to the back of the house and entered the large room that served as Papi’s office. He gazed at the garden through the wall of windows and wondered how any work got done in here with such a distracting view.
“Lucas, my boy!” Papi always addressed everyone with a lively greeting, as if a lengthy span of time had elapsed since he’d last seen them. In this case, it was dinner, only three hours earlier.
“Hi, Papi. What’s up? What’d you want to see me about?”
“Have a seat.” Papi rounded the granite-topped desk and sat in the high-back leather chair, while Lucas sat opposite him wondering what necessitated a discussion in his office.
“I want to talk to you about Sindy. There’s a little snafu with her background check.”
Lucas sat back in his chair, imagining the worst. “She has an arrest record, doesn’t she?”
“No. Not at all. She has a clean record. A clean driver’s license. Her credit’s not the best, but I can forgive that considering she’s a young woman on her own struggling to make ends meet. It’s her address that doesn’t check out.”
“What do you mean?”
“She originally put down a P.O. box, so I called her and asked for a street address. The address she gave me belongs to a storage center.” His eyes turned pensive, trying to make sense of the false address. “I don’t know if she’s staying with someone and doesn’t want to give out their information and this is where she stores her things, or if she gave me a false address on purpose. I don’t know what to make of this, so before I investigate further, I thought I’d ask you how to proceed before I confront her. I’m happy to call her again, but perhaps she’d be more forthcoming if you or Tessa spoke to her about it.”
Lucas furrowed his brow with confusion. He began to have genuine feelings for Sindy, and now this puzzle presented itself. “I don’t know what to make of it either. We were finally getting along. She’s a fantastic guitar player.”
“She’s very gifted. I can’t believe she doesn’t have a signed contract already.”
One of his brows arched, and he grunted a little. “Well, she can be opinionated and argumentative.”
Papi smiled. “All divas have an attitude, male and female.”
“You should have seen her when I first started teaching her music theory. She would roll her eyes at me, and she’d play riffs that she thought were better than mine. She drives me crazy sometimes. She would bait me into an argument. Like she enjoyed watching me get flustered and bothered.”
“Women are tricky little minxes. It’s not just the schoolboy who pulls the little girl’s ponytail for attention.” Papi pushed a manila folder across the desk. “I’ll leave this with you. Follow up on her address and get back to me. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. In the meantime, I’ll have legal go ahead and prepare the contract. But, I need a valid address.”
Lucas took the file back to his suite and Googled the address. As expected, it linked to a self-storage facility. Something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know why Sindy would give Papi two wrong addresses. He stared at the computer screen, baffled. “What are you hiding?” he muttered under his breath. “Let’s find out.”
He chose to take the car instead of his bike so he didn’t draw attention to himself with the loud engine of his Harley. Thirty minutes later, he found himself in front of the storage facility that matched the address that Sindy put down as her residence. A clerk sat behind the counter, visible from the curb where Lucas was parked. He didn’t plan on going inside, but he didn’t know what else to do.
A jingle announced his presence and the clerk looked up from his computer. “Can I help you?”
“Does Sindy Cavanaugh rent a storage unit here, or do you collect her mail?” Lucas asked.
“I’m sorry. That’s confidential information.”
“Is there an apartment or residential unit on the premises that she might rent?”
“Nothing like that. Only garages and storage units for people’s junk.”
Lucas returned to his car, no clearer about Sindy’s home address than before he came to the storage place. He’d have to ask her about it and hoped it didn’t start an argument. It was as if she thrived on combative dialogue with him sometimes. A flutter ran down his back and arousal made his crotch tingle. He let out a small laugh. What the hell was wrong with him? No one ever affected him like this before.
He slipped the key into the ignition, but before he could turn over the engine, a Toyota Corolla pulling into the storage facility caught his attention. It was Sindy. He stuck his head out the window and called to her, but she didn’t hear him and continued to punch a code into the keypad. He stepped out of the car and called her name again, but she drove through the gate. It didn’t close behind her, so he trotted after the car and into the alley that led to the individual storage units. She never slowed down, and he lost sight of her car when it turned a corner. When he finally rounded the turn, he saw her car parked along the fence, but she was gone. He stood near it while he caught his breath and looked around to see which unit she entered. All of the roll-up metal gates were locked, but there was a door leading to a lighted hallway for indoor units. He poked his head inside. “Sindy? Hello?” Nothing. He took a few tentative steps into the dimly lit hallway, an eerie prickle sending a shiver over his flesh. There was nothing but rows of metal roll-up doors, some secured with deadbolts or padlocks. It didn’t feel right. It was too quiet. Too desolate. He felt like he was intruding and decided to leave. He turned toward the exit when music suddenly came from one of the storage units. He paused when he realized it wasKnocking on Heaven’s Door. “Sindy?” Maybe this is where she came to play. He followed the sound to the unit where the music came from and hesitated with his hand in the air ready to knock on the metal door. He didn’t want her to think he was spying on her. Would she believe that he didn’t intentionally follow her here and that he was only checking the address and coincidentally ran into her? Or that she didn’t hear him when he called after her as he chased her car into the alleyway?
While he debated on whether or not to go home, the metal door flew up with a rumble and Sindy faced him with a garbage bag in her hand, wearing fuzzy slippers and lounge pants. She let out a small gasp and her cheeks turned crimson.
“Lucas. What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t you hear me calling—” He looked past her and into the storage unit. There were open boxes with clothing hanging over the sides. Her waitress uniform hung on a hook on the wall. A blow-up mattress, covered in blankets, sat on the floor in the corner next to her guitar case. A queasy feeling settled in his stomach as he took it all in, refusing to believe what he knew to be true. “Are you living here?”
Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks in long wet streaks. Her mouth started to quiver and then her lips drew back into a horrible grimace. She dropped the plastic garbage bag and covered her face to hide her sobs as she pulled on the handle to the metal door.
He stood there, startled and bewildered, and watched the metal door fall to the ground like a guillotine. “Sindy!” He pounded on the door, sending a loud metallic clang echoing throughout the hallway. “Open the door. What’s going on?”
She sniffled. “Go away, Lucas. Leave me alone.”
