Chapter 3 - THE DARK UNIT
I walked out of the principal’s office, the heavy brass key burning a hole in my palm.
Emma was still sitting with Mrs. Higgins, quietly coloring a picture of a yellow sun. When she saw me, she immediately dropped her crayon and slid off the chair.
“Daddy, are you mad?” she asked, looking up at me with those wide, innocent brown eyes that looked exactly like her mother’s.
My heart broke all over again. I knelt down and pulled her into a fierce hug, burying my face in her shoulder.
“No, sweetheart, I am not mad at you,” I promised, my voice thick with emotion. “I am so incredibly proud of you for sharing your books with Lily. You did the exact right thing.”
I looked up at Mrs. Higgins, whose eyes were filled with quiet understanding.
“Mrs. Higgins, can I leave Emma here with you for an hour?” I asked. “I need to run an errand, and I don't want her going back to Mrs. Carter’s classroom under any circumstances.”
“She can stay with me all day, Mr. Brooks,” Mrs. Higgins said firmly, casting a dark glare down the hallway toward Room 14. “I’ll keep her perfectly safe.”
“Thank you.”
I kissed Emma’s forehead, walked out of the school, and got into my truck.
I dialed Marcus, my lead construction foreman and the closest thing I had to a brother.
“Boss, you’re back from Chicago early,” Marcus answered over the roar of a backhoe.
“Marcus, I need you to meet me at the old industrial storage yard on 4th Street. Bring bolt cutters and bring your sidearm.”
The background noise on the phone instantly cut out as Marcus stepped away from the machinery. His tone shifted from friendly to dead serious.
“I’m ten minutes away. What’s going on, Daniel?”
“Someone used Sarah’s name to steal two thousand textbooks from my daughter’s school,” I said, the rage simmering just beneath the surface of my words. “And I think they’re hiding them in our facility.”
I drove like a madman across town. The old industrial yard on 4th Street was a property my company had purchased two years ago, slated for demolition next spring. It was mostly abandoned, consisting of long rows of rusted, corrugated metal storage units.
I pulled through the chain-link gates just as Marcus arrived in his heavy work truck.
We met in the center of the dusty lot. Marcus, a massive man with a thick beard and eyes that missed nothing, took one look at my face and simply nodded.
“Which unit?” he asked.
“Unit 42.”
We walked down the long, silent rows of metal doors. The afternoon sun beat down on the pavement, but the air felt heavy, suffocating.
When we reached Unit 42, the heavy steel padlock was secured tightly through the latch.
I pulled the brass key from my pocket. It slid perfectly into the lock. It turned with a heavy, satisfying click.
Marcus grabbed the handle of the corrugated roll-up door and heaved it upward. The metal shrieked in protest, echoing loudly across the empty yard.
The door rolled up, revealing the pitch-black interior of the deep unit.
Marcus clicked on a heavy tactical flashlight, sweeping the beam through the darkness.
My breath caught in my throat.
There they were.
Stacked floor to ceiling were hundreds of cardboard boxes bearing the logo of the educational publisher I had purchased the books from.
“You found them,” Marcus muttered, stepping into the unit.
I walked over to the nearest open box and pulled out a brand-new, blue science textbook. The exact same book Mrs. Carter had destroyed in front of Emma.
But as I flipped the book over, I noticed something deeply disturbing.
The original publisher’s barcode on the back cover had been violently scraped off. In its place, a new, glossy white sticker had been applied.
I pulled out my phone and scanned the new barcode using my camera.
A webpage instantly loaded on my screen.
It was an online listing for a highly exclusive, expensive private academy three towns over. The textbook was listed for sale at $150 per copy.
Patricia Vance and Mrs. Carter weren't just hiding the books to secure a federal grant for the school. They were actively repackaging and selling the donated books to wealthy private schools for pure, untraceable cash profit.
They were stealing from impoverished nine-year-olds to line their own pockets.
“Marcus,” I said, my voice trembling with disgust. “They’re selling them. This entire operation is a black-market fencing ring for educational supplies.”
Before Marcus could respond, a sudden, deafening crash echoed from the entrance of the unit.
The heavy metal roll-up door slammed down with violent force, plunging the unit into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
“Hey!” Marcus roared, rushing toward the door.
We heard the heavy click of a padlock snapping shut on the outside.
We were locked in.
I ran to the door, slamming my fists against the corrugated steel. “Open this door!” I yelled.
Silence answered me.
Then, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket.
The screen illuminated the dark space, casting eerie shadows across the boxes of stolen books.
It was an unknown number.
I answered it, putting it on speaker.
“I warned you about spoiling that child, Mr. Brooks,” a cold, familiar voice echoed through the speaker. It was Mrs. Carter. “You just couldn't leave well enough alone.”
“You’re going to federal prison for this, Margaret,” I spat into the phone.
Mrs. Carter let out a dry, humorless laugh.
May you like
“I don't think so, Daniel. You see, the demolition crew is scheduled to bulldoze that section of the yard tomorrow morning. And since your truck is parked out front, the police will just assume you were tragically crushed in a workplace accident while inspecting the site.”
The line went dead.
