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“No, ma’am.”
“I think I might have left it in his office. I’m just going to run up and have a look around. I might be a while. I have a few phone calls to make.”
He gave a polite nod, then went back to monitoring his screens.
That should keep him from wondering why she wasn’t coming right back down, she thought, taking the elevator to the penthouse.
Charles’s secretary was gone, and the lobby in front of his office empty. Perfect. His door, however, was locked, and she dug out a set of keys, duplicates for about every important room he felt needed to be secured from her.
If only he knew . . .
She found the key, unlocked the door, then slipped inside, only then wondering if he had any cameras set up.
Not that it mattered. Last she heard, prosecuting half an owner for theft was near impossible.
She set to work, going through his desk drawers first. The man was anal, everything neat, in its place. Doubting he’d keep something he didn’t want seen in so obvious a location, she sat back in his desk chair and looked around. The only thing that caught her eye was that map book he’d been so obsessed about. It sat on a table in the corner of his office, and she walked over, opened it, taking a closer look.
What was it about this thing that had him so fired up? Nothing that she could see. It looked just like the reproduction sitting in their library. She turned the pages, aware of how brittle they were in comparison to the copy at home. Her attention waning, she was just about to close it when she realized that someone had taken a pencil and drawn small circles in various spots around the intricate border design of . . .
Were those letters?
That’s exactly what they were. Archaic-looking letters that seemed more decorative, since they didn’t spell out any real words.
So why circle them?
She leaned in closer, about to take a better look, when her cell phone rang.
She walked over to the couch and dug it out of her purse, saw it was Kipp. “Glad you didn’t call when I was downstairs,” she said.
“Your ringer’s not off?”
“Who thinks of that stuff?”
“You should, if you’re sneaking around in your husband’s office. You were supposed to call me when you got up there.”
“If you were up here doing what I’m paying you for, I wouldn’t need to worry about that.”
“Right. Because no one would suspect a total stranger digging through your husband’s office. Who better to know what belongs and what doesn’t than you? So what’ve you found?”
“Nothing yet. Except that pirate book that he claims was stolen from some ancient relative of his.”
“The original book?”
“Yeah. Interesting thing, though,” she said, returning to the table and eyeing the yellowed pages. “Someone went to the trouble of circling letters all over it. Like a code.”
“Might explain his obsession. Take photos while you’re there. I’ll check into it. Have you looked at his computer yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Hurry up. You’ve already been there too long as it is.”
“You did see the number on his arm when he left? I doubt he’ll be coming back anytime soon.”
“Not worth chancing. Get moving.”
She took her cell phone, snapped pictures of each page of the book, her instincts telling her that whatever Charles was up to, it had something to do with this.
Photos done, she opened up his laptop, typed in the password he used for nearly everything—Pirate—then scanned the folders.