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Dexter nodded with a grimace. “I thought the original would be safer here than in the apartment.”
Slade let out a rough laugh. “So much for campus security. This is why they need us. Except now wearethe case.”
“Whynow?” I had to ask. “Is it because Slade picked up that envelope?”
Logan frowned. “It could be, but he was pretty careful not to show anything identifiable. I wouldn’t have known who it was from our own footage if I hadn’t been in on the plan.”
“If that’s the case, then there must be somethingreallyimportant in those records,” Dexter put in.
My gaze shot to him. “You haven’t broken the code yet?”
“No, unfortunately. I’m not sure I can. With closer inspection, I’m pretty sure it’s based on an external key. Which means it’s very simple to break the code when youhavethe key, but nearly impossible if you don’t.”
“Shit.” I rubbed my mouth, and another possibility occurred to me with an icy jolt. “Or it could be my fault.”
Logan aimed his frown at me. “What are you talking about, Maddie?”
I waved vaguely in the direction of our hometown. “When I went back to visit Mom on the weekend—I asked her a few questions about Dad’s things. And I talked to one of his former colleagues briefly to see if there were any old notes of his in storage or something at the hospital. I didn’t see anyone else around, but it’s possible someone overheard me—or that her room was bugged—I have no idea.” I groaned and dropped my face into my hands. “I shouldn’t have risked it.”
I half expected Logan to chide me for my carelessness, but he’d locked the asshole side of him firmly away. He squeezed my shoulder instead, his expression only concerned. “You were just trying to help. And it could have been the envelope we stole and not anything you did. Hell, it could be they have no idea we’re still on the case and this is just a follow-up to the attack on your mom that they’d have done anyway. Did you find out anything useful at the hospital?”
“Nothing that helps us figure out who murdered him, but I confirmed that a bunch of his things went missing from the office right after he died. His colleague assumed he’d brought some stuff home, even though we know it isn’t there.”
The corner of his mouth curved upward in the slightest of smiles. “I guess I’ll take that as a tiny bit of progress, since it means there’s even less chance of you deciding I’m just paranoid after all.”
I wrinkled my nose at him and looked back toward the building. Logan followed my gaze. The firefighters were tramping out, a little sooty but not looking particularly worse for wear. They dragged their hoses out with them.
“We need to see if there’s anything left in the office that can be salvaged,” Logan said.
“They probably won’t let us back in for a while,” I pointed out.
Slade smiled mysteriously. “We have our ways. But it’ll be a bit before they’ve totally secured the scene. Let’s grab some lunch and see what we can find when we get back.”
I tagged along with the guys, but my head was in such a daze that I barely tasted the burger I ended up buying. All four of us stayed mostly silent as we ate, pensive expressions all around. I had no idea how much stuff the guys might have lost to the fire, how much they’d had stashed in the office for safe-keeping, but the setback was clearly weighing on them.
We came back to the law library around the side of the building. The crowd had wandered off, and the firetrucks were gone, but caution tape was stretched across the main entrance.
While the three of us blocked him from view, Dexter made short work of a side door’s lock. We slunk inside through a maintenance hall and emerged into the library through a doorway next to the staff offices.
The space was dark and empty, the carpet squelching beneath our feet, still saturated with the sprayed water. The smell of smoke lingered in the air. The bookshelves at the back near the Vigil office and the floor in front of its doorway were charred black.
I couldn’t help holding my breath in dread and anticipation as we reached the door, which had been bashed in to allow the firefighters entrance without unlocking it.
Logan and Slade flicked on the flashlights on their phones. As we stepped inside, the thin beams sweeping over the room, my heart sank.
The only items in the room I could still identify were the table, the desk, and the filing cabinet, although even those were warped and scorched. The computer had melted into a featureless blob. Every paper and book in the place was nothing but ashes. My sneakers squished into the waterlogged cinders on the floor.
Slade went to the filing cabinet and yanked at the drawers. They creaked and rattled open just enough for him to peek inside.
“It’s all garbage,” he said with a sigh. “Everything burned up.”
Logan tugged open the drawer on the desk, the edges of which were blackened. He stared at the charred contents inside for several seconds without speaking, his posture slumping. When I came up beside him, I made out the corner of a thin cardboard box mixed in with the ashen contents.
His mom’s tarot cards. They’d been destroyed too. My heart wrenched, and I slung my arm around his back as if my embrace could make that loss any less painful.
“It’s okay,” he said, but in a voice that sounded more like a snarl. “It just means these bastards have one more thing to pay for.”
I shivered at his words, because they stirred up another question I didn’t want to consider. Our enemies clearly wanted to makeuspay in as many ways as possible.
