Chapter 7
The curtain moved an inch and stopped.
I could see his shoes from under the desk. Black dress shoes, laces tied tight, planted on the patterned rug just inside the threshold. He didn't come in right away. He stood there listening the way Elena and I were listening — breathing held, head cocked.
Elena's hand was still on mine, pinning the red ledger between our palms. The leather was warm from my grip. My other hand was braced against the floor, and I could feel dust and a paperclip biting into my palm. The portrait hung above us, straight again, hiding the safe. Its eyes looked past the man in the doorway.
He took a step forward. The floorboard under the rug creaked.
"Clear," he said, not loud. He was speaking to someone in the hall. "He moved the chair. Check the east hall again."
A second voice answered from beyond the curtain, muffled. "Cameras are looped. Could be still in the walls."
The first man walked to the desk. I watched his shoes come closer until the toe was six inches from my knee. Elena pressed harder against my side. I tucked the ledger tighter against my chest and shifted my weight back until my shoulders hit the wood panel behind the desk. If he leaned over, he'd see us.
My phone buzzed.
It was a low vibration against the inside of my coat pocket, but in that quiet it might as well have been a bell. I froze. Elena's eyes went wide. The sound lasted a half second, then stopped, then buzzed again.
The shoes stopped moving.
He reached down. I thought he was reaching for us. Instead his hand went to his own pocket. He pulled out a phone, checked it, and made a small annoyed sound.
"Marino's car was found at the river," he said into his phone. "No body. Yeah. Tell Victor's girl if she answers. He wants the book before Marino gets here."
Elena's fingers dug into my wrist. Marino survived. That was not rumor anymore. That was a team on the road calling it in.
The man above us turned. His phone light flashed across the underside of the desk and then away. He walked back toward the doorway, and his shoes disappeared behind the curtain.
We stayed crouched until the footsteps faded down the hall toward the kitchen stairs. Two sets now, moving away from the office.
Elena exhaled first. She let go of my hand and reached under the desk where my coat had shifted. Her fingers found my phone and pulled it out before I could stop her.
One notification on the lock screen. Unknown number. Text preview: MARINO ALIVE. OUTSIDE GATE. DON'T GIVE THEM LEDGER.
The timestamp was thirty seconds ago.
I stared at it. Outside the gate meant right now, tonight, not a week from now. The gate was a hundred yards from the office windows, past the driveway and the hedges. If Marino was there, the men in suits would see his headlights.
"Who sent this?" Elena whispered.
I shook my head. My father's old groundskeeper still had my number. So did the sheriff's deputy who'd been at the house last year when my father died. Could be either. Could be Marino himself.
Elena swiped the preview away and locked the phone again. She slipped it back into my pocket and pushed herself up just enough to peer over the desk edge at the curtained doorway. The threshold was empty. The velvet hung still.
"He survived," she said. Her voice was barely air. "If he gets inside and they have you —"
"I know," I said. The ledger was light in my hands but it felt like it was pulling. Red leather, father's script. This was what Marino was coming for, too.
She looked at the photo still tucked in the front cover — Daniel in his maintenance uniform, her younger, both smiling on the back steps of this house. She touched the edge of it and then closed the cover.
May you like
"We need to answer him," she said. "Or move. We can't stay behind this desk."
From the hall came the heavy thud of the front door being tested, then a voice, louder: "Lock the gates. Nobody in or out until we find it."
