compelled to win.
“Cheating already, Evandale,” I said, flying past her on the steps.
“Cheating would be tripping you,” she panted back.
I hit the top of the step and turned around with hands raised in victory. She finished a second behind me, bent over at the waist, laughing softly.
“Point to Byrne.” I smirked. “What are the total points so far for this case?”
“Can’t recall, I’m afraid,” she said breezily.
“Four-three. I can recall. I’m winning.”
She knocked her knuckles against a door marked Private. “You’ll get another point if you can break us into this door.”
I shook my head with a grin, reaching into my back pocket for the lock-picking tool I’d hidden.
“Ha,” Freya said. “I knew you’d bring it.”
“How many laws are we going to break tonight?”
“Until you’re fully corrupted,” she said. Strands of golden hair were starting to fall from her bun, framing her face. “Don’t think I’d forgotten you were the best lock-pick at Quantico. Next to me, of course.”
“Tell me that purse is filled with zip-ties.”
She snapped it open to reveal strips of duct tape and zip-ties. A trick our professors had taught us if you were caught in a dangerous situation but forced to carry light. Subdue them. Zip-tie their wrists. Slap a strip of tape over their mouths. They’d also taught us how to pick locks—which came in handy for an agent more than most law-abiding folks realized.
She used her phone flashlight to light the tiny keyhole. I dropped to one knee, wiggled the tool inside. Twisted, ear to the door. Twisted. Twisted one more time.
Click.
“Got it.” I turned the knob and slowly opened it, prepared for hidden danger. We’d heard not a peep this whole time, but those Empty House assholes seemed to lurk in every corner. The thin beam of her flashlight revealed a storage room filled with boxes and files.
Freya flicked the light switch.
“That’s a lot of boxes,” she breathed.
“Yep.” It was. More than any two people could conceivably get through in an hour.
“This is what the letters look like.” She found pictures from the internet on her phone and propped it on the closest flat surface. “They’re obviously hella old, and Henry told me they’d need to be stored in packaging that protected them from touch and damage. I think we’d recognize something like that. They’re not in a file folder, you know?”
“Yeah. I think so too.” I ran a hand through my hair, wondering what the hell we’d just gotten ourselves into. “We’ll work each room together to make sure neither of us misses anything. We’ll start here, then move to that room with the glass cases.”
She walked to the bathroom and came back with a handful of tissues. “Use these to wipe down prints. And we’ll need to be careful not to upset anything. Everything has to go back the way we found it.”
“Good call, Evandale.”
“I aim to please, Agent Byrne.” She gave me a sassy salute and set to work yanking open drawers.
Like our academy days, we fell back into a focused silence—the way we used to sit for hours when studying or test-taking. We moved through the small space, both muttering to ourselves as the minutes ticked by. I ran my hands along the baseboards, stood on a chair and examined the ceiling for false panels. She knocked on walls and listened for hollow spots.
Nothing.
The room with the historical documents seemed more promising as we swept in, both of us examining the 300-year-old documents put forth by Philadelphia’s political philosophers and great thinkers of the time. I checked my watch.
Twenty minutes down, forty to go.
“Cora Alexander is having an affair. Or affairs,” I said. “That’s what she and I were speaking about when you were in the bathroom.” I stumbled, forced away memories of what we’d done in there.
“What now?” Freya said, face impressed. “Affairs?”
“Julian is her confidante. Her two lovers—her word—have been sending her letters to their house. It’s probably one of the reasons why she’s also been fascinated with the George Sand letters. She’s living that life.”
“And Thomas…?”
“Is okay with it, apparently,” I said.
She shook her head as she slid her fingers through old books, shaking them out. “Thomas believes he’s cursed because Bernard had him steal an extremely valuable first-edition of Don Quixote. And Cora’s over here bangin’ two dudes and getting love letters about it.”
I studied her for a moment. “What did you mean back in the hotel room? You said”—I worked to keep my tone light—“you said you weren’t the kind of girl who ever