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I was startled from my search when Buck yelled, “Everything all right in there?”
“Yeah, looks like they didn’t get in. I can meet you around the front.”
Finally, unlocking the office door was surreal. I had been wanting to do that for so long. Tomorrow would give me more time to begin my initial search, but for the time being, I needed to get rid of Buck.
I slipped out the door before he could beat me back to the front of the house and waited. When he returned, he was adamant about staying to board the window up, and had he been a normal officer, I probably would have agreed. But even if it left me vulnerable, I wanted him gone.
He finally took my statement and reluctantly prepared to leave. I was sure that the chatter on his chest radio was the thing that really convinced him, but before he left, he made sure to get his hands on me one more time.
I made the mistake of turning my back to him, walking into the house, when I felt his hand close over my upper arm.
“Next time, little lady, it won’t be so easy to talk me into leaving you all alone out here. You really do need a man around.”
I jerked out of his grip, not even bothering to answer, just hurrying into the house and slamming the door behind me. Every brief brush of his skin on mine made me want to shower, but I needed to at least block the broken window somehow before I tried to go back to sleep.
Back in Trevor’s office, it took an embarrassing amount of time and effort, but I was able to push and pull one of the bookshelves in front of the window after emptying everything off of it and onto the floor. Breathing hard, I was more than ready to go to bed, but before I exited the room, I noticed something small and square beneath my foot.
I plucked it off the floor. It was a business card, for a company called Stone Security, the same name emblazoned on my cameras and keypads. I pocketed it, intending to keep it on my nightstand in case of another emergency. Whoever the security team would end up sending couldn’t be as bad as Buck, at least.
With everything as secure as I could make it on my own, I showered and climbed back into bed. It was almost 6 a.m., but I still tried to close my eyes and get a few extra hours in.
Unsurprisingly, it was a failed attempt.
Chapter Ten
Exhausted, I called off my trip to LA for the first time in a long while. All I had were a few shoots, and while the studios I had scenes lined up for wouldn’t be thrilled about the cancellation, they’d probably be even more annoyed if I showed up looking the way I did.
Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I wrinkled my nose in displeasure at the dark circles under my eyes. If I had any sense, I’d be trying to sleep right now, but there was something screaming my name downstairs that couldn’t be denied: Trevor’s office.
Knowing that it was open and available to me now was almost unbelievable. There was so much scattered across the entire room, but I had to put together some kind of story to explain the way everything happened. To this day, I still couldn’t believe that he died in an accidental car crash. There had to be something more, and if people were trying to break into the office specifically, there was definitely something more than old books and notes to be found.
I braided my hair back, brewed a cup of coffee, and once more entered the office. In the daytime, it was different, less ominous, but still so chaotic that it almost made me want to give up immediately. Light streamed in from the one intact window and around the bookshelf covering the broken one, illuminating the mess Trevor left behind. That he had spent so much time living in this near-squalor made me sad.
This room was clearly purpose built to be a man's office; the walls were a deep, imperial green, and the floors an equally dark mahogany. All his furniture matched impeccably, the one exception being the aforementioned antique desk, which was just a touch paler from age. If everything had been put together, I could see how it would have been a calming, mindful place that would encourage focus. Torn to pieces the way it was now, not so much.
Where do I even start?I wondered, tapping my nails on my coffee cup. I was not even certain what I was looking for, exactly. I’d given up the idea of there being an entire family missing Trevor somewhere, so that was off the table. I guess what I really wanted to know was what he did for a living, why he was such an isolated man, and if anything else could have contributed to his death.
The office was like a mind-boggling puzzle; like the kind where the pieces have no corners or the picture is indecipherable even when put together. I couldn’t pinpoint a single location to begin with so, left with nothing else to do, I decided to start on the left side and work around.
Out of everything, the papers were the hardest thing to comprehend. I recognized Trevor’s neat, if rushed, handwriting from all the little love notes he used to leave for me, and though it made me smile to remember, these pages upon pages were nothing like those thoughtful little post-its.
Some of them were more sensible: long and detailed descriptions of certain art pieces. It would take me days to read them all, but I sat down to skim through a few, and it seemed to be Trevor’s hypothesis about artifacts that had been found in old Egyptian expeditions but never photographed or seen again.
There were a lot of mentions of “the dark energy of the object” or “the curse the object imparts”, but on the more coherent pages, even the weird curse talk didn’t seem totally out of place.
On the other hand, there were other papers that were a lot more … unhinged, to say the least. He had made sketches of what looked like statues of dogs and cats, complete with description rife with mentions of old gods, more curses, and sacrifices. They freaked me out so badly that I didn’t even want to hold them in my hands, dropping them back to the floor like they were on fire.
Those papers were just the beginning of the uneasiness I felt in that office. I started to make two stacks, decipherable and indecipherable papers, before starting on all the bookcases and filing cabinets. I dug through drawers, pulling everything out and going through the pieces one by one, and nothing seemed too out of the ordinary.
Until I found the gun.
Nervously, I pulled the handgun out of the drawer, where it lay among a collection of loose bullets that jingled together at the motion. It was heavy in my grip, and when I turned it over, there was an area of scratched steel where the serial number had been filed off.
Heart in my throat, I put it back, closing the drawer as quickly as I can. Could Trevor have been a criminal? Why else would he need an anonymous weapon?
My search took on a new life, as I ignored the stacks of papers and books and focused on going through every possible hiding place I could find. There wasn’t just one gun, there were three, all of them with the serial number buffed away. After the first one, I picked the other two up with my shirt wrapped around my hand to avoid fingerprints.
I could hear my anxious breath as I continue. There were questionable things: small boxes containing vintage jewelry and coins, as well as even more books on Ancient Egypt. Some were as small as my hand and others the size of four normal novels, but so many of them were much older than I would have ever expected. Although they were not dated, their papery, flimsy covers and thick papyrus-like pages betrayed their age.
