Chapter 53

 

 

The sun had come out at some point while Foster slept, and by midafternoon when they reached Albuquerque the major roads weren’t too bad. He remembered the location of the self storage unit he had rented on a street called San Mateo. Two years ago it had been when he took the unit and paid in advance. He didn’t recognize the manager at the gate, but there were no questions and he drove directly to unit 127.

The footing was a little icy in the shady patches, but they would make the best of it. He dusted off the padlock and opened it, heaving the garage-sized door upward.

“Whew-ee, that’s a lot of boxes!” Melissa said, staring into the space which was lined floor-to-ceiling with them. “How much we got here?”

“Shh. Voices down,” he whispered. “I coded them so we don’t have to open them up to find out.”

He gazed around the room, judging. Would they be able to fit all this into the bus? Well, they had no choice at the moment, but before the next stop they would need to rent a trailer.

“Let’s get started. It’ll be dark soon.” He picked up a box and stacked another on top, carrying them to the door of the bus. “I’ll start finding places for these inside. You just keep ’em coming.”

He set the first two boxes on the dinette table and took out his phone calculator. Quickly translating his handwritten codes into dollar amounts, he entered the sums and then carried the boxes to the back, where he began packing them under the queen-sized bed in the corner. By the time he came back, Melissa had three more boxes waiting for him.

Enter the dollar value, stash the box, get another. Repeat, repeat, repeat. They weren’t a fraction of the way through the storage building before the under-bed space and top of the bed were full. He stacked boxes to the ceiling, and started on the tiny lavatory space. Next, he filled the passageway, then added to what was already under the dinette. Soon, the dinette’s bench seats were full.

“How we doing?” he called out to Melissa.

She had removed her jacket and was breathing hard when she dropped two more boxes on the step. “Take a look.”

The locker was barely half cleared.

“Okay, hold off a minute.” He did some quick calculations. They couldn’t wait until Amarillo to get a trailer. They needed one now, and a simple little U-Haul wouldn’t cut it. “Let’s lock up and come back.”

“Food would be good,” she said as she watched him double-check the padlock.

When she climbed into the bus her eyes went wide. “Holy cow! What—how? Honey, how are we going to sleep or take a potty break?”

“Sleep sitting up, take advantage of restrooms at the gas stations,” he said.

An hour later, they drove away from the sales lot, a brand new ‘toy hauler’ trailer hitched to the bus. The salesman had assured them it would easily carry six ATVs or two side-by-side vehicles in its enclosed space. Given the fact that they were paying in cash, he probably would have promised them anything.

When Melissa whined about not taking the time to enjoy a good restaurant dinner, Foster simply gave her a look. No way was he leaving the bus in a parking lot. The three million dollars already inside was not going to make some petty crook’s day.

It took them until nearly ten p.m., lock-up time for the storage facility’s main gate, to finish emptying Unit 127. Foster checked the map, debating. They were already more than a day behind schedule. That ship wasn’t going to wait.

They could skip Amarillo and easily make it to El Paso and then on to San Diego. But this was a now-or-never operation. There would be no coming back to get the cash later. Once they left the States for their island, there wouldn’t be another cargo container. The arrangements and rigmarole to make this happen—it was too much to contemplate doing it all over.

He pulled the bus and trailer out of the storage place and followed the route to I-40, eastbound.