Chapter 51
FIFTY-ONE
The rain hadn’t let up once since they’d crossed the state line. It came in sideways now, blown by a bitter wind, turning the car windows into a blur of cold water and streaked light. Zoe sat behind the wheel, her body strung tight as she drove slowly through the slick roads.
The world outside was like a dream. Headlights glowed like fireflies and storefronts were washed-out shapes. The colors were fluid, like a brush dragging through wet ink.
“When is your inquiry?” Aiden asked.
“Right.” She averted her eyes. “I told Simon to hold off until we wrap up this case.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw his fist clench. “It’s too bad that you’ll never know why that prosecutor sent that letter to you. The shooting started immediately, yeah?”
She swallowed hard. “Within a minute of me announcing who I was.”
His eyes lingered on her. She felt it burn through her skin, through her lies.
Did he know? She hid so much that she had no capacity for more secrets.
“And Viktor just showed up and started shooting? I don’t understand.
He hired Darren to keep tabs on you to make sure you didn’t go digging into your mother’s death.
You tell Darren to piss off. But why would Viktor show up out of nowhere and try to kill you? ”
Blood crept up her neck and suddenly, it was stifling hot in the car.
She couldn’t tell Aiden—not about Rachel’s involvement with Red Trigger.
A hitman. Zoe herself had refused to let that information truly sink in.
She held it at a distance, observing it through a thick sheet of glass, contemplating if this was something she could ever accept.
“Maybe my threat pissed him off. Maybe he realized that I wasn’t going to stop.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.
Her phone chirped and she quickly glanced at it. “Can you check this? I think it’s from the cyber division. They were looking into Spector.”
Aiden scrolled through the email. “They traced it to half a square mile in Pineview Falls but couldn’t get the IP address.”
“Seriously? Why not?”
“VPN’s masking it. They’ll need warrants to dig into the ISP and get any account info.”
They reached the address and Zoe parked the car, sitting motionless as she stared at the building through the windshield like it might shift into something else if she just looked long enough.
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 broken or 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.
1553.
The number was crisp. White paint, unchipped. The door itself was too clean and glossy, not collecting dust like the others. While the others were dulled by time, this one gleamed faintly in the flashlight’s beam. It stood out.
It had a different lock, too: a matte black padlock, newer than anything else around it.
Zoe stared at it, her breath catching somewhere in her chest. “Why would anyone install a new lock in a unit here?”
“Fair enough,” Aiden conceded. “What could the code be?”
Zoe stepped forward and ran her fingers over the number. The metal was cold beneath her gloves. She tried a bunch of numbers—Annabelle’s birthday, 1553, the date of the massacre, but nothing worked.
“I really thought the massacre date would do it.”
She smiled at him dryly and lifted the hem of her jeans. He blinked when she pulled out a crowbar.
“Seriously?”
“I’m always prepared.”
“Yeah, but how did you even fit that thing in there?”
Zoe didn’t answer. She was already working the lock. He sighed and stepped in to help, gripping the edge and pulling hard with her.
The lock groaned, resistant. It didn’t want to break. Zoe braced her knee against the door. “One more pull,” she said.
He nodded. “One, two…”
The lock broke free, the sound echoing down the hall like a starter’s pistol. They both froze for a moment.
Then she reached out and gripped the door handle. For a second, she didn’t move. And then—slowly, deliberately—she pulled the door open.
At first, she caught a whiff of sweat. It was the kind of air that was stale and empty, air that had been sitting too long trapped in a damp place. The room was shrouded in darkness for a few seconds before Zoe’s fumbling hands found the switch.
Light flooded the room and Zoe felt her stomach drop.
In the center of the room, a woman sat slumped in a metal chair, limbs slack like a marionette with its strings cut, her clothes damp and dirty.
Straps looped around her wrists and ankles, biting into pale skin.
Her head tilted slightly to the side, chin to chest, hair matted and clinging to her face in damp strands. Her shoulders rising and falling.
She was alive, just.
She wore a headset—sleek, black, wired to something humming softly in the shadows behind her. The soft blue glow from the headset pulsed faintly.
“Amy!” Zoe took a step forward when Aiden’s hand coiled around hers. “What?”
He put a finger to his lips, his eyes flickering to something on the floor. A shoeprint. Wet and brown. It was fresh.
And then there was a clang.