No name, no phone number, no logo. Just an address in the warehouse district and a time: midnight.
I glance at the microwave clock. 11:47 p.m. Thirteen minutes.
I should call 911 and report a break-in, a kidnapping, whatever this is.
But something about the precision of the destruction stops me. This isn’t random violence.
This is a message, delivered by people who know exactly what they’re doing.
People who probably have connections, influence, ways of making problems disappear.
People who might kill my father if I involve the authorities.
The voice on my phone seems less like a prank now.
The drive to the warehouse district seems to pass too slowly, one eye glued to the clock while the other keeps an eye on the road. Please let him be alive.
Please let this be about money, or gambling debts, or something that can be fixed with negotiation instead of violence.
Dad’s always been weak, but he’s not evil.
Whatever he’s done, whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into this time, it can’t be worth dying for.
The address leads me to a massive industrial building that looks like it’s been abandoned since the Clinton administration.
Broken windows stare down at me like dead eyes, and weeds grow through cracks in the loading dock.
My headlights sweep across rusted metal siding and a parking lot full of potholes deep enough to swallow a tire.
I park next to an expensive black sedan and check the time. 11:58 p.m.
Before I know it, I’m outside the car, shivering in the night breeze.
I should have brought a jacket. I should have changed into something other than an oversized baseball shirt and ratty gray pajama pants.
“You can do this Gigi,” I whisper to myself, my teeth chattering. “You’re brave. It’s for Dad.”
The warehouse’s front door stands slightly ajar, held open by a wooden wedge. Beyond it, there’s only darkness and the sound of my own thundering heartbeat.
I push the door open and step inside.
The vast space swallows the sound of my footsteps, turning them into whispers that echo back from the rafters sixty feet above.
A single spotlight burns in the center of the warehouse floor, creating a harsh circle of white light surrounded by an ocean of shadows.
Industrial chains hang from the ceiling, and the air smells of rust and motor oil and something else I don’t want to identify.
Inside that circle of light, my father kneels on the concrete floor.
His hands are bound behind his back with zip ties, and his face is so swollen and bruised I almost don’t recognize him.
One eye is completely shut, the other barely open through the purple swelling.
Blood has dried in dark streaks down his chin from his split lip, and his shirt is torn and stained with more of it.
“Dad!” I cry out. I start forward, but a voice from the darkness stops me cold.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
