His cheerfulness only made me feel worse, and I grabbed a bookmark with the library’s information on the way out. Once I got back home, I’d send them a check to try to cover the damage I had caused.

I wondered if Pallas had canceled the grant that covered my salary, or if she’d leave that alone until it expired at the end of the next fiscal year. Either way, this library didn’t deserve to take the hit for my mistake.

But first, I was going to find this bastard.

“Where do we go next?” Lena asked.

“I don’t know yet.” I flipped to the copyright page. “Listen to this. ‘This work is copyright Charles de Guerre, and may not be reproduced, quoted, sold, or reviewed under penalty of law.’ Someone doesn’t get how copyright law works, but it might have helped him hide the book from Porter catalogers.”

“Guerre is French for war, right?”

“This isn’t his real name. A nom de guerre is another term for a pseudonym.” I checked the back of the book. “There’s nothing to indicate where the book was printed. Mister de Guerre didn’t want anyone tracking him down.” I gnawed on my lower lip as I studied the name. “Keep an eye out for a bookstore.”

I watched her drive, her attention focused entirely on the road. Now that she knew Nidhi Shah was alive and human, she had no need of me. Did I change from a potential mate to simply another human, like moving a file from one drawer to another?

Or was she simply pretending, hiding her feelings for me so that she could return to her lover when this was all over? I thought back to the way she had watched me in the library. I almost asked, then thought better of it. Shah was alive, and Lena loved her. As for me . . . I would do whatever it took to make her happy. She deserved that much.

I adjusted my seat back and examined the book more closely. I had seen some gorgeous self-published books in my time. This was not one of them. The cover photo was dark and pixelated, and the interior font was several sizes too large. The whole thing was just under three hundred pages.

The first chapter introduced Jakob Hoffman as the typical white, American everyman, born in 1925 on an Iowa farm that had been in his family for three generations. The day he turned seventeen, he kissed his perfect girlfriend good-bye and walked six miles to enlist in the Army.