His voice cut through the darkness—calm, certain. “Don’t hide anymore… I can see you.”
My lungs locked. I pressed my back to the cold concrete of Unit 14B, the kind of storage locker people used for Christmas lights and old couches. My phone screen glared 0% signal. Of course. I’d picked the one dead spot in the whole industrial strip outside Phoenix.
Footsteps stopped outside the rolling door. Then soft laughter, like he was savoring a joke I didn’t understand.
“You always choose the same place,” he murmured.
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. Ethan Cole. My ex. The man whose closed-casket funeral I’d attended nine months ago. The man the police told me was “unrecognizable” after the highway fire.
This couldn’t be real—unless the real lie had been the crash.
I slid my hand into the pocket of my hoodie and felt the sharp edge of the flash drive taped to my palm. The reason I was here. Three days ago, I’d opened a package left on my doorstep: no return address, just a sticky note in Ethan’s handwriting—KEEP THIS SAFE. Inside was the drive and a single key card labeled SANTOS LOGISTICS.
I’d used the card that night. The office was quiet, but the file cabinet wasn’t. In a folder marked “Vendor Recons,” I found printouts of wire transfers—hundreds of thousands moving through shell companies. One name repeated on every page: Logan Pierce, Ethan’s boss. The same Logan who’d cornered me at Ethan’s funeral and said, smiling, “You don’t know how lucky you are to be out of our world.”
Then my car got tailed. Then my apartment door was scratched like someone tested the lock. And now Ethan’s voice was inches away.
The door handle rattled once, slow and deliberate.
“Meg,” he said, using the nickname only he used. “Open up. I don’t want to scare you.”
But my body was already screaming. I scanned the unit: a metal shelf, a stack of boxes, a rusted dolly. No exit. No window. Only the gap beneath the door where his shadow stretched across the floor.
A click—metal on metal.
The rolling door began to rise. Light knifed in, revealing Ethan’s face, thinner, bruised at the jaw… and very much alive.
In his right hand was a pistol.
“Give me the drive,” he said, and the muzzle lifted toward my chest.
For a second my brain refused to match the image to the memory: Ethan’s crooked half-smile, the small scar on his left eyebrow, all of it welded to the gun in his hand.
“Ethan,” I whispered. “You’re dead.”
“I was supposed to be,” he said, eyes flicking past me as if measuring angles. “And if you scream, I’ll have to make this worse.”
My throat tightened. “You sent me the drive.”
He nodded once. “Because you’re the only person I trusted not to hand it to Logan.”
“So you staged it,” I said, forcing the words out. “The crash. The funeral.”
His jaw clenched. “You think I wanted you crying over an empty casket?”
“Then why are you pointing a gun at me?”
“Because Logan isn’t the only one looking,” he snapped, and for the first time his calm cracked. “There’s a buyer. They want those ledgers. Logan wants them back. And I need them to survive the next twenty minutes.”
He took one step inside. I stepped back until my calf hit a box. My fingers pressed the flash drive harder, as if pain could anchor me.
“Put it on the floor,” he said. “Slow.”
I lifted my hands. “If I do… what happens to me?”
His gaze softened for half a heartbeat. “You leave. You drive until you hit crowds. You don’t call anyone.”
“Like you didn’t call anyone?” I heard the edge in my voice. “You let me think you burned to death.”
“I didn’t have a choice.” He shifted his stance, keeping the barrel steady. “Logan owns people. When I found the transfers, I was marked. The crash was the only exit they’d believe.”
Tires crunched on gravel outside—slow, careful. Ethan’s eyes darted to the gap under the door.
“Someone’s here,” I said.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “And if it’s who I think it is, we’re out of time.”
He yanked the rolling door down halfway, leaving a thin slit of light. Then he reached into his pocket and tossed me a set of keys. “My truck is two rows over. If I tell you to run, you run.”
“Why would you help me?”
“Because this started with me,” he said quietly. “And I’m ending it.”
The tires stopped. A silhouette paused in front of the unit.
A man’s voice called, friendly and loud, “Phoenix PD! Ma’am, we got a report someone’s being threatened.”
Relief surged—until Ethan’s face went flat with dread.
“Don’t answer,” he mouthed.
The officer tried the latch.
And Ethan whispered, barely audible, “That’s Logan’s guy.”
The latch scraped again. “Ma’am?” the “officer” called. “Open the door so we can make sure you’re safe.”
Ethan’s gun stayed on me, but his free hand tapped his thigh—one, two, three—like a countdown. He wanted me to play along.
I raised my voice. “I’m okay. I’m just locked in.”
“Then we’ll get you out,” the man said, a little too eager. “Now.”
Ethan leaned close, lips barely moving. “He’s not a cop. Stall.”
No signal didn’t mean no evidence. I hit record on my phone anyway, then spoke loud enough for the crack under the door to carry it. “I have the drive. Logan Pierce’s drive. The one with the Santos Logistics wire transfers.”
Outside, silence—then a sharp hiss: “Shut up and open the door.”
That reaction told me everything. A real officer would’ve asked who Logan was. This guy was afraid of names.
Ethan’s fingers reached “three.” He nodded.
I grabbed the rusted dolly and smashed it into the rolling door. Metal shrieked. The latch jolted loose. Ethan shoved the door up a foot and yanked the man’s arm inside.
“Where’s Logan?” Ethan growled.
The man twisted, furious. “He’s not coming, Cole. He wants the drive back—and he wants you to bring the girl.”
The way he said “the girl” made my stomach turn.
I stepped closer, holding up my phone so the red dot was obvious. “Say it again. Say Logan ordered this.”
His eyes flicked to the screen. He weighed the odds, then spat, “Logan Pierce wants it back. Happy?”
Ethan released him and shoved him away. “Go,” he snapped at me.
We ran—two rows over, just like he promised. His truck fired up. As we peeled out, I saw the “cop” on his phone, already calling someone else.
Ethan pulled up his sleeve and showed a taped microphone under a bandage. “FBI,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get Logan on a clean order. Your recording just did it.”
We drove to a busy precinct, handed over the flash drive and my phone, and let agents take it from there. Logan Pierce was arrested that night—no spectacle—just cuffs and a face that finally understood money doesn’t buy everything.
I’m still furious at Ethan for letting me grieve him. I’m also alive.
If you were me, would you have trusted Ethan when you saw the gun—or would you have handed over the drive to save yourself? Drop your answer, and tell me the moment you knew the “cop” wasn’t a cop.
