Chapter 27 · The Other Half

The storage locker smells like rust and old paper. Fourth Street Station's a dead subway stop. Nobody's used this place in ten years. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead, half of them busted. My fingers shake around the key.

Locke's behind me. Close enough I can hear him breathing. "You sure about this?"

I'm not sure about anything anymore. Dad wouldn't look at me the whole drive over. Just sat in the back seat staring at his hands like they belonged to someone else. Locke drove. Kept checking the mirrors. Kept his gun on his lap.

The key fits. Locker 247. I pull the door open.

Inside there's a shoebox. That's it. Brown cardboard, worn at the corners. The kind you'd throw away without thinking twice.

I lift the lid.

Cassette tapes. Four of them. Each one labeled in Dad's handwriting. Dates going back fifteen years. The last one says my birthday. The day I turned three.

"What the hell," I whisper.

Locke reaches past me, picks up the tape marked October 2008. The month of the bombing. His jaw's tight. "We need something that can play these."

There's a old Walkman at the bottom of the box.