The Never List

waist, as well as a backup prepaid phone. One on each side. Tracy shook her head, but I could tell she was scared too and therefore was probably secretly happy I had them. We each had a flashlight, and I had brought a small camera and a can of mace. I carried Jennifer’s picture in my pocket to bolster my nerves.
    We stood face-to-face, looking at each other, bracing our shoulders as we each took a long deep breath. And then, without a word, we started out. Almost as soon as we were out on the road, we heard a car engine gunning and jumped down into a ditch until it went past.
    “Why do I feel like the criminal in this picture?” Tracy asked.
    We continued slowly on until we reached the driveway, then crept along in the woods. At the top of the hill, we could see clearly down to the warehouse. It looked totally deserted. No van, no cars, no men. Nothing.
    I breathed a small sigh of relief as we got closer. Maybe it had been abandoned. Maybe we had been foiled in our amateur sleuthing after all. It was a welcome thought, and I clung to it.
    A single caged bulb on the side of the warehouse formed a large half-circle of light on the ground in front of the door. With a slight jerk of her body, Tracy signaled to me to follow her, and I stayed right behind her as we made our way around the building, dipping into the shadows to stay hidden.
    The woods were deadly quiet, except for the vague rustle of leaves as the summer wind shuffled delicately through them. There was just a hint of cool in the air. Back home in my apartment, I might have even cracked open a window on a night like this.
    After walking around the full perimeter of the building, assuring ourselves nothing was parked on the far side, we made our wayover to the windows of the garage door and peeked in. But it was too dark. We couldn’t see a thing. Tracy nodded in the direction of the door, and before I could stop her, she twisted the doorknob. Locked.
    Trying another approach, Tracy returned to the garage door, leaned down, and yanked up on the handle. I whispered for her to stop. To my relief, it didn’t budge, but she whispered back that she thought with enough force it might give way. She gestured for me to take the other handle at the end of the door. I shook my head vigorously.
    “No way,” I whispered back to her.
    Tracy stood still, looking me in the eye there in the darkness. “This is for Jennifer,” she said.
    I looked all around at the empty space surrounding us. I took a deep breath and gave in. I positioned myself at the other end of the door and grasped its handle. Tracy held up her fist and counted off with her fingers, one, two, three, and we pulled with all our combined strength. I felt it give a little, and we leaned in again and pulled harder. It was stuck, but we were able to hoist it up about a foot and a half off the ground. With that, Tracy lay down on her stomach and started to slide under.
    “What are you doing?” I said, almost out loud.
    “How else are we supposed to find out what’s going on?”
    My breath got faster, and my pulse was racing. “I’ll wait out here for you,” I said, all the while wondering if that really felt any safer.
    “Suit yourself.”
    I watched her slide under, out of sight, and started pacing around, counting off the steps to the woods, calculating how fast she could get back out, how long it would take us to be hidden in the dense trees once again. Then I heard a violent clank and turned back tothe warehouse. The garage door had slammed shut. If anyone was in there, they would certainly be aware of our presence now.
    I walked fearfully back to the windows and, in a state of half-shock, looked in. The light flicked on. A face stared back at me, inches from mine through the glass. I screamed and jumped back before realizing it was Tracy. She smiled and pointed to the door. She met me there and let me in.
    “See, nothing to it. No one’s here.”
    The warehouse seemed much larger from the inside, almost cavernous. And yet even so, the walls felt as if they were closing in on me. I looked back at the door nervously, to make sure we’d left it ajar.
    The building was empty except for rows of stainless-steel stalls that lined the walls, each about four feet across, perhaps for some sort of livestock, I thought. At the end of each stall was a metal stand bolted to the floor, with a clipboard filled with blank pages, a pen dangling from a small chain on each one.
    In each stall, rubber hoses