Ellie

The fire alarm's wail went on, and on, and on. It pierced my eyes, assaulted my eardrums and began to rattle around inside my skull like a banshee, a never-ending squeal that threatened to raise the dead.

But I was grateful for it.

Because the longer it went on, the longer I'd be alone. And judging by the sprawling enormity of the evidence locker, I'd need every second I could get. The steel racks went on forever, row after row of plastic-bagged, brown paper-tagged pieces of evidence piled high to the skies and forever in danger of toppling. Bloodstained shirts sat cheek by jowl with guns, knives – and even more arcane weapons abounded. I think I saw a samurai sword, though it was out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't go check it out.

Still, weapons were the least of the story. Most of the racks weren't nearly so interesting: piled high with brown cardboard boxes, like the inside of the self storage unit, or the kind you get when you're told to clean out your desk.

Well, shit…

It turned out that getting in to the locker wasn't nearly going to be the hardest bit. Finding my bag in here was going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack. The size of the place boggled my mind, stretched its ability to comprehend what it was seeing to the very limit.

I tried to picture it.

Case after case, murders, rapes, beatings, assaults; day after day, month after month, year after year. My stomach clenched, and I began to contemplate just sitting back and letting the weight of the world wash over me. How could I do this? It was too big for just one person on her own. Hell, an army might scour this place for a month and not find what they were looking for. So what chance did I have?

I closed my eyes. Not a second passed by before Roman's face flashed onto the back of my eyelids, risking his life for me even now; then the vague outline of my child, wrapped in blue swaddling clothes and crying out for his mother.

I bit my lip, and kept biting until the coppery tang of blood filled my mouth, and then longer still. I bit down until the pain wiped out the fear, banished the demons stalking my mind, and crystallized everything I stood to lose.

Who cares if an army can't find it? An army's driven by its stomach, not by love.

And I had that in spades.

My eyes snapped back open, and I found myself suffused by a grin, fatalistic determination. I was going to give it my best shot, or die trying, because if I didn't succeed that I didn't want to live.

I tore through the shelves like a woman possessed, almost jogging at times, my arms and eyes and fingers all dancing in unison, searching boxes, eyeing labels, fingering bag after plastic evidence bag, box after box of legal notes until they all melded to one. And at all times, like Sauron's eye watching over me, two things reminded me where I was, and the enormity of what I was doing – the screeching wail of the fire alarm, and the security cameras that speckled the ceiling, dark and bulbous, like baleful black-painted turtle shells.

Think, Ellie! Work smart, not hard.

And then it struck me, like it had been preying on my mind all this time. The goddamn shelves were labeled. Pretty, organized white labels, like a library, and filed just the same. And libraries, after three years studying journalism at college and half a decade spent reporting, I could handle. The shelves were organized by year, then month, then week.

January, February, March, no – skip a few, the clock's ticking, August, September, closer, October.

November.

The month I ended up in hospital.

Search area narrowed, I sped through the shelf, the only shelf it could be. And there it was, my bag, stuffed full of my notes, and looking like the police had never even bothered opening it. I mean, why would they? It was an open and shut case, after all. Rick had absconded from custody, they knew that, and then I turned up beaten to all hell. Of course, he was long gone, but still. Open and shut…

I opened it, tearing aside the plastic sheeting that covered it and brushed my fingers against the soft, aged leather as I unclasped the chrome-plated buckle.

The bag fell open, and the musty smell of hard work, of paper that hadn't seen the light of day for months, filled my nostrils. I sucked it in greedily, a pig at a trough.

I pulled the string rucksack off my shoulder without looking, grasped an iPad and keyboard from inside, and turned it on. This was it, the culmination of my plan. I'd known – and hadn't told Roman – that there was no way I'd be able to smuggle evidence out of the police station.

This was the plan.

I started taking photos. Every last one of the hundreds, maybe even a thousand research documents. Sworn testimonies of witnesses, men and women I'd interviewed, faded black and white photocopies of bank statements, all headed with the logos of offshore banks – from the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Haiti, Panama and a dozen others besides. I tapped the screen until my finger hurt, until I could hear it echoing around the room.

Something was wrong.

At least, different. I struggled to place it, to figure out what it was – what my subconscious had revealed. And then, at long last, I understood.

I could hear again. The fire alarm was off. It was only a matter of time before someone found me.

I knew what I had to do. I had to get the story out. The words began to fill my mind, like numbers cascading through the matrix, flowing like water after a storm. I'd known what I was going to write for months, even before Rick damn near beat the ability to speak out of me. My brain must have dwelled on it whilst I was in that coma, marinated it, made it ready, and now – with the power of desperation and the fear of failure sparing me on, the most powerful article I'd ever written began to soar from the crevices of my mind.

I wedged myself behind an overflowing rack, hidden from sight, and began to type. The clacking sound of keys filled my tiny corner of the room.

And my story began to flow.