Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) Rachel Caine (best e book reader for android .txt) 📖

23

GWEN

We see not a soul on the way out of town. Not a single person behind a window, not a car, nothing. The town feels artificial now, like a movie set.

The whole day feels wrong. Sweatily humid, but cool. The reek of rot gets worse as we drive with windows open, and the Honda’s nonexistent suspension bounces on every bump and crack. The sound of seagulls crying rings in the air like bells.

The smell is worse the closer we get to the beach. I wonder if a whale has beached in the area. It’s that bad, a rancid, fishy smell that makes me want to gag. I breathe it deep instead in the hopes I’ll get used to it. Humans are adaptable, that’s our real strength. We can adapt to anything, given enough time and resources. Jonathan—clever, strange Jonathan—isn’t going to give us that.

I park the Honda near the back fence of the cannery. Kez looks at me, and I look at her, and neither of us speaks. We finally just get out. Kez opens the trunk and hands me a shotgun; she keeps one for herself. We’ve each got our usual sidearms, but she gives me a hunting knife, and I snap it on my belt. She’s got two police-issue body armor vests, and we put those on too. The weight feels smothering, but comforting too.

“Just so we’re clear,” she says, “this is the end of both our careers if we do this and it turns out we were wrong. And that could be exactly what he wants too.”

“We’re not wrong,” I tell her. But she’s also correct. It probably is the end of her career as a detective, regardless; she’s out of her jurisdiction, armed to the teeth, ready to kill. And so am I. I’ve skated out of a lot of close calls. I’m due for a bad fall.

“Okay. Just wanted to be clear about it. Stay together. We don’t split up.”

“Agreed. Kez?”

She slams the trunk and gives me her attention.

“You don’t have to do this. Please think about the baby.”

She shakes her head. “I love you, too, Gwen, but fact is, the next person he comes after could be Javier, since I came this far. I don’t want my baby growing up without a dad because I backed off. Besides . . . it might be you he really wants. But I want him. Prester deserves that much.”

Choices. I’m not sure it’s right, if any of this is right. But in one sense, Jonathan’s correct: everything is a choice. And everything we do will have consequences.

“You got any bolt cutters?” I ask her, and she shakes her head. “Ladder in your pocket?”

“Shut up and pop that hubcap,” she says. “Y’all don’t know how to improvise.”

I smile and use the knife to get the Honda’s hubcap off. She catches it and goes to the fence, kneels down, and starts digging. The soil’s soft and sandy, and she scoops out a big pile, then flips on her back and slithers under. “Good thing about body armor,” she says. “It also keeps you flat for things like this.”

Not that I need a ton of help in that department. Kez and I are otherwise of a size, so the hole she’s dug works for me too, with some creative wriggling. I roll up to my hands and knees and take a step onto the bare ground. It’s harder packed here, but it was used as some kind of outdoor lunch area; there are still a few rusting metal tables and some yellowed plastic molded chairs scattered around. I can’t imagine it would have been too pleasant out here in the summer, but no doubt better than inside the cannery.

There’s no door on this side, so we head around to the parking lot, which faces a loading dock with six roll-up doors. The pavement is buckled and cracked like dry mud; we watch our footing and head up the steps at the loading dock. Kez tries the metal back door. Locked. We work our way down the line of dock doors. One moves, but not much. Maybe six inches up before it sticks fast. It’s a gap, but it’s tight. I don’t ask, I just go first, and push myself underneath. My belt catches, and for a second I panic, thinking that the door’s coming down, that it’s automatic and going to crush me, cut me in half . . . but then I suck in my breath and fumble at my belt buckle and am able to fit through. I roll to my knees, shotgun heavy in my hands, and scan the area.

It’s empty. An empty warehouse that once would have held pallets of canned food shipping out to the area, if not the country. Very still, concrete the shade of mist and ghosts. It’s been cleaned out completely. I don’t even see spiderwebs or broken windows. There are windows, up high toward the ceiling, which is a blessing because it’s otherwise dark. I have a flashlight, but I’d rather save it.

My heart’s pounding. My head’s throbbing. The reek of dead fish is stronger in here, an almost tangible odor, like it’s radiating from the bare concrete. How did people stand it, day after day? They must have never been able to wash the stench out of their hair, their skin, their clothes.

Kez slips under the door and joins me in silent appraisal for a second. “Well,” she says. “This might have been useless.”

“This room is,” I say. “But let’s take a deeper look.”

She coughs into her elbow. “Should have brought Vicks. This is as rank as any crime scene I’ve ever been to.”

She’s right, but we push on. We cross the bare concrete to the far-left wall, where a broad double door stands, big enough to admit forklifts. It’s closed. I try it, and the knob turns easily in my hand. When the door swings open, it doesn’t make a sound. I’m ready. Ready to fire on him if