He nodded, more grateful than he could say that she was making this easy on him. She always did that—pushed when he needed it, stopped pushing when he needed it more. “It’s where they keep a lot of the out-of-date equipment that the state refuses to get rid of.”

She smiled. “That sounds promising. Hefty hoses and fire poles and all that.”

“It’s not that kind of equipment. It’s mostly filing cabinets.”

The mention of filing cabinets and dust should have had Sophie running for the hills—and taking Bubbles with her—but she seemed to sense that there was more to that upstairs hole than he was letting on. “I’d like to see it. May I?”

He nodded and watched as she swung a leg onto the bottom step and fearlessly made her way up the rickety contraption. It creaked and groaned a protest, but that didn’t seem to stop her. Harrison had a nice view of her ass as she neared the top, and then a quick glimpse of her ankles before she disappeared altogether.

She didn’t appear to be making any sounds of disgust, so he grabbed Bubbles and followed her up the steps. They creaked in even greater protest to his weight, but he’d been coming here for close on sixteen years now. They’d always held him before.

He paused on the landing to allow his eyes a moment to adjust. A skylight provided a beam of sunshine in one corner, highlighting dusty motes that danced in the air, but other than that, there was no lighting up here. No electricity, no running water, no real walls, even. Bare studs and rough floorboards were all that had been done to make this space usable.

“You have a bed up here,” Sophie said without looking over at him.

He grunted. It wasn’t a bed so much as an old mattress laid in one corner and heaped with blankets, but he’d slept in it enough for it to count.

She drew closer to the sunlit corner, her head tilted at a curious angle as she took in the rest. “You have books. And a flashlight. And snacks.”

He grunted again, but it was more of a chuckle this time. Sophie didn’t sound the least appalled at how pathetic that list sounded for a grown-ass man of thirty. She cast a look back at him over her shoulder. “Why, Harrison Parks. Is this your secret clubhouse?”

He set Bubbles on the ground and gave her permission to sniff out the area. “I know. It’s pretty sad, right?”