Page 69 of Toxic Revenge: Part Two

I bundled us both inside and shut the door, leaving us in the dark, stuffy space. Linens brushed both of our shoulders, and I hid Talia backed up against the far row of shelves, making sure I was the first thing the guard saw if he decided to take a peek inside the room.

Attuning my ears to every faint noise I could, the loudest thing was Talia’s breathing. She was panting, and if I could see more than the outline of her body in the pitch black room, I bet her chest would be heaving.

I leaned in and kissed the side of her head.

“Calm down, sweetheart. I don’t think anyone is coming this way.”

She grabbed my hips, swaying closer to me. “Are you sure?” she whispered back. “That was close.”

I listened again, focusing beyond her breathing. There was nothing from outside our linen closet except distant sounds from the party. No imposing footsteps coming our way. The guard must have headed straight downstairs, as ordered.

“Positive,” I said when I knew it was true. “Let’s head out. We can go down this hall and around to get to his office, without having to go back to the main hallway.”

“OK. I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Agreed.”

What I really wanted was to send her on her way now, but she would never go. We’d have to continue taking the risks together.

Ronald better be keeping what we needed in his office. If we had to run around this entire estate searching, I might have to find the man and murder him.

Pausing with my hand on the closet doorknob, I waited a few extra seconds, just to be certain we weren’t stepping out into an ambush. Then I pushed the door open, cringing at its slight squeak, and we made our way down the hall.

The office wasn’t far, and we made it there without any more incidents. His guards were busy in other parts of the mansion.

The door was locked, but I made quick work of it and ushered Talia inside. Handing her a pair of gloves, I made sure she put them on so her fingerprints wouldn’t end up all over the room.

“We’re in the office,” I updated Lavinia via my earpiece.

“Be fast,” she commanded.

“Doing our best.”

Talia was already snooping around. Ronald White’s office was full of artfully worn leather recliners and dark wood furniture. His desk was the centrepiece, with a winged chair perched behind it. A full wall of windows backed it.

Emilia had confirmed they were tinted, so we shouldn’t be seen easily at night. However, any additional light would give us away immediately, contrasting with the dark evening sky outside.

My eyesight was keen enough to not need light, but Talia might have trouble.

She’d started by rifling through the books and trinkets on the bookcases that lined the room, so I began with the desk. There were certain types of information a man like him would want to keep close at hand.

His desktop was mostly tidy, but I scanned the documents he’d left sitting in a simple black folder. A contract. Nothing nefarious. I discarded it quickly to go through his drawers instead.

Every one on the right side was easily accessible and held simple office supplies or more contracts like the one he’d left out. The top left drawer didn’t open so easily. I tugged, and it didn’t give.

Locked.

That meant it had to hold some kind of secret.

I used my tools to fiddle with it as Talia came over, clutching a book in her hand.

“I recognize this symbol.” She pointed to an infinity symbol with a line running horizontally through it, drawn on a corner of the front cover in black permanent marker. Three vertical lines crossed the horizontal one. “Benjamin had files with it every once in a while.”

The lock evaded my efforts to undo it. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, grabbing the book from her to check it out instead. A cursory flip through it didn’t reveal a thing, but that didn’t mean anything. They could have used this book for a cypher, or written in invisible ink in the margins.

Taliahadclaimed this man was paranoid.

“Let’s take it with us. I’m going to keep trying to get into this drawer. You look for any other places where that symbol shows up.”