CHAPTER 11
CELESTE
The speed of the decision should concern me.
Instead, I open the property record attached to the address and confirm that Armand Atlantic still leases the building.
“Off-site archive,” June says from the chair across my desk. “Older manifests, vendor contracts, physical payment records. Most of it was supposed to be digitized years ago.”
“Victor ordered the files moved last week.”
“Some of them. Leonard said the transfer wasn’t complete.”
“When is it scheduled?”
“Tonight.”
The wall clock reads 11:10.
Kellan is at the Accord with Tomas, reviewing Northline payments. He promised to return before three.
We promised not to hide evidence.
The promise is less than twenty-four hours old.
It should be stronger than this.
“We tell him,” June says.
“I heard the unspoken accusation.”
“It was spoken.”
“If we tell him, he will lock down the building, notify the Accord, and turn retrieval into an operation.”
“That sounds safer.”
“It also gives whoever is monitoring the Accord time to reach the files first.”
June leans back, arms folded.
She wears a black sweater, gray trousers, and practical boots. Her hair is loose today, falling bluntly to her shoulders. She looks less like an analyst than a person attempting to decide whether friendship includes permission to physically restrain an employer.
“You believe someone inside the Accord is involved,” she says.
“Kellan believes the marriage was prepared using their authority.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No. It is enough.”
“And if we go alone?”
“We retrieve the boxes Gabriel marked and leave.”
June looks toward the office windows.
Outside, employees move through the risk department carrying reports, coffee, and the ordinary burdens of Monday. No one appears frightened. They know about the garage attack, but the company has issued a statement calling it an isolated security incident.
I approved the language.
Now I am planning to enter an unsecured building without telling the man responsible for protecting me.
Self-awareness is not always useful.
“Celeste,” June says, “your husband is terrifying, but he has vehicles, weapons, and people whose job is to prevent us from being murdered beside filing cabinets.”
“If I call Kellan, he may stop us.”
“Possibly because of the murdered part.”
“I need the records before Victor removes them.”
“Then give Kellan thirty minutes to make the murdered part less likely.”
I unlock my phone.
The screen displays Kellan’s name.
My thumb hovers above it.
I remember the promise in the kitchen. Forty-eight hours. Everything that changes my choices.
He asked for the same honesty from me.
Then I remember his pause when I asked whether the order concerned me. The way he admitted only enough to postpone the rest.
Trust should not require one person to act first every time.
That thought is convincing because it protects the choice I already want to make.
“We take your car,” I say.
June closes her eyes.
“Terrible decisions should at least involve company vehicles.”
“Your car is less visible.”
“That was not support.”
We leave through the employee garage. I send Kellan a message before getting into June’s sedan.
Reviewing archived vendor records with June. Back before three.
It is true.
It is also designed to prevent him from asking where.
A familiar form of dishonesty.
The archive occupies a low brick building near an old freight yard south of the main terminals. Half the neighboring properties are empty. A chain-link fence surrounds the parking lot, and weeds grow through cracks in the pavement.
June stops beside the entrance.
“No security car,” she says.
“The lease probably predates the current contractor.”
“That sentence has never prevented a crime.”
I try the access card.
The light turns green.
Inside, the air is colder than outside and smells of dust, damp cardboard, and aging paper. Rows of metal shelves fill the main room. Fluorescent lights activate in sections as we move.
June looks at her phone.
“No signal.”
“Mine has one bar.”
“Comforting. You can call for help slowly.”
A clipboard hangs near the entrance. The most recent sign-in occurred Friday afternoon.
Victor Halden.
No time out.
I photograph the page.
“Which section?” June asks.
“Shipping records, five years ago to present.”
We find the shelves at the rear.
Several boxes have been removed. Clean rectangles remain in the dust where they stood.
Others are marked for destruction with orange labels.
My father’s green pencil lines appear on three.
“He came here,” I say.
June touches one box. “Recently.”
The label is dated last Thursday.
Gabriel had visited four days before his death.
We place the first box on a table and open it.
Inside are physical payment approvals tied to Northline, medical contractors, and a security company I do not recognize. Gabriel inserted green index cards between groups of documents.
The first card reads:
EMPTY ROUTES. REAL PAYMENTS. FIND WHO IS MOVING WITHOUT CARGO.
His handwriting crosses the paper in impatient block letters.
For a moment, the building disappears.
I see him at his desk, glasses pushed up into his hair, writing too hard because the pencil lead kept breaking. He would have complained about the box labels. He would have called me only after he understood enough to sound certain.
He died before certainty.
My throat closes around something I refuse to let become sound.
June places her hand near mine on the table without touching.
“We found it,” she says.
“Some of it.”
I photograph each card.
The next section contains payments to a private security contractor. Repeated sums, divided across terminals so no single amount looks remarkable.
June sits at an old computer and tries to access the archive index.
“This company received money every week,” she says. “No assigned guards. No service reports.”
“Northline funded it.”
“Through Armand accounts.”
“Authorized by whom?”
She scrolls.
“Operations office.”
“Victor.”
“His department. Not his signature.”
Footsteps sound near the front of the building.
June stops moving. The fluorescent lights in the entry section go dark.
Someone has used the switch.
I close the box.
“Back exit?” June whispers.
I look toward the emergency map on the wall.
“Loading dock behind the shelves.”
A second set of footsteps enters.
More than one person.
We move quickly without running. June takes the payment file. I carry Gabriel’s green cards and a folder of Northline approvals.
The lights turn off section by section behind us.
Whoever entered knows the building.
A man’s voice travels between the shelves.
“Ms. Armand?”
June mouths a word I will not repeat.
We reach the rear aisle. The loading door is secured by a manual bar. I lift it slowly, trying to avoid the metal scrape.
The main lights go out.
Red emergency lamps switch on near the floor.
The archive becomes a series of narrow shadows.
“Open it,” I say.
June pulls the door.
It moves six inches and stops.
A chain wraps the outer handles.
“Locked from outside.”
A shelf rattles in the next aisle.
I pull out my phone.
No signal.
The message I sent Kellan shows as delivered.
Nothing after it.
“We need another exit,” June says.
“The office windows.”
“Front of the building.”
“Yes.”
A sharp chemical smell reaches us.
Gasoline.
They are not here for the files alone.
“Fire,” I say.
June goes pale.
Smoke appears near the ceiling at the far end, thin at first, then darkening.
We move toward the side aisle. The emergency map showed a small records office with an exterior window. If it opens—
A man steps into the intersection ahead.
Black jacket. Gloves. Respirator hanging around his neck.
He looks surprised to see us.
That helps.
I throw the folder at his face.
Papers explode through the red light.
June swings the metal clipboard she took from the entrance. It catches him across the shoulder, not the head, but he turns.
We run past.
Another man comes from the next aisle.
He grabs June by the back of her sweater.
She twists, loses her footing, and strikes the edge of a shelf. Metal boxes fall around us.
I drive my shoulder into the man holding her.
Pain shoots through my arm.
He releases June long enough for her to pull away.
The first attacker catches up.
He has a lighter in one hand.
I hit the wall alarm.
Nothing happens.
The system is dead.
I slap the emergency release beneath it.
A mechanical siren begins somewhere deeper in the building, loud enough to vibrate through the shelves.
The man with the lighter flinches.
I grab the red fire extinguisher from the wall, pull the pin, and discharge it into his face.
White powder fills the aisle.
He curses, blinded.
June grabs my sleeve.
“This way.”
We reach the records office. The window is narrow, reinforced with wire glass, and painted shut.
June lifts a chair and strikes it.
The glass cracks but does not break.
Smoke thickens behind us.
I take the extinguisher and drive the metal base into the center. The second impact breaks a hole. The wire holds much of the pane in place.
June pulls at it with her sleeve wrapped around one hand.
A loud crack comes from the aisle.
The crack comes from a collapsing shelf.
Then a sharper sound.
The window breaks outward as June tears the wire free. A glass fragment slices across her lower leg.
She gasps and drops to one knee.
Blood appears immediately through the gray fabric of her trousers.
“No.”
I crouch beside her.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“You are bleeding.”
“This is a terrible time to borrow his dialogue.”
The smoke reaches the office.
I hook one arm beneath June’s and pull her upright.
The window opening is barely wide enough.
“You first.”
“Celeste—”
“You cannot climb with that leg after me.”
She grips the sill and pushes herself through. Glass tears her sweater. She drops outside with a cry she tries to swallow.
One of the men enters the office behind me.
I swing the extinguisher.
He catches it, wrenching it sideways.
My injured palm splits beneath the bandage.
He pulls me away from the window. I release the extinguisher and drive the green pencil into the back of his hand.