“I see.”
He didn’t speak again, which was good. She better get used to silence, because she’d be on her own pretty soon, which was good. Just as she liked it. Nobody to bare all her secrets to, that was what she wanted.
Sejal roused herself when they got to the door. “Ten twenty-four,” she said, and Krish punched it in. The door clicked open. She should change that code, actually. It was her mother’s birthday. Well, the date their dad had told them was their mother’s birthday. Who knew when Rushali’s actual birthday was.
Krish followed her into the climate-controlled building. “How long has it been since you’ve lived in Vegas?” he asked. His voice echoed in the hallway, bouncing off the concrete and cinder block.
“Not since I was eighteen or so. Though I visited a couple of times.” Once out of necessity, once under duress.
“But you kept a storage unit here?”
“Not mine. My dad’s.”
“But he’s gone, right? Who’s been paying for it?”
“My dad didn’t think he would ever die. This thing is probably paid up for decades.” She stopped in front of a unit. Number 1024, like the code. God, her dad had been so hard up for his wife. It would be sweet, if the woman wasn’t a crook who abandoned her young children.
“You stored stuff here?”
“No. Only my dad did. But he had something of mine.” She fingered the lock on the door.
“Do you have a key?”
“Not on me, no. But I don’t need one.” She unscrewed the necklace around her neck, revealing the sharp pin hidden in the oblong pendant. She flourished it at him.
He didn’t look as impressed as she thought he might. “I saw it in the bar. So that’s how you kept getting out of the cuffs.”
“Yeah, man. Did you think it was actual magic? I’m good, but I’m not Houdini.” She inserted the pin into the keyhole andfinagled it. A minute, maybe two, and the lock popped. She hummed in satisfaction and took the padlock off.
The smugness turned to swearing, though, when the door slid up and the light came on. “What the fuck?”
“I take it it’s not supposed to look like this.”
She gritted her teeth and walked inside the completely empty unit. “No, it’s not.” She crouched down. There were marks on the floor where a desk had been, and a thin layer of dust on the concrete. Everything had been moved a while ago. Fuck.
“Could your father have emptied this place out before he died?”
She shook her head. “No. When my aunt told me about his death, she told me he’d left stuff in the unit. Said it would be here when I was ready.” Sejal hadn’t wanted anything from her dad at that point. Alexei hadn’t been bothering her then.
Her Rhea Auntie had been hurt by Sejal’s lack of a reaction to Vassar’s death.He loved you. He just wasn’t good at raising little kids.
Every repressed memory had come roaring to the surface. How Vassar neglected them as children, making her parent her sister, how he kicked her out because she’d refused to be a party to his dangerous schemes, how he hadn’t cared about them unless they were making him money.
Then he shouldn’t have had any kids, she had shot back, furious with her aunt. Rhea had merely hung up. Sejal had marked the news of his death by going to a pub and getting intensely drunk.
Fuck you, Dad.She raked her hands through her hair.
“Sejal?”
She turned around to find Krish leaning against the doorframe. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was a mess, but he somehow still looked more put together than she felt. “What?” she snapped.
“You’re panicking.”
“No fuck.” She paced back and forth. “I needed the— I needed what was in here. It was important.”
“How important?”
“Life and death.” Their lives.
