“I can make ten minutes interesting.”
The rear exit led to an alley and then a side street.
Strand’s truck was gone before Briggs had any reason to take his attention away from Devlin’s motorcycle idling out front.
By the time Briggs realized something had happened, Strand was four blocks away.
Gregory sat in the passenger seat.
Sky sat in back.
The storage facility was about twenty minutes away.
Sky did not speak.
Strand was not the kind of person who felt the need to fill silence.
Gregory looked through the windshield with his hands folded in his lap.
At a red light, Sky finally spoke.
“The paintings.”
Gregory turned slightly.
“What were they of?”
“People, mostly.”
He thought.
“Some landscapes.”
A pause.
“One or two I couldn’t really make out.”
Then he remembered.
“But mostly people he knew.”
Sky listened.
“There was one of a girl on a roof holding a paintbrush.”
Gregory watched her in the rearview mirror.
“Couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven in the painting.”
He paused.
“Blond. Working on something we couldn’t see.”
Sky made a tiny sound between laughter and something else.
“He painted me.”
“He painted you.”
The light changed.
Strand drove.
The storage unit smelled of motor oil and time.
The Dyna stood beneath a cover exactly as Gregory described.
Strand removed the tarp carefully.
Even Sky, who had spent much of her life around motorcycles, made a sound.
It was a beautiful machine.
Not beautiful because it was polished excessively.
Beautiful because everything about it carried intention.
Every bolt seated correctly.
Every line purposeful.
Built with the kind of love that does not announce itself.
It simply shows.
Sky reached out and touched the handlebar with two fingers.
“He rode it the week before he disappeared,” Gregory said.
“That was the last time.”
Sky removed her hand.
She looked toward the protected canvases stacked along the far wall.
Then toward the box.
Standard cardboard.
Old tape.
Across the top, written in Luther Hart’s unmistakable blocky, left-leaning handwriting:
SKY.
FOR WHEN YOU NEED IT.
She stared at the words.
For when.
Not if.
When.
As though he had known.
Sky lifted the box.
It was heavier than expected.
“You want privacy?” Strand asked.
“No.”
She looked at both men.
“Stay.”
Sky set the box down beside Luther’s Dyna.
The tape had become brittle with age.
It came away more easily than fresh tape.
She opened the flaps.
An envelope lay on top.
Her name.
Same handwriting.
Sky picked it up.
She did not open it yet.
Underneath were documents.
An entire folder.
She lifted it out.
The first sheet was heavy legal paper with an official heading.
Sky read the first paragraph.
Stopped.
Read it again.
“This is a custody document.”
Gregory stepped closer.