4. Renee
RENEE
I roll down the window, letting the cool air rush in as he palms the wheel. The music playing on the radio is vaguely familiar, but I can’t remember for the life of me where I heard it before. Right now, I’m not sure it matters.
“You alright?” he asks, and I nod, closing my eyes as I lean against the headrest.
“Just enjoying the break from driving.”
“I told you, I could have taken over sooner.”
“Yeah, I know,” I reply, flashing him a grin. “But maybe I didn’t trust you behind the wheel till we were out of the city.”
He rolls his eyes skyward, but I can tell he doesn’t mind my ribbing.
He seems to have a decent sense of humor about himself, at least from the little I have seen of him so far; I don’t know this guy well, and I’m sure that it’s all kinds of crazy to agree to go out on this adventure with him.
But he has worked with my grandfather before, and I am certain that he would never steer me wrong.
If he has his seal of approval, that’s all I need to know.
I open the map, laying it out on my lap and trace my finger across the town of Remarque, where he believes he picked up the wardrobe in the first place. I narrowed it down to a few places, where the map could be pointing to.
There are surprisingly few places with a river that bends just the way it does on the sketched-out map, with the cluster of trees next to a small mountainous area nearby.
The fact that Drew recognized Remarque as soon as I showed it to him is all the proof I need, and I am not going to let my overthinking get the better of me. I am going in the right direction. I am sure of it.
I have to be.
“So, where is the motel, again?” he asks.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting tired already,” I tease him, raising my eyebrows, and he shakes his head.
“I’m not. But you are.”
I frown at him.
“How can you tell?”
He glances at me briefly, leaning his arm in the window. The angle I am looking at him, the rose looks as though it is moving across the flexing muscles of his neck, and I am filled with the sudden urge to touch it.
“Just a feeling. How long has it been since you lost your grandfather, again?”
I sigh, closing my eyes.
“Uh, a few weeks,” I admit. I am trying not to think about it, at least as best I can, but Drew already seems capable of cutting straight through any front I try to put up, whether I like it or not.
He lets out a whistle through his teeth.
“That’s no time at all. When I lost my?—”
He stops himself, but I cock my head, curious.
“Lost your...?”
He reaches up to touch his neck, running his hand over the rose.
“My grandmother,” he admits.
“You guys were close?”
He nods.
“Very. She raised me.”
“Oh, damn,” I mutter. “Like my grandfather and I?”
“Yeah, guess you could say that.”
I bite my lip, wondering if I should delve more, if I should keep my mouth shut and keep from going in too much harder. But I am curious about this man, about everything that has led him to offer to take off across the state with me like this.
“Your parents weren’t around?”
“Nah,” he replies, shaking his head, and though I can tell he is trying to sound nonchalant, there is an edge to his voice, a tinge of hurt that has clearly never left him.
“My father was never around. And my mom, she used. In a big way. Everything she could get her hands on. She couldn’t have taken care of a baby if she wanted to, so my grandmother stepped in to look after me. ”
“What was her name?”
“Rose.”
My eyes widen.
“Oh, that’s...”
“What the tattoo is about, yeah.”
My heart aches for him, the thought of him carrying that memory on his body, so determined not to let go of it.
“That’s really sweet,” I reply. “That you want to make sure you remember her.”
“Yeah, not like I could forget if I wanted to,” he replies. “I regret it sometimes, though.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, when I do something that I know she wouldn’t like,” he replies, with a chuckle. “I can almost hear her voice in my head, telling me not to be such a fuckin’ idiot.”
I laugh.
“You make a habit of being an idiot, then?”
“Used to. Trying to reform myself these days.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I turn to face him properly, the wind whipping strands of my hair around my face.
“What have you got to reform from? You said you were just out of prison, right?”
He nods again, and his jaw tightens slightly.
“What for?”
“Breaking and entering,” he replies. “I was trying to get my hands on some shit I shouldn’t have been.”
“No wonder my grandfather wanted you for this job,” I tease lightly. “He knew he could trust you to get your hands on anything.”
He laughs.
“Yeah, good point,” he concedes, but before we can continue, my phone buzzes in my pocket, and I frown as I go to dig it out. And, as soon as I see what is waiting for me, my eyes widen.
“Shit,” I mutter, tapping on the message to get a better look at it.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s my grandfather’s storage unit,” I reply vaguely. “There’s some kind of security alert.”
The people who own the storage locker facility have sent me a video, and I swiftly tap it open, chewing my lip as I get a better look at what is going on here.
My heart sinks when I see what is waiting for me, two guys trying to pry open the door of the storage unit that I left locked up, managing to heave the steel away from its hinges and tossing it to the side before they duck in.
“Shit.”
I mutter the words under my breath, half-forgetting he is even here.
“What is it? What happened?”
“Some guys broke into my grandfather’s storage unit,” I explain, shaking my head. I squint down at the screen, trying to get a better look at the people in question. They are wearing masks, pulled down low over their faces to make sure that they could not be caught on camera, and it throws me.
Why would they be trying to break into my grandfather’s unit? It’s not like he has much there that’s worth getting in trouble for. At least, that’s what I thought.
“Fuck,” he replies, brows digging together with concern. “Do you have any idea why?”
I shake my head.
“This seems like the kind of thing you would know about, not me,” I reply. “Why would someone come looking for a specific storage locker like that?”
“Did they break into any others?”
“Not that they mentioned.”
“Then it’s because there was something in there they wanted in particular,” he replies. “Did your grandfather have anyone else who knew about it? Any other family members that might have come looking for something?”
“Not that I know of,” I mumble. “Just me. And I don’t see why anyone would want what’s in there, unless they’re some collector of antique books or something.”
“Maybe they were looking for that.”
He nods to the bag sitting on the dashboard, which has spilled open slightly to reveal the moleskine notebook that I found in the bottom of the wardrobe. I cock an eyebrow and pull it out, flipping it over in my hands.
“You think?”
“If that map really does lead to something important,” he remarks. “Then maybe they want it. And maybe they knew that wardrobe was where to find it.”
I tap my fingers against the battered leather, considering the possibility.
I mean, he has a point. I might not be the only one looking for whatever it is that this map points toward.
It’s the first time it has so much as crossed my mind, but a rush of urgency courses through me, and I rewatch the video again.
Yeah, whoever this is, they look like they are searching for something specific.
There’s no security footage inside the locker itself, but they move with purpose as they approach.
I fire off a text back to the owner, asking if anything has been taken, and he responds swiftly to let me know that everything is in its place.
Almost as though what they were looking for has already been taken.
I slip the book back into the bag, turning to look out of the window once more. And something creeps up the back of my spine as I wonder just what we could be on the other end of this map.
And just what my grandfather might have the keys to, whether he knew it or not.