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I flipped the page, and on this one, it wasn’t just names and numbers, but rather a whole page of writing. The handwriting was difficult to read, but it looked like a list of events, with paragraphs of explanations. I couldn’t tell if it was a plan for future activity or a record of past activity.
Before I could get too far into it, I heard footsteps approaching. Hastily, I slammed the book shut and gave a satisfied nod. “Yep, that’s the one I was looking for.” I smiled as I passed the approaching person and walked like I was a woman on a mission. I had to resist t
he urge to look back to see where the woman went. What was someone else doing here at this time?
I was itching to read more of the book, but I could hardly do that while I walked through the hallways, and there was no way I’d get away with taking it to my office first before handing it over to Roger. I still couldn’t figure out what he wanted with a hundred-year-old record book, why finding it was a secret mission, or why this book had been magically hidden.
Reluctantly, I brought it straight to Roger’s office. “Here you go!” I said. “I think this is the one you were looking for.”
He looked up at me, and his eyebrows rose. “Already?”
“It was in a pretty logical place, once I cracked the code.”
His smile looked hungry. If he’d been in a cartoon, drool would have trickled from his lips. “You don’t realize how long I’ve wanted to find this book,” he said, his voice husky. If he’d sounded like that when talking to me, I’d have said he was trying to seduce me. As it was, I thought I should probably give him and the book some alone time. He shook himself out of his lustful daze and said, “I’m impressed. I should have sent you in earlier. You have no idea what this means to me.”
“Well, here you go,” I said, stepping forward to hand the book to him.
He reached out for it, and the moment his fingers came in contact with it, a burst of light blew him backward, tipping over his chair. I didn’t feel anything, even though the explosion happened right in my face.
I immediately dropped the book on the desk and rushed to check on Roger. He’d been thrown out of his chair onto the floor. There was a trickle of blood on his forehead, and he wasn’t moving. I guessed that he’d hit his head on the corner of the filing cabinet behind his desk.
At this time of night, I wasn’t sure if there would be emergency personnel on hand, and since he was doing this at night without wanting anyone to know what we were up to, I figured he wouldn’t want me to call for help. But what if he really had been badly hurt?
I knelt beside him and gently shook his shoulder. “Roger? Roger?” I asked.
Much to my relief, his eyelashes fluttered, and soon he groaned. “What happened?” he mumbled.
“That book seems to have some kind of ‘keep out’ spell on it,” I explained, “it created a blast that knocked you backward when you touched it, and then it looks like you hit your head. Do you have medics we could call?”
He sat up straight, then had to squeeze his eyes shut for a second. “No, I’ll be fine. Don’t call anyone.” He gave me a shaky grin. “It looks like you’ll have to handle this book for me.”
“It must be really valuable if it’s that well-protected,” I said. “Though that kind of security does kind of render it useless.”
“Unless you’ve got the right people on board. It belonged to the last person to rise unnaturally rapidly in the company, and no one knew quite how he brought in that kind of money. I’m hoping it will reveal some of his secrets. But perhaps we’d better tackle that in the morning.”
*
Sure enough, I’d barely made it to the office the next day before he called for me. When I reached his office, he reminded me of a child on Christmas morning whose parents slept late. He was so antsy with anticipation that he could barely stand still. “Come in. Please, sit down,” he said eagerly, gesturing for me to take his chair at his desk.
I sat down and pulled the book toward me. “So, what do you want me to read? The whole thing?”
“Let’s start at the beginning and see what’s there.”
He leaned over my shoulder so he could read as I turned pages. While he read silently, I skimmed the page. My eyes caught on the name “Meredith,” which was Sylvia’s family. The page detailed what her great-grandfather had done to Philip Vandermeer—on the orders of this book’s author—to secure funding for other operations.
“Yes, that should do nicely to start,” Roger said. “Vandermeer was released, but now I can get that company for myself.”
I tried not to gulp audibly. I had to warn Philip. But how?
Eleven
My mind raced, desperately trying to come up with a way to get out of there. Maybe I could fake a case of food poisoning, or a sudden-onset migraine so bad that I had to go home and lie down immediately.
Then again, there was no reason Roger had to act right away. Surely he’d read the rest of the book and put together an overall plan that fit the current situation. He wasn’t crazy enough to run off and carry out step one before he made the rest of the plan. I leaned over the book. “Ready for me to turn to the next page?” I asked, my fingers touching the corner.
Much to my relief, he had me keep going. There were spells on the next page that he read over my shoulder. I was somewhat familiar with spells from my own brief experience with magic and from spending so much time with Owen, but I still wasn’t totally sure how the first one must work. It had something to do with transportation. The second involved a spell done on an object to make it a beacon. It didn’t look all that exciting to me, but after he read it, Roger’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Thank you. That will be all for now,” he said. “Leave the book on my desk open to this page.” I did as he asked and returned to my office. Maybe this was my chance to warn Philip, but I still couldn’t think of a way. Any phone calls out would be monitored, assuming they went through. I only had e-mail access to other people within the company, so that wouldn’t work. A couple of hours later, I was just about to resort to that sudden-onset migraine plan, figuring I’d been at work long enough to make it seem plausible, when Roger appeared in my doorway. “I need you to come with me,” he said, a manic gleam in his eye that had me really worried. What was he up to?
