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“And I’m still clear headed enough to join you.” I want to be in there when they make the discovery. I don't even know Stefan’s password. If he’s not in the office, if he doesn’t extend an invitation, then I have no access to the room. What else is he hiding in there?
Lacey looks worried, but her boss gestures for her to lead the way. He doesn’t bother to introduce himself to me, and with every step taking my whole concentration and both EMTs helping to support me, I don’t give a shit. It’s not like giving him my name will make the situation better for me. If anything, I’d be landing myself in a deeper pot of boiling oil. Maybe he already knows who I am.
Lacey keeps glancing over her shoulder to make sure I’m okay, but every step sees her more confident, more in her element. She shows her boss to the door, both of them glaring at the lock.
“What’s the password?” she asks me.
I shake my head, the pain in my side down to a dull throb. How ridiculous, for me not to know. Another reason why Stefan had to go.
For what he did to our father.
For all the abuse I’ve taken over the years, and anyone else who came into contact with him.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “He changes it with enough regularity not to be able to figure out a pattern.”
“Maybe he said something to you? Recently? Something out of place?” Lacey draws in a deep breath, the purple smudges on her neck already starting to stand out against her skin, all in the shape of my brother’s hands.
I wish I’d done more to him before they carted him off.
“Actually, he said something really strange to me earlier, something off putting that’s bothered me since he said it,” Lacey mutters out loud.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
It’s lovely to see the others letting Lacey take the lead on this, rather than questioning her thought process. They might have told her she’s out of her mind. Instead, her boss only asks, “What did he say?”
“He said every man has been made by God in order to acquire knowledge and contemplate,” she repeats. “He asked me if I knew the quote.”
I shake my head again. “No clue.”
“It’s Pathagorous,” her boss answers. “The guy who figured out the Pythagorean theorem. He was a very influential philosopher.”
“Stefan isn’t smart enough to make his password something like that. He barely remembers his birthday,” I say.
Still, Lacey refuses to let the subject go. She punches in a number, and the sensor beeps at her, a light flashing red.
“Has he been known to quote the ancient Greeks before?” Lacey quips. “Or is this some kind of fluke? Maybe he looked up several quotes before the dinner tonight to make himself sound smarter?”
I keep silent, working through it in my head despite the dull throb of pain from my side. Lacey types in a second number, and again, the red light blinks.
“What sort of—” her boss starts.
“Actually, let me try one more thing,” she interrupts quickly. “The golden ratio. Right? It’s 1618.”
Is there anything this woman can’t do? Something inside of me shifts, lightens, then blazes into fierce pride when she types in the numbers and the light on the lock turns green as a beep signals the mechanisms disengaging.
“How in the world did you figure that out?” I ask under my breath.
“It was a gamble, and it paid off.” The relief on her face is clear enough—relief and something else.Pride. “Let’s get inside and find those tapes.”
I hear what she doesn’t say: we need to find them before I collapse.
But she doesn’t knowhowmuch worse I’ve already been through. This bullet wound? It’s basically a mosquito bite. It takes work, however, to let her enter the office first, followed by her boss, to know the feds are going to dig through everything in this room that used to belong to my father. The setup Stefan took over after he—
Later. It’s a problem for future Marco.
I sway on my feet and lock my knees to stay steady, trying not to feel anything except cold detachment as the others scour the room. Lacey flicks her gaze to me once, twice, scanning me top to bottom before her brows knot in concern.
“Please let the EMTs do their job.,” she says softly. “And I’ll do mine here. Okay?”
