Chapter 3
"Evan's right," Seth said from the doorway, his voice thick with dread. "The second the law touches this, we're finished. Whatever this is... whoever is doing this... we have to handle it ourselves."
Before Marcus could speak, a sharp, metallic *clack* echoed from the outer garage bay.
Julian’s head snapped toward the door. The revolver was in his hand in an instant, the hammer pulled back with a heavy, distinct click.
"Did you hear that?" Julian hissed.
"Front bay," Seth murmured, stepping away from the office door, his body sinking into an athletic crouch. "Sounded like metal hitting the roll-up door."
Evan reached into his coat and drew a sleek, compact semi-automatic pistol from a concealed leather holster. He checked the slide with a fluid, practiced motion. "Stay behind me. Julian, lights."
Julian flipped the wall toggle. The office plunged into absolute darkness, save for the faint grey rectangle of the window facing the cavernous main shop floor.
Outside the office, the garage was a maze of towering shadows—hydraulic lifts holding half-gutted sedans, stacks of bald tires, workbenches covered in greasy wrenches. The rain beat down on the corrugated roof like a thousand drumsticks.
Evan led the way, his back pressed against the wood-paneled wall, moving with the quiet precision of a man who owned the building and everything in it. Julian followed, his breathing heavy and ragged, the revolver raised near his cheek. Seth and Marcus brought up the rear, Marcus clutching his chest as if his heart were trying to tear its way through his ribs.
They reached the edge of Bay 3. The massive twenty-foot corrugated roll-up door was closed, padlocked from the inside.
At the base of the door, sitting dead center on the grease-stained concrete where the draft whistled through the rubber seal, was an object.
It hadn't fallen from a shelf. It had been pushed through the three-inch gap between the bottom of the roll-up door and the concrete threshold.
Julian raised the gun, his eyes wild, sweeping the darkness above the rafters. "Someone’s outside. Someone’s right outside the fucking door—"
"Quiet!" Evan hissed, grabbing Julian’s wrist and forcing the barrel toward the floor.
He listened.
Beyond the thin sheet metal of the bay door, there was only the sound of rain splashing into puddles and the distant, lonely rumble of a coal train moving along the river valley. No footsteps. No engine. Just the hollow empty night.
Evan knelt beside the object.
It was wrapped in a yellowed, translucent plastic grocery bag, tied with a simple square knot. Inside, visible through the plastic, was a bulky, rectangular shape of faded black plastic and chrome.
Evan used the tip of his pocketknife to slice the plastic open, refusing to touch the surface with his bare fingers.
The wrapping fell away.
Sitting on the cold concrete was a 1990s Panasonic portable cassette voice recorder—scratched, scuffed, the battery compartment cover held in place by a strip of peeling electrical tape. Stuck to the front of the cassette door was a piece of white masking tape.
Written on the tape in smudged black permanent marker was a single name:
*LEO.*
Marcus choked back a sob, his hands flying to his mouth. "Oh God. Oh sweet Jesus. It’s him. It’s his."
"Shut up!" Julian snarled, his voice trembling so hard the revolver rattled against his belt buckle. "He’s dead! He’s six feet under wet clay behind the rail trestle! I checked the site last spring! The dirt hasn't moved!"
Evan didn't speak. His jaw was set like granite, but a cold bead of sweat ran down the back of his neck, soaking into his collar.
The tape deck was loaded. Inside the clear plastic window sat a vintage Maxell 60-minute cassette, the magnetic ribbon visible, wound halfway through Side A.
"Don't press it," Seth whispered from the shadows behind them, his face pale as chalk. "Evan, don't. Leave it. Throw it in the incinerator."
"If we don't know what they have," Evan said, his voice flat, dead, devoid of all human warmth, "we don't know how to kill them."
Evan reached down with a gloved finger and pressed the heavy mechanical *PLAY* button.
The gears clicked with a harsh, plastic snap. The small electric motor inside the recorder let out a high-pitched, warbling whine as the spools began to turn.
For five seconds, there was only the heavy, rhythmic hiss of magnetic tape static, mixed with the faint, muffled sound of distant wind.
Then came the audio.
It wasn't a stranger’s voice. It wasn't a blackmailer delivering demands.
*“Grab his legs! Grab his fucking legs, Seth, he’s slipping!”*
It was Julian’s voice. Raw, shrieking, terrified, exactly as it had sounded ten years ago under the dripping canopy of the ravine.
*“I can’t! There’s too much blood on his jacket, I can’t get a grip!”* Seth’s voice followed, cracking with high-school panic, breathless and sobbing.
*“Shut up, both of you! Marcus, get the headlights killed! Kill the fucking lights before someone comes off the bridge!”* That was Evan. Cold, commanding, furious.
And then, cutting through the background hiss like a rusted blade, came the sound that Evan had spent a decade drowning out with scotch and seven-figure real estate transactions:
The wet, rattling gasp of a dying boy, choking on shattered teeth, whispering a single, broken word:
*“Please...”*
Then the sound of heavy boots sloshing through mud. The dull, sickening thud of a tire iron striking wet bone.
And finally, Evan’s own voice, crystal clear, sounding as though he were standing right beside the microphone:
*“He’s done. Drag him into the pipe. If any of you ever speaks a word of this, I will bury you right next to him.”*
The tape ended with a loud, mechanical *POP*.
The recorder whined in the empty garage, the spool spinning freely against the plastic header tape, sending a steady, rhythmic clicking through the frozen air.
*Click. Click. Click.*
Marcus fell to his knees on the concrete, his hands buried in his hair, rocking back and forth. "We’re dead," he whimpered, saliva dripping from his chin onto his tailored trousers. "We’re dead. It was recorded. The whole thing was recorded. He had a tape running in his pocket... the whole time..."
"Julian," Evan said. His voice was terrifyingly calm, the calm of a predator that had finally spotted the snare around its ankle. "Did you search his pockets that night?"
Julian was staring at the recorder, his eyes wide, blood draining from his face until his skin looked like wet dough. "I... I grabbed his wallet. I took his state ID. I didn't... he was wearing a heavy winter parka, Evan! It was dark! It was raining like a bitch! I didn't check every goddamned pocket!"
"You left a running voice recorder on his body," Evan said, turning his head slowly toward his cousin.
"I didn't know!" Julian screamed, raising the gun toward the ceiling, his finger trembling violently against the trigger. "How the fuck was I supposed to know a runaway was taping his walk down the highway? Who does that?"
"Hitchhikers do," Seth said, his voice completely flat, deadened by shock. "Kids who think they're making an audio diary. Kids who are scared of the dark."
