“It’s a self-storage facility. I find it doubtful that’s where she’s hiding.”
“Sure, but she didn’t hide this inside the dresser for no reason. It was clearly important.”
“It looks like it was in the garbage.”
“Sure, but then it was taped to the inside of a dresser. I thought you guys always followed all the clues.”
“I plan on following this one as well. I am just not sure it is as important as you seem to think it is.”
“We’ll see.”
The storage facility was not far from Whitaker’s hotel. It was about halfway between there and the Wissler apartment, which made sense. Taylor did not think Whitaker had taken out the storage unit since the number on it was written in someone else’s handwriting. If Taylor had to guess, he would have put his money on Frieda Wissler at least paying for it. In her frail condition, it was unlikely she could have carried anything down to the unit, but she could have easily hired labor to take care of those details.
The facility itself was actually fairly familiar, looking like one of the thousands of such places that had opened across America in the last decade. Even Europe could not escape its ubiquity.
Graf got them through the gate by flashing his badge at the camera. He then drove them up and down the rows until they found the number they were looking for. Taylor hopped out as soon as they were parked in front of the numbered locker, leaning down to the lock.
Turning his head to make a comment at Graf, three men caught his attention. They were four or five lockers down and walking towards Graf and Taylor with a sense of purpose. Taylor had not heard a car and did not see one anywhere near the three men, who were also not looking at any of the lockers as they closed the distance between them and Taylor. On top of everything else, all three men wore heavier than needed jackets, which further triggered warnings in Taylor’s head.
“Graf,” Taylor started to say in warning when the first man’s hand went into the mostly closed coat. Taylor did not think, he just moved, pushing off the ground and catching Graf around the mid-section, pulling both of them down, putting the car between themselves and the three men.
Graf had a look of surprise on his face as the two of them hit the ground, right up until the first gunshot rang out.
“What …?”
“Three men, armed, about thirty feet that way,” Taylor said, pointing through the car to the position he had seen the men.
Graf reached to his waist and pulled his own gun out of its holster. Taylor silently cursed the fact that he had been forced to leave his own weapon at home but was silently happy that at least Germany was not one of those countries that did not force the police to go around unarmed.
Bullets continued to slap into the car and the closed storage locker door. Graf pushed himself off the ground into a crouch and lifted his pistol into a raised two-handed grip while Taylor slid as far to one side while still protected by the body of the car as possible to give him room. Since Taylor did not have a weapon of his own, all he could do was watch Graf protect the two of them.
Graf pushed himself up just enough to squeeze off two shots in return before popping back down. Turning to say something to Taylor, Graf instead dropped his weapon and grabbed his arm, falling to one knee.
Blood began seeping through Graf’s fingers, darkening his grey suit jacket. Since he had been behind the car, Taylor assumed it must have been a ricochet that hit him.
“Scheiße,” he said through gritted teeth.
Taylor reached over and picked up the dropped weapon.
“Can you call this in?”
Graf nodded and pulled his now blood-stained hand off his arm, reaching into his pants pockets for his phone. Taylor ducked his head down to look under the car, checking where each assailant was. The few shots Graf had gotten off had gotten the men to stop their forward advance. Had Taylor been in their shoes, he wouldn't have started a firefight in what was essential an alleyway, stuck between two walls of closed storage bay doors, with effectively no cover. Especially if his target was still next to a giant chunk of metal in the form of a car they could use as their own cover.
Admittedly, their plan had probably been to catch himself and Graf by surprise. The gunmen probably were not looking to kill them either, since the corner where this row of storage bays ended was close enough to still be in effective range.
They were also showing themselves to not be total amateurs, either. Once Graf had begun returning fire, the three men had stopped their advance and were retreating under a base of fire, with one almost to the edge of the row and cover.
Instead of popping up and firing over the hood of the car as Graf had done, which would have put him directly in the line of fire, Taylor duck-walked sideways and leaned out, Graf's service weapon already up and aiming roughly in the area where he had seen the legs of the man furthest away.
One of the men was still putting rounds in the car as the other two backed away quickly. Taylor ignored the man firing for the moment since, in his current position, the guy had a bad angle on Taylor. Pulling the trigger four times in rapid succession, Taylor managed to hit both men who had been retreating for cover. The one furthest away went down like a marionette with his strings cut, a sure sign of a solid and possibly fatal
