June pulled Big Red to a stop and shut off the aged truck with her habitual pat of encouragement to the dash. Peter’s silence weighed heavily in the interim, broken only by the engine’s ticking. The last car had passed them five miles back, and weeds lined the fence that enclosed their destination.
“You’ve a few of these, then.” His voice was quiet, but the censure in his voice filled the cab.
June reached underneath the driver’s seat and pulled out a ring of keys. It clinked as she sorted through the labels on near-identical silver pieces of metal. “You knew that when you invited yourself on this trip.”
“I knew.” He ran a hand through his hair and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “Reality turned out to be a mite different after the thirteenth stop.”
Her own dry eyes ached with the grit from driving the past six hours. Towing the RV behind her ancient truck always felt like a struggle against prairie winds, even if there weren’t as many drivers in the state compared to the mistake that Chicago had been. Gripping the steering wheel in one hand, she held up a slim silver tab with the other, trying to ignore the knot behind her shoulder blades. “South Dakota.”
He sighed and opened the truck door. “As long as we see an American buffalo while we’re in the area.”
June’s boots hit gravel before it smoothed into pavement. She slammed the door. “Probably not inside the storage facility. And this is number seventeen, not thirteen.”
“How you can tell the difference is beyond me.” Peter held a hand to the keypad. A burst of light, and the lock clanked open. “Which unit are we looking for?”
Her mouth was still agape to tell him the code when she snapped her jaw shut. “One one three one.”
A faint covering of dust made her shiver. The tracks Peter left looked downright apocalyptic, with low weeks and only a mournful bird in the distance. How long it had been since anyone else had visited the facility?
“Manual locks.” Disgust filled the air as she caught up with him. He snagged the key from her extended hand, turned it so hard she feared it might snap, and bent to lift the roll door.
“Same as last time,” June said and stepped into the darkness. “I think this one had a pull light.” Her hand found the cord. “There it is.”
“Yes.” Peter drew the sentence out. He didn’t move into the storage unit. “Same as last time. And the time before.”
“I warned you.” She tightened her lips and headed for the first Pelican case. June turned with it in her hands to find her path blocked.
“Warned, yes, but never explained, a ghrá. Seventeen different storage units, and we’re not yet done. Not a single one opened, just stashed in the RV wherever we still have room. All I’ve seen is cases of bottled water.” He held out a hand, palm upward, and gestured at the stacked boxes behind her. “You owe me an explanation at this point, June.”
She bit her lip, cognizant that it was a habit she’d been trying to break. A deep breath, and she set the case down on the concrete floor. The cold seeped through her jeans at the knees as she popped each latch open. The box almost snorted as the sides parted, as if the air captured years before inside the container’s plastic maw resented its mixture with modern oxygen molecules.
The plastic was smooth against her hand, until it stuck on a suddenly sweaty palm. “Black is weapons,” she managed, and flipped the lid open. “I color coded them. Black is always weapons.”
Resting on the exposed foam rested a series of daggers in varying sizes. The longest could technically qualify as a short sword. She reached out to a strange pair of decorative sticks and twisted her hair in an automatic pattern her fingers knew from long practice. Each pointed stick stabbed into the bun and held it in place. A strand of hair floated to the ground from where it had been sliced clean. “Hmm. I’m out of practice.”
She got to her feet, carefully not looking in Peter’s direction, and headed to the back of the unit, past the stack of black that reached her shoulder. Her back twinged as she hauled a different case forward, too quickly, and flipped the latches. “Desert tan is the emergency kit, kept sealed inside a case so nothing gets inside and trashes it. Bug out bag with a hard drive of documents and photos, a stash of freeze-dried food, a first-aid kit.”
The lone khaki-colored case tipped, spilling a backpack onto the floor. She hadn’t closed the bag properly, and a colorful blur skittered farther away as a box burst open.
“And the olive boxes?” This time, he sounded concerned.
“Basics. Clothes, boots. Cash. Sometimes gold. Enough to buy or trade for a vehicle.” She hesitated, still turned away, and wrapped her arms around her queasy stomach.
Footsteps started, then paused. “You stashed candy?”
“Fast energy,” she answered automatically. “As long as it’s sealed, it’s fine.”
“This sweet looks odd.” A crinkle, and she could feel his frown in the small room. “And it’s oddly heavy.”
“Don’t eat that one,” she warned. Turning, she kept her arms crossed. “You’ll break your teeth. I hid at least one gold bar in each box of candy bars. I had this theory that someone breaking in would steal the cash and weapons, but wouldn’t bother with survival gear or snacks.”
Peter froze for a few seconds, then carefully set down the disguised chocolate. He rose to his feet, dusting off his trousers. “June.”
“Peter,” she answered. Misery filled her throat. “I know how it sounds. Utterly paranoid. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“June, darling, what on this green earth was chasing you?”
She tried a smile, and half her lip managed an upward movement for some nebulous fraction of a second. “I don’t know. They never found what murdered my parents. John got me onto his land before it could find me, too, and that protection lasted while I stayed on his property. When I left, I didn’t know what would be waiting for me.”
“So you wanted to be prepared for anything.” He studied her, lenses glaring under the bare bulb light unit.
June clenched her hands around her middle tighter. “If I could run, I could get to one of the storage units. I could get away.”
“What you really mean, then…” He studied the ceiling, and she watched his throat as he swallowed. “This means shutting down the storage units is a big step for you.”
“I’m trying to move on,” she whispered.
Peter stepped toward her and wrapped her in his arms. “I understand.”
“Thank you.” The relief she felt brought peace, even if it added to her exhaustion.
From outside the doorway came the scrape of a footstep, moments before the door banged closed with a metallic roar and blocked the sun.
***
This week, ‘nother Mike’s prompt fit neatly into something I’d preplanned with Peter and June’s story, and I loved the idea of planting a hidden gold bar mixed among the candy bars. My prompt went to Cedar, about the unsuspecting, balding thief.
