All Good People Here(86)

“You’ll be fine.”

Margot glanced around one last time for any sign of someone, but there was nothing but empty fields. The night was still and quiet. She took a deep breath, then grabbed high on the fence, dug a toe into it, and hoisted herself up.

The fence wobbled violently beneath her weight, but Margot held on, and after a moment, it grew still. She reached a hand up to grab another hold. The metal dug into her skin painfully, and holding herself up with nothing but her fingers and the toes of her shoes was much harder than she’d expected, but after five minutes or so, she reached the top, swung her leg over, and headed down again. Finally, she jumped onto the patchy grass, grateful to be back on solid ground.

She bent to grab the flashlights and stuffed them back into her pocket, but just as she did, she heard the sound of an approaching car. Through the fence, she caught Jodie’s gaze, and the woman’s eyes widened with panic. Margot’s heart thumped as she listened, her feet frozen in place. Then, she realized the sound of the car was growing fainter. She waited until it faded and let out a breath.

“Okay,” she said. “Throw over the cutters.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jodie muttered, shaking her head before she heaved the tool over and began to climb the fence too. It took her longer than it had Margot, but eventually she made it. Jodie caught her breath as Margot retrieved the cutters and the two of them walked, fast but quiet, toward unit seventy-four.

“All right,” Margot said in a low voice when they came to a stop outside the unit’s massive door. She glanced around them, careful to keep her head down in case she was wrong about the cameras. “Can you keep an eye out?”

As she’d seen from scoping out the facility hours earlier, the door of Wallace’s unit was, like all the rest, locked with a padlock. As she stared down at it, it seemed impossible a mere tool could break through its thick metal loop, but it was the only chance she had.

She fitted the bolt cutters around the metal and squeezed the handle fast and tight. Margot pressed as hard as she could, but the metal was thick and the blades wouldn’t penetrate. She continued to squeeze, harder and harder, until her arms began to tremble. Finally, when she couldn’t do it any longer, she gave up and pulled the cutters away. She felt as if the blades hadn’t even scraped the surface of the metal loop, but when she examined it, her breath coming in heavy gasps, she spotted two very small dents on either side.

“Shit,” she said. “I think it might be working.”

She tried again.

“Here,” Jodie said when Margot released the cutters. “Let’s take turns.”

Margot handed them over and Jodie fixed their jaws around the metal loop, pushing the handles together so hard her arms shook. When she eventually gave up, Margot could see the dents were getting deeper. They alternated like that, making more and more progress each time, until finally, during Margot’s fifth attempt, as she was squeezing the handles, the metal loop split apart and the lock clattered to the ground.

She caught Jodie’s eye, and a broad smile slowly spread across the woman’s face.

“We did it,” Jodie said.

Margot let out one wry laugh. “Now let’s just hope it was worth it.”

Just then, the sound of another car’s engine revved in the distance.

“Shit,” Margot hissed. “Get inside. Quick.”

She hastily undid the latch and tugged the metal door open. The hinges creaked noisily and Margot winced, listening as the sound of the car grew louder. When the space was just wide enough to fit through, they hurried inside and Margot tugged the door shut behind them, ensconcing them in blackness so dark she couldn’t see her own body. The two of them stood, unmoving, listening to the car in the distance, the sound of their too-fast breathing loud in Margot’s ears. Finally, the noise from the car’s engine faded into the night. Margot exhaled. She was being paranoid. No one was watching the cameras’ footage live. No one knew they were here.

She tugged the flashlights from her back pocket and clicked them on, illuminating the storage unit in front of them. Finally, they could see. She handed one of the flashlights to Jodie, and the two of them gazed out over the space.

Margot didn’t know what she’d been expecting exactly, but she felt disappointed at the banality of Wallace’s things. There was a wooden dresser, an old-looking couch, a lamp, and stacks upon stacks of unlabeled cardboard boxes. Sifting through it all would take hours.

“Let’s split up,” she said with a glance at Jodie. “I’ll start over here.”

“I’ll start with those.” Jodie nodded toward a collection of boxes on the far side of the unit.

“Oh,” Margot added. “I almost forgot.” She pulled the latex gloves out of her pocket and handed a pair to Jodie. They both tugged them on, then headed in opposite directions.

Margot stopped in front of one of the smaller cardboard boxes at the foot of the old plaid couch. Holding her flashlight with one hand, she opened the cardboard flaps with the other, revealing a collection of old books. The sight of them reminded her of her interview with Wallace three years ago, when he said he’d been working his way through the classics. Margot picked up one of the paperbacks on top, a weathered copy of Moby-Dick, and flipped through the pages with her thumb.

She sifted through the rest of the books quickly, looking for anything that might have been tucked into them, but found nothing even slightly incriminating other than a well-worn copy of Lolita that turned her stomach, but would be useless as proof of anything.