I shoved my card into the reader to open the gates and then drove to the end of the long building on the left. Our unit was the very last one. I parked in front of the roller door, then climbed out and glanced around. No one else was here, and there were no lights on in the office—which sat at the rear of the block, in between the two storage buildings, enabling them to see who was coming and going. I glanced at my watch; it was close to five thirty, so that wasn’t unexpected, and it wasn’t as if the office was manned full-time anyway.
But for some damn reason, instinct stirred. Something was wrong—though as usual, said instinct wasn’t supplying any information as to what.
I pocketed my keys and walked over to the office. No one answered my knock, and a quick peer through the windows revealed there was no one inside and nothing out of place.
I frowned and headed back to our storage unit. It was then I noticed the roller door’s lock had been jimmied, and the thick padlock the facility’s owner insisted we use as additional security was sitting on the concrete in front of the door rather than being locked in place.
My gaze dropped to the bottom of the door; the edge had been bent upwards in a couple of places.
Someone had tried to get inside.
I knelt and carefully ran my hand across the door’s bottom edge. Energy caressed my fingers, which meant the spells remained active, and that was a huge relief. They were undoubtedly the reason the would-be thieves hadn’t succeeded. Roller doors—even locked ones—were easy enough to get into if you knew how. I didn’t, but I’d certainly seen plenty of newspaper articles warning those in high-crime-rate areas about it.
I rose and took several steps back to study the roofline. There was no evidence the thieves had tried to get in from up top, so I turned and walked around to the rear of the unit. Again, there was nothing to suggest they’d tried to get in there, either, which was odd given there was only one camera watching the six-foot-wide strip of land between the razor-wire topped chain wire fence and the building. It would have been the easiest camera to disable, but from where I was standing, there was no evidence it had been tampered with in any way.
There was also no evidence that the would-be thieves had gained access into the storage yard through the fence—the razor wire might have meant they couldn’t have climbed it, but the right wire cutter would have gotten through the fence easily enough.
I walked back to the front of our unit and studied the forecourt area again. There were multiple cameras in this area, and at least two of them were trained on our unit—one of the reasons we’d chosen it. They would have captured the persons behind the attempted break-in, so why weren’t we notified?
I had no idea, but I very much intended to find out. I grabbed the phone out of my purse and quickly rang the after-hours number.
Harry, the owner and manager, answered on the third ring. “Castle Rock Ultimate Storage,” he said. “How may I help you?”
“Harry, it’s Lizzie Grace. I just arrived at my storage unit and discovered someone has tried to break in. Did you notice anything on the cameras over the last couple of nights?”
“No—anything taken?” His voice was sharp.
“No, because they didn’t get in.”
“At least that’s something. I’ll be there in five—I’ll have to check the other units, then look at the day’s recording.”
“Do you want me to call the rangers?”
He hesitated. “Let’s wait and see if any of the other units have been hit.”
“Shall I do a walk around while I’m waiting for you to arrive?”
“Probably best not to, just in case you foul any evidence if there have been other break-ins.”
I resisted the urge to point out that I probably knew more about preserving evidence than he ever would, given who I was dating and how often I’d worked with the rangers, but maybe he was one of the rare few in this reservation who didn’t actually know about me and Aiden.
“I’ll be in my unit if you need to speak to me, then,” I said, and hung up.
After shoving my phone into my pocket, I locked my car, then keyed open the roller door and lifted it up. The threads of magic protecting the contents of the unit were a swirling river of silver, gold, and a hint of red—which was the anti-fire spell we’d recently woven in. They reacted as I stepped inside, briefly resisting my presence before acknowledging and allowing me in. The inner space was dominated almost entirely by a secondary unit. It had been built on a metal platform one foot off the ground, and there was a three-foot gap between its walls and the main unit’s. Though there was a door, there was no handle or lock. Like the storage units hidden behind the bookcase in our reading room, the door here used a magical version of a fingerprint scanner—one that would respond to only Belle and me.
I pressed my hand against the middle of the door. Energy caressed across my skin, then the door softly clicked open. I pushed it wider and stepped inside. Bookcases lined three walls and were filled to the brim with books of all ages and sizes. Belle might not have inherited all of her grandmother’s books, but she’d certainly gotten a good percentage of them. In the center of the room was a small wooden table on which another dozen books sat—Nell’s handwritten index system. Unfortunately, she’d had a very haphazard method of recording what information lay where, which made it somewhat difficult to find things. We were currently in the process of not only converting all the books to an electronic format—a long and somewhat laborious process—but also trying to make sense of the indexes.
Of course, making things easier to find wasn’t the only reason for the conversion. It also gave us a backup in case the High Witch Council ever discovered we had the majority of Nell’s library—which should, for all intents and purposes, have been gifted to the National Library in Canberra on her death.
Belle had initially asked a techie friend of hers to help with the conversion process, but after some serious misgivings over just how interested he was becoming in the old books, she’d decided we’d be better off doing it ourselves. And while it was undoubtedly safer, it would also now take a whole lot longer.
I sat on the table, crossed my legs, and then pulled the top index onto my knees. I was barely halfway through when I heard the gates open; a few seconds later, Harry’s red four-wheel drive drove past and stopped outside the office. I carefully placed the index down and headed out of the inner unit, ensuring the door was locked before walking over.
“Hey, Lizzie,” he said. He was a thin, rather dapper-looking man in his mid-fifties. “Sorry about this. Not sure why the alarms wouldn’t have gone off—the sensors are set to trip if there’s an un-carded entry.”
I swung around and walked beside him as he headed for my unit. “Maybe whoever did this managed to get hold of a card.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, given it’s in the contract that we be notified immediately if a card goes missing. Otherwise, our responsibility for damages is voided.”
I was betting a lot of renters here didn’t actually read the fine print. “The fence behind this building wasn’t cut; I did check that.”
He grunted and pulled down the roller door, studying the bent sections intently for a few minutes. “Certainly looks as if a pry bar has been used, and that suggests they didn’t really know what they were doing. A determined thief could have gotten through easy enough.”