With his free hand Pierce attempted to pull back the hair from her face. It was frozen and individual strands broke as he moved them. He uncovered her upturned ear and there attached to the lobe was an earring. A silver cup holding a drop of amber with a silver feather below. He turned his hand so that the amber caught more of the light leaking into the box. It was then that he could see it. A tiny bug of some kind frozen in the amber, long ago drawn to sweetness and sustenance but caught in one of nature's deadly traps.

Pierce thought about that bug's fate and knew what he had to do. He, too, had to hide her.

Hide Lilly. Move her. Keep her from discovery. From Renner. From everyone.

A sigh escaped through his mouth as he considered this. The moment was surreal, even bizarre. He was contemplating how to hide a frozen body, how to hide it in such a way as to hold no immediate connection to him. It was a task fraught with impossibility.

He quickly closed and relocked the freezer, as if it were a measure that would stop its contents from ever coming out and haunting him.

But the simple action broke the inertia in his mind. He started thinking.

He knew he had to move the freezer. No choice. Renner was coming. It was possible that he would find the storage unit even without the clues of keys and scramble card.

Whoever had set this up could just make an anonymous call. He could count on nothing.

He had to move her. If Renner found the freezer, then everything ended. Amedeo Tech, Proteus, his life, everything. He would be a bug in amber after that.

Pierce leaned down and placed his hands on the front corners of the freezer. He applied pressure to see if it was movable. The freezer slid the last remaining six inches to the rear wall of the storage unit without much resistance. It had rollers. It was movable. The question now was, movable to where?

A quick fix was needed, something that at a minimum would work safely in the short run while he figured out a plan for the long run. He left the storage unit and moved quickly down the corridor, his eyes sweeping back and forth from door to door as he searched for an unlocked, unrented unit.

He passed by the elevator and was halfway down the other wing before he found a door with no lock through the hasp. The door was marked 307. The light on the card reader to the right of the door glowed neither green nor red. The alarm appeared to be inactive, probably left so until the unit was rented. Pierce reached down, flipped the hasp and pulled up the door. The space was dark. No alarm sounded. He found and flipped on the light switch and saw that the space was identical to the unit rented under his own name.

He checked the rear wall and saw the electric socket.

He ran down the corridor back to unit 331. He moved behind the freezer and yanked out the plug. He heard the hum of the freezer's electric heart go silent. He threw the cord over the top of the appliance and then leaned his weight into it. The freezer rolled toward the hallway with relative ease. In a few seconds he had it out of the storage room and into the corridor.

The freezer's rollers were set in line, designed to make it convenient to move the appliance backwards and forward in tight spaces, and to provide access for service.

Pierce had to bend down and put his full strength into pushing it into the turn into the hallway. The rollers scraped loudly on the floor. Once he had it pointed in the right direction, he pushed harder and got the heavy box moving with momentum. He wasn't quite halfway to unit 307 when he heard the sound of the elevator moving. He dropped into a crouch to put more power into his pushing. But it seemed that no matter how much strength he expended, he could not pick up speed. The rollers were small and not built for speed.

Pierce crossed in front of the elevator just as the humming from the shaft silenced. He turned his face away and kept pushing, listening for the door of one of the cars to open.

It didn't happen. The elevator had apparently stopped on another floor. He blew out his breath in relief and exhaustion. And just as he got to the open door of unit 307 the stairwell door at the end of the hallway nearest him banged open and a man stepped into the hallway. Pierce jumped and nearly cursed out loud.

The man, wearing painter's whites, his hair and skin flecked with white paint, approached. He seemed winded by his climb up the stairs.

"You the one holding up the elevator?" he asked good-naturedly.

"No," Pierce said, too defensively. "I've been up here."

"Just asking. You need a hand with that?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm just…"

The painter ignored his response and came up next to Pierce. He put his hands on the back of the freezer and nodded toward the open door of the storage room.

"In there?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Together they pushed and the freezer moved quickly into the turn and then into the storage room.

"There," the painter said, seemingly winded again. He then stuck out his right hand.

"Frank Aiello."

Pierce shook his hand. Aiello's left hand went into the pocket of his shirt and came out with a business card. He handed it to Pierce.

"You need any work, give me a call."

"Okay."

The painter looked down at the freezer, seemingly noticing for the first time what it was he had helped move into the storage area.

"That thing's a bear. What do you have in there, a frozen body?"

Pierce faked a small guffaw and shook his head, keeping his chin down the whole time.

"Actually, it's empty. I'm just storing it."

Aiello reached over and flicked the padlock on the freezer.

"Making sure nobody steals the air in there, huh?"

"No, I… it's just that with the way kids get into things, I've always kept it locked."

"Probably a good idea."

Pierce had turned and the light was on his face. The painter noticed the stitch zipper running down his nose.

"That looks like it hurt."

Pierce nodded.

"It's a long story."

"Not the kind I want to hear. Remember what I said."

"What do you mean?"

"You need a painter, you call."

"Oh. Yeah. I've got your card."

He nodded and watched as Aiello walked out of the room, his footsteps moving down the hallway. Pierce thought about the comment about a body being in the freezer. Was it a lucky guess, or was Aiello not what he appeared to be?

Pierce heard a set of keys jangling out in the hallway and then the metallic snap of a lock.

It was followed by the screeching of an overhead door being lifted. He guessed that Aiello might be getting equipment from his storage space. He waited and after a few minutes he heard the door being pulled down and closed. Soon the hum of the elevator followed. Aiello was going to take it down instead of the stairs.

As soon as he was sure he was alone on the floor again he plugged the freezer in and waited until he heard the compressor begin working.

He then pulled his shirt out of his pants and used the tail to wipe every surface on the freezer and electrical cord that he could have conceivably touched. When he was sure he had covered his tracks he backed out of the space and pulled the door down. He locked it with the padlock from the other unit and wiped the lock and door with his shirttail.

As he moved away from the unit and toward the elevator alcove a terrible guilt and fear swept over him. He knew that this was because he had been operating for the last half hour on instincts and adrenaline. He hadn't been thinking out his moves as much as just making them. Now the adrenaline tank's needle was on empty and there was nothing left but his thoughts to contend with.

He knew he was far from harm's way. Moving the freezer was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. He needed to know what was happening to him and why. He needed to come up with a plan that would save his life.