Free Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

and casino promotions I remembered from my childhood. The marshland by the highway reminded me of the desert. Flat and hot and empty. There was hardly any vegetation taller than scrub brush for miles. The casino towers shimmered on the horizon like a mirage. The Honda handled nice and easy.
    I zoomed past a billboard that read The Atlantic Regency: A World Away .
    As I got closer to the city, I could taste the salt in the air. I cranked up the AC to full blast and followed the instructions from the machine on my dash. Back in the Five Star, Marcus had mentioned a self-storage unit north of the city. Call me and wait it out . If there really was a unit, it would be my first stop. I owed Ribbons that much. Not everyone who doesn’t make a phone call after a heist is vanishing. Some have reasonable explanations for why they went incommunicado, and not all of them are liars. Phones run out of juice. Numbers get lost. People get caughtin places with no reception. It sounds unlikely after so many months of planning, sure, but these things happen. If Ribbons had simply broken his phone during the firefight or ditched it in a moment of panic, it was still feasible he could’ve made it to the storage facility. He could be there right now, just hoping and praying that Marcus would send someone like me, and not a guy with a jar of nutmeg and a pair of pliers. I owed it to him to assume his innocence. At least, for the moment.
    I saw the storage sign from almost a half a mile out, growing like a dot on the horizon. The storage center was in a precarious zone between the outskirts of the city and the uninhabitable salt marshes separating the city from the rest of the mainland. The place looked like it had been around for all of a week. The units were old steel freight containers just dumped there in the marsh, surrounded by a fifteen-foot razor-wire fence. There was a plain stucco prefab manager’s office in the dirt parking lot. The sign was on wheels. I parked the car and stepped out. It was like walking into a steam vent. The smell of the stagnant water and rusting containers hit me like a blow to the head. I hadn’t even got across the lot before my shirt was soaked through with sweat.
    Units like these are a one-stop solution to a lot of heisting problems. Sure, the management takes notice if you start sleeping there, but for a quick and private place, a storage unit’s hard to beat. A hundred bucks can buy you a hundred square feet for a month. As long as you keep paying the rent, you can keep anything you want in there. Most companies make you flash a driver’s license and sign a piece of paper saying you won’t use the joint for anything illegal, but there isn’t much they can actually do to stop you. If you just need a place to lie low for a few hours, self-storage beats a motel every time. I looked through the fence at the rows of rusted shipping containers. I knew just by looking the place over once that Ribbons wouldn’t be there. Having your face on the news changes everything. Suddenly you think about the bored-looking kid who watched you sign the paperwork a couple of months back and start wondering if he could pick you out of a lineup. This place would seem too confining for him. By now, paranoia would be making the decisions.
    But Ribbons did have a unit in there.
    It was worth checking out.
    I ignored the manager’s office and walked directly up to the gate. There was an electric box over the handle with a standard numerical punch-code lock. You’d press four numbers and the magnetic bolt would come undone and let you open the gate, even if the manager wasn’t around. I tried 1111 and 4444 in case the manufacturer’s codes still worked. Neither of them did. I looked up at the fence. I didn’t enjoy the prospect of climbing up and slicing through the coils of nickel-chromium razor wire. I stared at it for a moment, then back down at the number box.
    I took out the car key. I worked the rental-car insignia off