Page 83 of Run for Her Life
Aiden exhaled in the passenger seat, fogging up the glass. “This is the place?”
She nodded, barely. “It matches the coordinates.”
He leaned forward, squinting into the gray. “Looks like a building time forgot.”
Ahead of them, the storage facility was half-swallowed by overgrown brush and chain-link fencing. Faded Harrington Group logos clung to concrete walls like bruises, cracked and worn by weather and time. The windows were either brokenor boarded up. Nature had started reclaiming the structure. It didn’t look like anyone had been here in years.
Zoe popped the door open and stepped out, the cold rain soaking her jeans in seconds. Aiden scrambled after her, holding a hand over his head.
“You’re not even going to pretend that this doesn’t feel like the beginning of a horror movie?” she said.
They kept walking. The wind stole his reply.
The gate was still partially standing, though the lock had long since rusted off. It swung open with a sound like metal coughing. They stepped through into the main yard, boots crunching on gravel and broken glass. The building loomed closer—its flat roof sagging slightly in the middle, ivy clinging to its seams.
Zoe stopped in front of the main door, a heavy metal slab with no sign, no warning. Just rust and silence. She looked at it, then at Aiden.
“You think this is still powered?” she asked.
“No.”
She grabbed the handle and yanked. The door groaned open a few inches before sticking. Aiden stood beside her, and together they forced it open wide enough to slip through.
The air inside was still and stale, laced with the scent of wet concrete and rot. It was darker than it should have been, the only light filtering through broken skylights and thin gaps in the boards. Their footsteps and breaths echoed immediately.
“No one has been using this, that’s for sure.” Zoe wiped her grimy hands on her jeans. “David didn’t recognize the code.”
“I’m not entirely surprised. He’s a high-level executive. I doubt he knows the product labels his warehouses are using.”
She cupped her hands around her mouth and let out a “Helloooo!” Her voice bounced around before coming back to them. When Aiden raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged. “I just wanted to get an idea of the acoustics.”
Rows of storage units stretched out in both directions, numbered in faded white paint across dented metal doors. Some were open, filled with scattered junk. Others remained locked, untouched.
“Wow,” Zoe muttered. “I don’t know what I thought we’d find, but this isn’t giving me warm and fuzzy vibes.”
She pulled out her flashlight and started walking. “This place has been shut down for years. Why would Annabelle make a code of this?”
“And Jackie kept it. So it meant something.” His eyes lit up. “What if this is where they planned to hide the game?”
“Possibly. The prototype is a VR headset. Maybe Jackie and Annabelle didn’t want to hide it in their homes in case Dawn involved the authorities and there was an investigation.”
“This place is huge.” Aiden looked around and kicked a broken pipe out of his path, the clatter breaking the stillness like a gunshot. “But an ideal place to hide something.”
The code was still folded in her jacket pocket, the paper damp but intact. INV-W7-D4-1553. The numbers had brought them this far—latitude, longitude—but the longer she looked at it, the more it didn’t feel like just coordinates. That last sequence—1553—it kept repeating in her head like a metronome.
Maybe it meant more.
The numbers on the doors ticked upward slowly as they moved: 1507, 1508, 1509. “Aiden… do you think this 1553 could correspond to one of these units?”
She stopped in front of a rusted map pinned to the wall, barely legible. She wiped a gloved hand across it, revealing a crude layout. “Storage units 1500 to 1600. Back corridor,” she read.
Aiden squinted. “Let me guess. We’re going to 1553?”
She gave him a look, still not used to him trying to crack a joke or two.
The back corridor was narrower and darker, and the doors here were spaced closer together. As they walked, she watched each number rise—1544, 1545, 1546. Some of the units were open and empty. Others had doors sagging on hinges. But most were untouched.
And then she saw it.
