They needed to be closer. They didn’t have a building yet.
Troy jabbed his finger at the screen. “There’s a storage facility on that block. It has to be that.”
The circle flickered on again a few times as Graham took a few more turns.
Joe sent out texts, telling everyone to head to the storage unit, and then he shut down the volume on his phone. “Everyone on silent mode. And that’s not just to avoid the calls telling us to wait for backup.”
Sam pulled out his phone and made it silent as well. “We’re not waiting.”
Troy pointed out the front window. “Blue and Green sign on the right.”
Graham decelerated and pulled into the lot as if they weren’t on a mission. The units were surrounded by a locked gate. Joe and Sam jumped out.
Joe went to the manager’s office at the gate and Sam moved along the fence until he was out of sight of the road.
He’d scaled a few similar fences in his time and he knew how to work around the measures designed to keep people out.
No one was keeping him out.
Once he was over the fence, Sam dropped to the pavement and pulled out his gun. It would take Joe more than a minute to talk the guy into opening the gate, and Sam need to find the unit by then.
And if his team didn’t hurry the hell up, he was going in anyway.
Top Secret
Tansy started at the beginning, like she always did with research. If she got lost in the words and the problem, she’d be able to ignore the pain and the fear.
Was Sam close to finding her?
When her parents had died, Tansy’s therapist had helped her build a mental box to contain emotions when they’d threatened to overwhelm her.
The TeenySaurs had been easy to conjure up in her mind and they’d worked together to create a beautiful box covered with images of Tansy’s favorite memories with her parents.
Because the box was in her mind and not physical, she could change out the photos as she’d needed over the years.
She’d tried to be a robot and not have any emotions, but that hadn’t worked for long. Instead, the therapist had helped her teach the TeenySaurs to open the box a small crack at a time. That way, the emotion would eke out, not slam into her like a bullet. Once she’d learned to deal with that emotion, she’d let out a little more.
It had been years since she’d used the technique, but now, she slid her fear into the box and instantly felt less panic.
Tansy typed out her first heading. Hypothesis.
The TeenySaurs closed the lid on the box and showed her the new photos. Ones of her and Sam.
As she typed through her hypothesis and the accompanying questions, she let the images of her and Sam occupy another part of her brain.
The quiet boy doing martial arts in the Riveras back yard.
His agreement to teach her Tai Chi and martial arts.
His pride when she got her first black belt.
The knife slid into her thigh and drew a sharp line through her skin.
“Miss Cheveyo, you are stalling.”
Breathing through the pain, she kept her eyes on the screen. “I’m not. I’m a scientist without my data, so I need to start at the beginning and build from there.”
After a beat of silence, the knife receded, and Bernie spoke. “Proceed. Do not dally.”