Page 43 of Haven't Killed in Years
“Okay…”
“They sold the facility to some big nationwide treatment center—that’s not important. Care Vision, LLC, didn’t disband. They got out of the kid business, but they still operate four halfway homes outside Philadelphia. And more than that, Care Vision, LLC, has an active lease on three storage units in East Buford, Pennsylvania.”
“How do you know that—about the storage units?”
“I called the number on the website, pretending I was from the city tax office. I said I was calling to confirm they no longer owned or leased any property in East Buford and they quickly corrected me, afraid of more fines.”
“Very savvy.”
“So the files have to be in there, right? I mean, what else would they keep in there?”
“I don’t know, furniture?”
“No one is going to pay rent to store some old furniture for ten years.”
“You still have the same problem—controlled access.” I couldn’t let him know I was nervous, but I sure could let him know I was annoyed and hopefully thwart this before we reached the highway.“You’re driving me all the way out there again to be reminded of a thing called locks? There has to be a better way to go about this.”
“Ididhave that same problem…” He paused, waiting for me to beg him for further explanation.
“Buuuut?” I obliged.
“I called the storage unit office. It’s a mom-and-pop place, not one of those huge companies—just, like, a guy who’s owned some units forever. I said I was performing a periodic security test and wanted to make sure the list of people with access to the units was up to date. The ownerfaxedme the list, can you believe it? He didn’t know how to email it. I had to sign up for an online fax number.”
“With your own name?”
“No, I used a fake email and that’s all I needed. I mean, I’m sure someMr. Robotcyber police could track my IP or something, but I’m not going to sweat it. We’re not stealing the crown jewels.”
“What are you going to do with the list?”
“I told the man we’d send someone over in the next week because we’re thinking about going digital. He spouted off a ton of reasons not to go purely digital, mostly about the Chinese blowing up all our satellites, but he seemed very eager to keep Care Vision as happy customers. So I found the guy on the list who looks the most like me and John made me a fake ID.”
“Who’s John?”
“You know John. He lives with Jake.”
“Oh, right,” I said, having no idea who John was. All those guys looked the same to me. Not a lot of diversity, a lot of ripped black jeans and faux-faded graphic tees.
I was already in the car and his plan seemed a hell of a lot more solid than OperationAce Ventura. I couldn’t very well let him get to those files without me, so I said, “Fine.”
“Thank you!” He beamed, adjusting in his seat, expressively getting into long-car-ride mode.
Spending five hours in the car and then five hours back with him, or anyone, was not particularly enticing, but I didn’t really have another option. So many holes in the dam, but Dominic getting access to those files seemed to be the most problematic at the moment. I didn’t know if there were files in those storage units, and even if there were, I didn’t know if there would be one for me. I didn’t want to think about what I would have to do if there was. Could I trust Dominic to keep my secret? Was it possible he already knew and this was all a ruse to torture me? Short of violence, all I could do at this point was wait and find out. So I sat quietly and thought about all the other problems I was ignoring in favor of this one.
I needed to be with Porter, wherever he was. He hadn’t gone home like I’d told him to and he hadn’t responded to any of my texts. I should have been looking for him, but short of reporting my car missing, I had no place to start.
And Elyse. What was I to even think about her anymore? She wasn’t the person who’d met Porter at Old Navy. Was that enough to believe she wasn’t involved? She could have hired someone—an aspiring actor. Or was it Dominic who’d hired someone? Dominic, sitting next to me, taking me on this trip, laughing on the inside about how dumb I must be. Taking cues from Abel or going rogue to impress Abel or going rogue to try to get the upper hand on Abel.
“Check it out,” Dominic said, pausing my spiral by handing me the fake ID. “John did a great job.”
Or John! Was it John? Whoever John was. I was getting worked up. I counted the buttons around the car radio,1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
“What are you doing?” Dominic asked.
“What?”
“You’re staring at the radio. You can change it if you want.”
“No, nothing. I zoned out. I’m tired.”
