Chapter 12
The second night didn't feel like trespassing. That was the difference.
I'd folded the charcoal coat at the end of the cot he'd rolled out between the blue racks. My heels sat paired underneath it, beige toes pointing straight. The overhead lamps were off except the one over the small office, and the warehouse hummed the way it had the night before, that low bass drone from the coolers along the back wall. I was making a list on the back of an inventory slip — county intake hours, bus times — when the knock came.
Not the front roll door on the highway side. The side door, metal, halfway down the dark aisle. Three hard knocks. Then two more.
I froze with the pen still touching paper.
The man was at his desk ten feet away. He looked up at me first, not at the door. He put a finger to his lips and stood.
"Expecting someone?" he whispered.
I shook my head. My throat went dry in that instant, that specific dry that meant I knew exactly who knocked like that.
He didn't move toward the door. He moved to the wall switch with the red indicator — the same one his hand had rested near the morning he found me. He kept his palm over it without flipping it, keeping the aisle dark. The concrete stayed gray in the dim light from the office, but the long run between the orange racks stayed shadowed. If he turned that light on, anyone looking through the wired glass would see straight to the cot, to me.
Another knock, harder this time. A man's voice, muffled through steel.
"Margo? Margo, I know you're in there. Your phone pinged over here last night."
My stomach dropped. It was Derek. Not an ex-partner exactly — my ex-landlord from the apartment complex off the county road. He'd held my deposit, my mail key, the excuse I gave when I left mid-month.
The man glanced at me, silent question. I could feel my breath getting shallow.
Derek tried the handle. It held. He knocked again with the flat of his hand. "Come on. You can't just ghost with rent due and a bag left in my laundry room. Open the door and talk like an adult."
The man stayed where he was, hand still shading the switch. He mouthed, Do you want me to answer?
I stared at the dark aisle between us and the door. For two nights I'd been hidden here, and part of me wanted to stay hidden completely — let the man send him away, let me be invisible. That had been my whole strategy for a week. Don't answer. Don't explain. Curl tighter in the coat.
But he'd tracked my phone. He knew I was nearby. If I let someone else speak for me again, he'd just come back in daylight when the warehouse was open, when trucks were coming and going and I couldn't hide between pallets.
I stood up. My legs felt cold where the coat hadn't covered them. I didn't go to the door. I stayed in the dark, three steps behind the man, where the shadow cut across the concrete.
"Derek?" I called. My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again, louder. "I'm here. Don't knock like that."
The door rattled. "Margo! Jesus. You had me driving around industrial lots. You owe me —"
"I don't owe you a conversation through a locked door at nine at night," I said. I could hear how thin my voice sounded, but I kept going. "My stuff in the laundry room, you can throw it out. Keep the deposit. We're done."
Silence on the other side. Then his voice, closer to the glass, lower. "You sleeping in there? You living in a storage unit now?"
The man shifted slightly, still blocking the light, still not opening anything. He didn't speak for me. He just let me stand there.
"No," I said. "I'm not sleeping here. I have a place. You need to leave."
It was a lie and a boundary at the same time. He couldn't see me in the dark aisle, and I wasn't going to give him a picture to hold onto — me on the floor, me wrapped in a coat that wasn't mine.
"You have my spare key still," Derek said. "You never returned it."
"I left it on the kitchen counter," I said. "Check the counter. Don't come back here."
Another beat. I heard him step back from the door, boots on the asphalt outside.
"This place is closed, right?" he called, not to me now, but loud enough for whoever was inside to hear. "I'll be by tomorrow when the office is open. We can sort it proper then."
The man finally spoke, calm, not loud, without moving toward the glass. "We're closed. No tenants here. You need to leave the property."
Derek laughed once, short. "Yeah, okay."
His footsteps moved away, slow, then stopped. I held my breath until I heard his truck door slam and the engine start. Headlights swept the wired glass for a second, white across the concrete, then gone.
The man didn't flip the switch. He let the aisle stay dark a minute longer. Then he looked at me.
"You okay?" he said.
May you like
I nodded. My hands were shaking. I'd stayed hidden, but I'd spoken. That felt different than hiding completely.
He wasn't gone, though. Derek knew the warehouse now. He knew close enough.
