Page 35 of The Woman in the Garage

“Hm?”

“Food?” she asked, giving me a bemused smile. “I got a BLT,” she added.

“Right. Sorry. How about the steak sandwich?”

We waited for our food, stashing our drinks in Dasha’s purse as she gushed about the decor. “I know that the garage can’t look this bright and girly, but it would be nice if it looked like it was part of, you know, this century at least.”

“It’s already looking better,” I told her, taking our bag of food. “Within another month or two, it will be like a new place. You don’t agree?” I asked when a dark look crossed her face.

“Hopefully,” she agreed.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem a lot less enthusiastic than you were the last time I saw you.”

“I guess I’ve just been giving this whole move and career change some second thoughts.”

“Because the guys at the garage are assholes?”

“Well, that’s, you know, part of it,” she admitted, and I liked that she didn’t feel the need to keep that secret.

“What’s going on, Dasha?” I asked, sensing she needed a little push as we crossed the road toward the marina park.

To that, she exhaled hard.

“I was kind of attacked recently, and—“

“Whoa. Back up. What the hell do you mean you were attacked?”

She exhaled hard, looking down the slope the sidewalk was about to take, then over at the hospital to the right, at thelittle park to the left where they played live music sometimes. Anywhere but at me.

“My uncle had a storage unit. I decided to use it to store a bunch of junk until I can get rid of it. Have you ever been to a storage unit? With the lights that only go on when you walk under them? Super creepy.”

“Yeah, not the best in terms of safety. Something happened there?”

“I was going back and forth to my car, so I left my unit open.”

“Of course.”

“When I came back one time, one of the lids on the containers was askew. I didn’t notice it right away, though. Not until I came back to find the same container missing.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. And when I got spooked, someone came out of nowhere, plowed into me, and made me fall. Then I ran for my life.”

“Jesus. Did you go to the office? The police?”

“I tried. The office was closed. When I went back, they checked the footage. You could see my unit getting burgled and me getting knocked on my ass. But you couldn’t see the guy’s face.”

“I don’t get it. Don’t storage units have gates and codes and shit like that?”

“They do. But, get this, he didn’t get in through the gate.”

“What?”

“Yeah, apparently, he scaled the fence back in the corner where there were no cameras to get in.”

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