Chapter 7 - They went after Dad’s garage
Dad moved before anyone could stop him.
Ortiz grabbed his arm.
“No.”
“That garage is my livelihood.”
“And whoever sent this wants you there.”
He stopped.
She was right.
Police reached the property first.
The gasoline can was there.
The man wasn’t.
Nothing had been burned.
It was a message.
Inside the garage, however, someone had searched Dad’s office.
Cabinets open.
Desk overturned.
Old storage boxes ripped apart.
They were looking for something.
The ledger.
Dad insisted he didn’t have it.
I believed him.
But somebody else didn’t.
Then he remembered an old footlocker.
After leaving military service, Dad had shipped his personal belongings to my grandmother’s house.
Years later, most went into storage.
When Grandma died, I helped clean the attic.
One box had never been opened.
Military markings.
Dad had told me to donate it.
I hadn’t.
Sentimentality saved it.
It was in a storage unit registered under my maiden name.
Emily Grayson.
Marcus didn’t know.
Harrison probably didn’t either.
Ortiz obtained authorization before anything was disturbed because potential evidence from an old federal matter required careful handling.
Inside the footlocker were uniforms.
Letters.
Photographs.
A broken watch.
Three cassette tapes.
And beneath a false cardboard bottom:
A small waterproof pouch.
Dad stared at it.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Inside was not the ledger.
It was a brass key.
Stamped with a number.
And a handwritten note.
Grayson—
If I don’t make it, locker 417.
—M.
Dad sat down.
“Mason.”
One of the men killed April nineteenth.
The initials on Dad’s tattoo.
Mason had hidden something in Dad’s belongings without telling him.
Twenty years ago.
A locker.
But where?
Then Dad turned the key over.
A faded logo remained visible.
Harrison saw that logo every day.
It belonged to one of the earliest logistics companies his family had owned.
Vance Atlantic Storage.
The company had supposedly closed eighteen years ago.
Supposedly.
Ortiz checked corporate records.
The company had changed names.
Changed ownership.
Changed addresses.
But one warehouse still existed.
May you like
Outside Baltimore.
And according to property records, it remained controlled through a Vance family trust.
