The manager knocked on the door, waited, knocked again.No response.She unlocked it with her master key and pushed it open.
The apartment was empty.More than empty—it felt abandoned, stripped of the small personal touches that made a space feel lived-in.Dresser drawers hung open, their contents scattered on the floor as if someone had grabbed what they needed in a hurry.The closet door stood ajar, revealing gaps where clothes had been hastily removed from hangers.In the bathroom, toiletries were missing from the counter, the medicine cabinet left open and mostly bare.
"She ran," Carter said grimly, holstering her weapon."She knew we were getting close and she bolted."
Kari moved through the apartment, looking for anything that might indicate where Diana had gone.A stack of mail on the counter was addressed to Diana Shepherd, nothing useful.No notes, no calendars marked with appointments, no indication of a secondary location where she might be hiding.
"If she has Tayen, she needs somewhere to keep her," Kari said, thinking out loud."Somewhere private.Somewhere isolated.You can't hold a person captive in an apartment building where neighbors might hear her screaming."
She pulled out her phone and called Vanessa Caldwell.The woman answered on the second ring, her voice tight with anxiety.
"Detective?Did you find her?"
"Her apartment is empty.She packed up and left in a hurry."Kari paced the small living room, her mind racing."I need you to think, Vanessa.When Diana first came to L.A., before she could afford an apartment, before you hired her—where did she live?"
"I...I don't know.A motel, maybe?Some kind of transitional housing?"
"Think harder.She came here with nothing but a dream and a suitcase.She had a complete mental breakdown, spent six months in a psychiatric facility.When she got out, she was broke and alone and had nowhere to go.Where would someone like that end up?"
Silence on the line.Kari could almost hear Vanessa thinking, rifling through memories of conversations from years ago.
"There was something," Vanessa said slowly."When I hired her, in her personnel file.A previous address she listed.I remember thinking it was strange at the time—it wasn't a residential address.It was a business."
"What kind of business?"
"A storage facility.SecureStore, I think it was called.Somewhere in the Valley."Vanessa paused."I asked her about it once, and she got very quiet.Almost defensive.She said she'd been living in a storage unit for a few months after she got out of the hospital.It was all she could afford.She slept on an air mattress surrounded by boxes of her old life—all the things she couldn't bear to throw away but couldn't stand to look at either."
Kari's heart rate spiked.A storage facility.Private, isolated, climate-controlled.The perfect place to hide someone you didn't want found.
"Do you have the address?"
"Hold on.Let me pull up her file."The sound of typing, of papers being shuffled."SecureStore Self-Storage, 14500 Vanowen Street.Van Nuys."
Kari hurried to the door, Carter right behind her."Thank you, Vanessa.Let us know right away if she shows up at work or tries to contact you."
The drive to Van Nuys took thirty-five minutes in afternoon traffic, every red light feeling like an eternity.Carter called for backup while Kari drove, her knuckles white on the steering wheel as she wove through lanes of slow-moving cars.
"Blackhorse."Carter's voice was careful, the tone of someone about to deliver bad news."You know what the pattern is.Diana doesn't hold people captive.She kills them and stages the scene.If Tayen's been missing for days..."
"I know."
Carter went on anyway."Based on everything we've seen, Tayen is probably already dead.We might be driving to find a body, not a rescue."
Kari's jaw tightened.She knew Carter was right.The logical part of her brain had already run the calculations—days missing, a killer who acted quickly and cleanly, no ransom demands, no contact.The odds weren't good.
But she thought about Lola, waiting by the phone.About the promise she'd made to find Tayen and bring her home.
"I have to know for sure," Kari said."Either way, I have to know."
Carter nodded and didn't push further.She understood.Sometimes you had to see it with your own eyes before you could accept it.
SecureStore Self-Storage was a sprawling complex of identical orange buildings, row after row of metal doors stretching back from the street like a small city of secrets.A chain-link fence surrounded the property, with a gate that required a keycode to enter.The kind of place where people stored furniture and holiday decorations, the accumulated debris of lives in transition.
They pulled into the parking lot and found the facility manager, a heavyset man in his sixties.He was sitting in a small office that smelled of stale coffee and cigarette smoke, watching a security monitor with half-closed eyes.
"Diana Shepherd," Carter said, flashing her badge."She rents a unit here."
The manager squinted at her badge, then turned to his ancient computer, typing with two fingers."Yeah, got her.Unit 247.Been renting it for about six years, never missed a payment."He looked up."She in some kind of trouble?"
