I needed to hear Daniel before I did anything else foolish in his name. The cold store had given me a light and Sutter's car, nothing more. I left my bag at a cheap room I could afford for one night, washed under my injured arm with a rag, and drove back after midnight. The pickup's headlights shook over the broken road. I parked well short of the building and walked the rest, carrying no weapon and no good answer if somebody stopped me.
Beyond the roadside brush, the property smelled of wet weeds and old insulation. The machinery had been idle long enough that ordinary night sounds reached me: tires on the distant road, water ticking from a gutter, somebody coughing inside. I stopped at the cough. It came again, low and rough, but I could not put a name to it. A fence board shifted under my hand. I let it settle before moving farther. My shoulder had become a weight I carried rather than a joint I used.
Near the side wall, rain had eaten the wood around an old service opening. I remembered it from deliveries, though not in this condition. One edge sagged away from the masonry. I crouched beneath it and heard a woman's voice through the wall. She was speaking too softly for words to separate. Then a man answered. I pressed closer, cheek against damp brick. Somewhere inside, a chair scraped. I thought of Daniel's coat folded behind his truck seat and made myself wait.
'Daniel, keep your foot still.' The woman's voice was clearer now. 'It won't stop shaking,' he said. I gripped the broken frame hard enough to feel it cut my palm. His voice had changed since boyhood, but not that upward catch when he tried to make an embarrassment sound funny. I nearly called his name. Air rose in my chest and stayed there. He was alive. So was the woman with him. I had found them, and finding them had not yet helped them.
Through the gap I could see a narrow stretch of passage, gray floor and a bare bulb. Sutter crossed it carrying two cups. He disappeared beyond my angle of sight. A door moved, and the woman's voice stopped. I could not see a room, a lock, or Daniel himself. I stayed crouched until my leg began trembling. Then someone outside kicked a loose piece of metal. I turned too late. A man stood at the corner of the building, looking straight toward me.
'Get away from there.' His voice carried across the yard. I rose and tried to put the wall between us, but my stiff leg betrayed the first step. He came forward quickly. I backed into weeds, slipped, and caught myself with the cut hand. Pain opened across my palm. Behind him a door banged. I heard Sutter asking something I could not make out. The man reached for my jacket. I tore free, leaving cloth in his fist, and stumbled toward the drainage ground.
The ditch was deeper than it looked. I went down on one knee in black water, struck my shoulder against the bank, and lost the breath I needed to keep running. A flashlight swept the weeds above me. I pushed along the bottom, bent almost double, using my good forearm against the mud. Water filled one shoe. Somebody called my name from the yard. That was Sutter. I knew his voice now, and he knew whose hand had left blood on the broken opening.
At a culvert I stopped, unable to force my aching arm through the narrow turn. For several seconds I considered climbing out and running straight at them. Anger made that seem practical. Then Daniel spoke again in my memory, ashamed of a shaking foot. If I went back without help, there might be three people waiting behind those walls. I lowered myself farther into the water, turned sideways, and worked past the obstruction while mud scraped my face. The flashlight moved away.
I reached the road beyond the next stand of brush. My pickup was still where I had left it, but I did not go to it immediately. From the higher shoulder I could see part of the cold-store yard. The outside man walked slowly along the wall, examining the ground. Sutter joined him, then bent near the service opening. I wrapped my hand in a handkerchief and understood what I had left behind. They would not need to guess whether somebody had been listening.
I wanted to leave, get dry, find Leon. Instead I stayed long enough to learn whether the discovery changed anything. A pale seam appeared beneath the clouds. Inside the yard, Sutter moved his sedan away from the loading entrance. Another engine approached from the far road, heavier and slower. I could see only its lamps until it turned through the gate. Then a vehicle backed against the building before dawn.