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Chapter 14

Lilly Cisneros

When I came to this time, opening or closing my eyes seemed to make no difference in the surrounding darkness. I looked down at my body, bound to my wheelchair, just to verify I hadn’t gone blind. It was cold, the air was moist, and everything reeked of seaweed and oil tankers.

I take it that Andrea guy is not, in fact, my new tour manager. I chuckled to myself. I was too weak to even try to break my restraints, so I accepted that was about all I could do.

Somewhere between 5 minutes and two hours passed before I heard the sound of metal sliding over metal. A light peeked in from an opening door. It was night time, but there appeared to be enough overhead lights outside to nearly replicate the day. Andrea stood in the door way with a large brute of a man.

I’m in a shipping container. Long Beach?

Wooden crates were all around me, marked with different band logos. Parrot Marionette, Lemon Park, Ride the Viking, even my own name graced a crate – all bands under the ALIVE label.

“You’re awake!” Andrea beamed in a way that was entirely too cheerful.

“Where is this?” My voice sounded foreign in my ears.

“At the final stage.” He nodded to himself. “Oh- Don’t worry, we’re not going to kill you or anything.”

“Cool.” Great response, Lilly. And clearly there’s nothing to worry about. They’re just going to drug me and tie me up, but they won’t kill me… “So what’s with all the CDs?”

“You’ll see.” That grin made my skin crawl.

I pursed my lips and heaved a sigh. I’m supposed to be celebrating my success right now. Not being held hostage. This is bullshit.

###

Finch Corbin

Charles Sommers set me up with a new car. Mark Corbin headed back home, leaving me to try to absorb everything that was happening on my own. It was so much to process, I opted to just shut it out completely to focus on the task at hand. I could dwell on how many betrayals and lies I’ve been subjected to later.

I dialled Baek, but got no answer. I sent him a text, and the response was more positive.

Something non offensive seemed like the safest course of conversation right now.

He responded almost immediately.



I couldn’t play completely dumb. I hadn’t spoken to him since he sent me to the Mad Mister Roger’s house, and there was no way I could speak to him the same way after that.






His punctuation said all he needed to say on its own. Though it wasn’t clear how much he had been involved in incident all those years ago now. I agreed to meet, sent a text to Sommers, and set my map to a shipping container yard just a couple miles away from Mr. Sommer’s warehouse. I parked the car out of sight, so he wouldn’t assume the worst before we even got a chance to meet up.

I followed the arrows and numbers to the container number Baek had also sent me. Everything looked the same, rusted and dirty from months and months on the slow boat to and from China. At long last, I located a large green container at the end of the fourth row. No containers were stacked on top of it, and the door appeared to be slightly ajar. No one was around.

I pulled open the door the rest of the way, figuring Sommer’s minions would surely be inside for some kind of ambush. But instead, all I saw was...

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