Chapter 34
The address Tom had pulled from Cara's photos led to an industrial strip at the dead end of a street in East Oakland that time had forgotten and the city had stopped servicing.
Six beige storage units squatted behind a truck depot, separated from the road by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire and a dumpster so old it had developed its own ecosystem.
No signage on any of the units. No security cameras that Gabe could see — which told him more than cameras would have.
Someone had chosen this place specifically because nobody was watching.
He killed the engine fifty yards out and let the car idle.
Gabe followed Wade’s gaze, eying the steel roll-up door. It was padlocked, and there were no windows.
“One car in the lot,” Wade added. “Blue Honda. Three spots from the unit.”
Gabe’s chest tightened. He and Wade had no badges, no warrant, no jurisdiction, and no backup.
“How do you wanna approach this?” Wade asked.
“Back door, if there is one. You take the pry bar. I’ll take point.”
Wade didn’t argue. They’d both done this before.
They circled wide, keeping the dumpster between them and the unit. Gravel crunched under their shoes. Gabe could hear traffic on the freeway a quarter mile east. Normal people going normal places.
There was a back door. Metal. No lock on the outside—a fire exit, push-bar only. Wade wedged the pry bar into the gap and leaned. The frame gave with a sound like a bone cracking.
Gabe went in firs, low and fast. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the dark. But no amount of blinking could hide the truth. The place was empty.
The word registered before the details did. Eight hundred square feet of poured concrete and bare walls. No equipment. No shelving. No people.
Wade flicked on the lights and came in behind him.
“Well.”
“No kidding.”
The space had been scrubbed. Not cleaned.
Erased. The walls showed shadow marks where shelving had been mounted.
The electrical outlets still had the faint outlines of heavy equipment plugs.
A ventilation hood had been dismantled above what must have been the primary workstation—the ceiling showed the bolt holes and a rectangle of slightly less discolored drywall.
Two industrial sinks remained, bolted to the wall, too heavy to take.
They’d been bleached so thoroughly the stainless steel had a faintly blue tint.
Wade crouched by the nearest drain. Sniffed. “Solvent’s fresh. I’m thinking twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight.”
Yesterday, Cara had been photographing contracts at the Foundation—contracts that included the shipping address for this very unit.
Gabe photographed every wall. Just in case there was some tiny clue he and Wade missed.
They were searching the floor drain by the second sink when they heard the truck.
Gabe’s hand went to his hip, a useless instinct, given that he wasn’t carrying.
Wade flew to his feet, pry bar low at his side.
Both of them pressed against the wall by the back door.
Gabe heard an engine idling outside, then a door slamming, and footsteps—one person, walking casually, no urgency—approaching the back door of the unit.
A knock.“Yo! Golden Dragon!”
Gabe and Wade looked at each other.
Another knock. Louder. “Saturday order! Kung pao chicken, two orange beef, three fried rice, egg rolls—come on, man! I got six more deliveries.”
Gabe held up a hand to Wade—stay—and walked to the front. He unlatched the roll-up door from the inside and shoved it up three feet. A kid in his twenties stood on the gravel holding two large paper bags and looking confused.
“You’re not Danny,” the kid said.
“Danny’s out,” Gabe said. “I’m covering.”
The kid peered past him into the empty unit. The confusion deepened. “What happened to all the—”
“Renovations.” Gabe reached for the bags. “What do I owe you?”
The kid pulled a receipt from the top bag. “It’s already been charged to the account. Same as always.”
On the account.
Gabe took the bags with one hand and the receipt with the other.
Glanced at it. A standing Saturday order billed to a business account—Golden Dragon Chinese, East 14th Street, with a phone number and what looked like a corporate card on file.
The name on the account was an abbreviation he didn’t recognize.
Could be one of the shells. Could be nothing.
“Sign here?” The kid held out a phone.
Gabe signed with his finger. The kid headed back to his truck. Delivery complete. Just another Saturday.
Wade took one of the bags. Opened it. The smell of kung pao chicken filled the empty lab, absurdly domestic in a space that had been used to design a drug that stole people’s memories.
“At least we’re not going back empty-handed,” Wade said.
They drove back across the Bay Bridge with Chinese food for six on the back seat and nothing else. Saturday afternoon in San Francisco was a postcard—sunshine, sidewalk cafés, someone busking saxophone on the corner of 16th and Valencia. Gabe parked three blocks from the apartment.
With two blocks to go, his phone buzzed. Tyler Price.
Gabe stopped walking. Wade took two more steps, turned back. Read his face.
“What.”
“Graham filed the missing person’s report.” Gabe read from the screen. “Elena Whitfield. Vulnerable adult. Left treatment against medical advice. Last seen in the company of unidentified individuals. Price says it’s been forwarded to the FBI field office in Portland.”
Wade was quiet for a beat. Then: “How worried are you.”
“Ask me tomorrow.”
They walked the last block in silence. The blue Honda in the lot had been registered to a rental company. Tom would trace it. It would lead nowhere. Everything in this case seemed to hit a dead end.
Gabe thought about the deadline for the chief’s application, which had now passed.
He thought about the empty lab and the fresh solvent, and a lab tech named Danny who ordered kung pao chicken every Saturday and vanished without canceling his takeout.
He thought about Tyler Price’s text and his career dissolving in his hands.
He thought about Tom’s question: Who has that kind of reach?
At the apartment, Piper opened the door. Her face went through three expressions in two seconds—hope, confusion, disappointment.
“The lab was empty,” Gabe said.
“Not good.” She took the bags. “Is this—did you bring us Chinese food from a crime scene?”
“Technically, from a crime scene’s lunch order.”
Piper stared at him. Then at Wade.
“I’m telling this story at every Thanksgiving for the rest of my life,” she said, and carried the food inside.