The agent looked at the screen, then back at me.
“Do not answer that,” she said.
And behind her, inside Unit 17, something started to beep.
The beeping came from inside the storage unit.
Slow.
Steady.
Electronic.
The FBI agent moved before I could react. She pulled a key card from her pocket, unlocked the metal door, and rolled it upward.
The smell of dust and machine oil drifted out.
Inside sat a folding table.
A laptop.
Three file boxes.
And a black metal briefcase with a blinking red light.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The agent crossed the concrete floor and entered a code into the case.
The sound stopped.
Only then did she look back at me.
“Your father wasn’t hiding from criminals,” she said.
“He was hiding from someone in your family.”
My pulse hammered in my ears.
“What are you talking about?”
She opened the briefcase.
Inside were dozens of photographs.
