“No, thanks. I’m good.” She turned to face him. “You said someone was in and out of here? You sure it was this unit?”

“Yup. Right here. Seen her a few times, actually. Not my business, of course.”

Her? Before Emily could ask what the woman looked like or how recently she’d been here, the driver took off.

She raised the door of the storage unit. The interior was in shadow. A blast of hot air drove her back and she gagged on the smell—mildew and general rot. She returned to her car to get a face mask from her gear bag.

Back at the storage unit, face mask strapped in place, Emily felt for a light switch and flipped it. Overhead, fluorescent lights flickered on. The readout on a thermostat hanging beside the light switch was blank. So much for the climate control that Inner Peace liked to advertise.

The space was narrow and about twice as deep as it was wide. Lining both sides were floor-to-ceiling metal shelves. Emily moved down the center path, noting that most of the shelves were stacked with books and boxes. Some were loaded with document tubes. As she’d observed with Mr. Murphy’s workshop, everything was sorted with the kind of precision that Emily’s mother, a retired librarian, would have relished. Books were shelved one-deep. Boxes and tubes were labeled.

Emily took a quick break, stepping outside into slightly less oppressive heat. She lowered her face mask and took a few deep breaths. Then she put the mask back on and went in again to look more closely.

On one shelf sat a set of leather-bound books, the spines embossed in gold. Les Misérables. Volumes I–V. The lower part of the book spines looked as if they’d been dipped in white powder. Beside them was a pair of taller books, their spines so blackened that their embossed titles were illegible. When Emily tried to pull one of them from the shelf, its spine broke, releasing a cloud of what were probably mold spores. In her hands, the book felt fragile, although the gold coat of arms embossed on the red-leather front cover still looked fresh where it had been protected by the adjacent book. She peeked at the title page, trying not to crack the spine.

Hakluyt’s Voyages. Beneath that, it read, Anno 1599.

Emily took photos of the spine, the cover, and the title page, where the paper was foxed and sprinkled with black dots. She and Becca would need a book dealer to advise them on whether this was a reprint, and whether in this condition it was even worth saving.