Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(103)

I had grown impatient. “I’m telling you, okay? As a concerned citizen, or whatever you want to call it in your report. And I’ll tell you the rest soon. I don’t have time now. Make sure I can reach you tonight. And if for some reason you don’t hear from me by morning, don’t forget to check the mail.”

“Wait—where are you going, Nikki? And what did you mean, something you have to do?”

I ignored the questions. “Like I said, pay him a visit. I wouldn’t wait.”

I hung up. Picked up the receiver again. Put in more quarters. Dialed again. This time I didn’t have much to say. “Charles,” I said. “What we talked about—it’s time.”

I hung up again but kept the phone to my ear. A third call. The last one for now. More quarters clinking into the coin slot. More ringing. The voice that answered this time was suspicious. “Who is this?”

“Oliver,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“What are you talking about? Why are you calling me?”

“In person. Tonight.”

“Meet? Are you crazy? I told you not to even call me anymore. I don’t know who this is,” he said loudly as though the NSA and Pentagon were both tucked into bed with him and the microphones were poking him under the quilt. “Good-bye! I’m hanging up now!”

“It’s important,” I insisted.

His voice was reluctant. “Then tomorrow.”

“I found out what In Retentis is. I think you’ll want to see what I have. Besides, tomorrow might be too late.”

His voice changed. “You did? What is it? And what are you talking about, too late?”

“Too late for you, Oliver.”

“What?” Now he was bewildered.

“They just visited Gregg Gunn. Which means they probably intend to visit you next.”





44


The Port of Oakland was a massive sprawl along the eastern side of the Bay, big enough to handle the thousand-foot container ships that plodded back and forth across the Pacific, decks piled high with rectangular shipping containers. Stacks and stacks of multicolored corrugated boxes carrying the world’s trade across the globe. Above, hundreds of cargo cranes poised like silhouettes of giant herons with metronomic eyes of blinking red, frozen on the verge of dipping into the black water.

I reached the maze of streets that belonged to the Port itself, my motorcycle bouncing along asphalt that had been chipped and potholed from endless lines of heavy trucks. I turned several times until I reached a one-lane road marked only by the yellow diamond of a dead-end sign. Steel and asphalt were the only markers of human presence. I could have been five hundred years in the future, staring at the deserted ruins of some anachronistic metropolis.

The night was quiet except for an electric hum and the faint noise of cars dripping off the freeway. In front of me was a reinforced four-foot metal gate. A sign said EAST BAY E-Z-STORE CUSTOMERS ONLY. I pressed a button on a plastic fob that hung off my keychain and the gate slid open. Inside, the ground was packed dirt. Stretching around me were stacks of the ubiquitous shipping containers, each twenty feet long and ten feet high, each stack a half-dozen containers high. There must have been hundreds of them, lining the yard like an industrial hedge maze. The storage facility was a squared pancake of a building, thick walls painted a depressing beige.

I waited.

Twenty minutes later I saw headlights. A small white car came into view and I pressed the key fob as the car slowed. The gate opened and the car drove slowly into the yard. Oliver rolled down the window two inches and peered up at me suspiciously, his thick eyebrows furrowed. “This really couldn’t wait?”

“Come on. We don’t have all night.”

He turned the engine off and warily got out of the car. He was dressed as though I had told him we’d be jumping out of a helicopter behind enemy lines, a black hooded sweatshirt under a black windbreaker and a black ski hat. The ski hat had a tasseled pompom. Looking at him, I thought that Oliver must be the first special ops soldier in history to have a windbreaker emblazoned with the Sierra Club logo. He rubbed his eyes. “What did you mean about them visiting Greggory?”

“Gunn’s dead.”

He stopped rubbing his eyes and blinked. “Greggory? Dead? What are you talking about? He can’t be. I just saw him today.”

“I saw him tonight.”

Oliver looked at me as if I had told him a joke in poor taste. “You can’t be serious! What happened?”

“Either he shot himself or someone gave him a hand.”

Oliver groped for his orange plastic bottle of antianxiety pills and dry-swallowed several. “Karen Li talked to you and she’s dead. Greggory talked to you and now he is, too.”

“I didn’t hurt Gunn, or Karen, and I don’t intend to hurt you.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Come on. We’ll talk more inside.”



* * *



Plenty of people used storage facilities for normal things. A couple downsizing, or someone stuck in a four-hundred-square-foot studio who needed more space. But storage facilities attracted some definite weirdos, too. Loners, often nocturnally inclined. Plenty of middle-aged men storing survival gear or hoarders filling space with crumbling newspapers. So storage facilities like this one usually offered 24-7 access. If a guy in combat boots and camouflage wanted to go digging around for his hunting rifles, maybe better that he not do so while a family was picking up a couch. The unrestricted access suited me fine. I’d always liked to be able to come and go.