The pages trembled in front of my eyes—my hands were shaking. I was desperate to whisk these away. It felt like I was meant to find these—like I was meant to have them. Like they had been written just for me. There was something here—I knew, I knew it in my bones. There had to be. There would be an explanation, a rationale, a reason for changing her work, for killing herself. Maybe—maybe it was in the details of that mysterious final work, the film that Charles and Pine City were fighting over.

I looked around and assessed their location. It was impossible to see these two particular shelves from below. They were located to the left and five feet above the doorway, so you didn’t face them walking in, and then the vantage point from the floor was so far down that the only thing you could see was the bottom side of the shelf, not the contents. Still—if someone got on the ladder and looked—they would know the books were gone.

Yet—I could take pictures without anyone knowing, I reasoned, so I left Carey’s work on the shelf, slid to the bottom of the ladder, ran outside, and grabbed my camera from the truck. I darted back inside and jumped down the stairs two by two, intending to document as much as I could before anyone came home—only to find Charlie standing in the middle of the room.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Some cat burglar you’d make,” Charlie said, looking up and smiling at me. “I heard you the second I closed the garage door.”

“Hi!” I sputtered, trying not to look up at the shelf above the doors. “I thought the house was empty.”

“You decided to break in and read all my books?”

I stared up, willing him to keep his eyes in one place. I waved my camera. “Research. Max gave me the code.”

“What are you looking for?

“I can’t say…,” I told him truthfully. “There’s something about verbalizing what I’m doing that renders it irrelevant, do you know what I mean? As if, when I say it out loud, that’s what it will be and I won’t want it anymore…I was sort of hoping for some library magic. For something to call out to me.”

“I understand.”

“The gist is that I’m looking for alternative methods of attaching pigment.”

“Isn’t that your entire milieu?”

“It’s an infinite question,” I said, smiling. “A lifelong question.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said. My stomach growled. “Would you like dinner?”

“Is it that obvious?” I chuckled. “That would be amazing. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. It’s already cooked, I only need to heat it up—it’s the Fourth of July, after all. We should celebrate. Half an hour okay?”

“Sure. I won’t be long.”