The Syndicate (Timewaves Book 1) (27 page)

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said, with a healthy dose of dry sarcasm.

“Ignore her, Ines,” Gaige chimed in, poking me in the ribs. “Stassi doesn’t always play well with others.”

Ines’s tinkling laughter filled the car briefly before she eyed me with curiosity.

“Not that it is any of my business, but why did you refuse Hadley’s invitation for drinks?” she asked.

Gaige and I exchanged glances. Our late-night plans weren’t exactly a secret. Nonetheless, through unspoken agreement, we’d neglected to inform Ines of our plans for a felonious after-party.

The alchemist lit a cigarette and took a long, languid drag.

“Does it have anything to do with the toolkits Cyrus requisitioned from customs earlier?” she asked as she exhaled.

“Nothing gets by you, Ines,” I replied.

“Well, whatever your plans, promise to be careful, won’t you? I simply cannot abide another visit to that horrid préfecture.” Ines paused and stared me dead in the eye. “This city is full of men I would gladly lose sleep to spend the evening with, but that bore of an inspector is not one of them. I am sure you would agree, Stassi. Perhaps Charles DuPree is on your list?”

Yep, nothing got by Ines.

“WHAT THE FRACKING
frack?” Gaige hissed, the curse words leaving his pursed lips on a small, white puff of air. “What’s wrong with this damned thing?” Remembering too late that our boss had decided to join us on this excursion, my partner glanced over his shoulder guiltily and muttered a sheepish apology for his use of foul language. “Sorry, Cyrus.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s user error,” I suggested helpfully.

Under different circumstances, the situation might have been funny. But at two o’clock in the morning, with the temperature hovering somewhere just north of freezing, I couldn’t find any amusement in Gaige’s shortcomings. Even with the state-of-the-art lock picking set from customs, my partner couldn’t seem to disengage the relatively archaic deadbolt on Shakespeare and Company’s front door.

“I’ve got this,” Gaige declared. “Just give me a minute.”

“We don’t have a minute,” I muttered, trying to keep my agitation to a minimum.

Our position on the sidewalk in front of a closed bookstore left us completely exposed and vulnerable to nosy insomniacs looking for late-night entertainment. Thanks to our night vision contacts, also courtesy of customs, Gaige wasn’t using a flashlight, which would’ve drawn even more attention to our shady business dealings.

In Gaige’s defense, having our boss staring over his shoulder had to be intimidating. Cyrus was retired from running, and no longer mentored newbies during the apprenticeship year, so this was the first time either Gaige or me had been on a mission with him.

Declining our boss’s offer to assist with the search of Shakespeare and Company had not been an option. Even if it had been, Gaige and I needed all of the help we could get. Locating a single a book hidden in an overcrowded bookstore was going to be as difficult as finding a specific grain of sand on the beaches of Branson, so three sets of eyes were definitely better than two. Though if Gaige didn’t get that door open soon, three butts were going to be sitting in hard plastic chairs down at the police station instead of two.

“I’m usually so good at this,” Gaige groaned, going in for a fifth attempt.

I caught Cyrus’s gaze over Gaige’s head and rolled my eyes. My boss’s lips twitched as he fought a smirk.

“Keep telling yourself that,” I shot back, careful to keep my volume low. “Your turn is over sweetie, and you get an A for effort. Now move over, let me try.”

With a grumble, Gaige handed me the lock-picking tools. I removed my black leather gloves and blew warm air onto my fingers to restore blood flow, then set to work.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Cyrus interrupted, just as I was about to slide the flat metal piece into the lock. He gripped the door handle in one gloved hand and twisted. A soft click sounded, then the door swung inward, emitting a rickety creak.

“Ladies first.” Cyrus gestured to the open doorway. I crossed the threshold into the bookstore, followed closely by Gaige.

“How’d you do that?” my partner demanded, annoyed.

“Magic,” Cyrus deadpanned. “Now, do either of you have a starting point? Or are you just hoping the manuscript will jump off of the shelves and bite you in the ass?”

“The second one,” I replied sheepishly.

“Wonderful, the hope-we-get-lucky method of investigating—my favorite.” Cyrus’s tone was dry as the Sahara. He ran a gloved hand over his salt-and-pepper hair as he surveyed the overflowing shelves and worn furniture. “Okay, why don’t we divide the store into thirds? Stassi, you start with Adventure, Children’s Books, and Classics,” he instructed, gesturing to the signs hanging above the various bookcases. “Gaige, Horror, Literature, and Mystery. I’ll take Romance, Thrillers, and Travel. When you finish with your assigned sections, start in on one of the remaining ones.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” answered Gaige, giving our boss a cheeky two-finger salute.

From the pouch at my waist, I withdrew a pair of white, cotton artifact gloves. Sliding them on to my frozen fingers, I set to work. This was the first time I’d used the night vision contacts. They felt very foreign in my eyes and I kept blinking, as if that would help me adjust to the new, odd sensation. Even stranger than the feel of them, was the greenish glow they cast over everything.

The search was tedious, made more so by the fact that we didn’t know exactly what we were looking for. Going into this, I’d assumed a handwritten manuscript would be easily identifiable, that it was just a matter of locating Rosenthal’s hiding place. Not so much. Every other book I pulled from the shelf was handwritten. Even those that were typed often had handwritten missives in the margins.

“Anyone finding anything?” Gaige called after what felt like forever. Glancing at the synchronized timepiece on my wrist—yet another goody from the customs toolkit—I saw that it had only been an hour.

“Yes, Gaige, I found it. I figured keeping it a secret would be a laugh,” I said dryly, reaching for the next book on the shelf.

“Bite me,” came Gaige’s eloquent reply from across the room.

“Now, children, play nice,” muttered Cyrus, sounding somehow both bored and amused.

Exhausted and annoyed, I snapped closed the edition of
Peter Rabbit
in my hands and replaced it on the shelf. I’d finished with my sections, and was no closer to finding
Blue’s Can
y
on
than I had been when we entered the store.

“This is going to take all night,” I proclaimed. “We need a better system.”

Cyrus turned from a shelf of travel books, a hardback copy of
Alistair’s Guide to London
open in his hands. He arched an eyebrow. “Do you have a suggestion?”

I blew out a breath. “No,” I admitted, gesturing helplessly around the store. “But there has to be a better way to do this.”

Cyrus replaced the guidebook and gave me his full attention.

“You both spoke with Beach, correct? Something she said made you believe part of the manuscript is here. What was it?”

Gaige was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a bookcase of mystery novels. He’d been thumbing through a thick book with a tattered rust-colored cover, but looked up when Cyrus started asking questions.

“I don’t remember exactly. She told us that Rosenthal comes in here to write on a regular basis. We asked her about his habit of hiding sections of his manuscripts until he was ready to submit them for publication. Then I flat out asked whether any of his work was hidden here,” Gaige replied.

“Subtle,” Cyrus remarked.

“Effective,” Gaige volleyed. “Beach tried to be coy, but she definitely knows there is a piece of a manuscript in this store. She might even know where.”

“Exactly,” I said, realization dawning. “She does know where, she has to. Otherwise, she might accidentally sell it to someone.”

“Should we go wake her up for a little midnight interrogation?” Gaige asked me doubtfully.

I rolled my eyes. “No, of course not. But think about it—she wouldn’t want to risk selling the manuscript—”

“You already said that,” Gaige interjected.

“—and she wouldn’t want to risk someone walking off with it,” I continued, ignoring my partner’s snarky comment. “So it’s not going to be on one of these shelves.”

“Stassi’s right,” Cyrus chimed in. “Beach would want to keep it in a controlled environment, like—”

“Behind the register,” Gaige and I finished in unison.

Since I was closest, I reached the sales counter first. Gaige and Cyrus joined me a moment later. I started with the shelves beneath the register. Beach was organized, with accounting and sales ledgers, handwritten receipts for the past few months, inventory lists, and reminder notes to herself arranged in boxes and folders.

“Nothing,” I declared, feeling defeated. I’d been so sure the manuscript would be there. “What about the back of store?”

“No need,” Gaige replied, sounding distracted.

He and Cyrus were standing beside me, searching the books Beach kept on a small two-tiered shelving unit behind the sales counter. Gaige was holding a leatherbound book, smaller than the one we’d seen Rosenthal writing in at the café, but similar in style. He held it up to show us. The front cover was blank, save one word embossed in gold calligraphy: Book.

“Well that’s specific” I said of the title. “Are you sure?” I stepped closer to my partner as he flipped the cover open to reveal the precise penmanship inside. Sure enough, the handwriting matched the examples Eisenhower had shown us of Rosenthal’s works.

Cyrus crowded in on Gaige’s other side, staring over his shoulder to read the words along with us. My partner ran his gloved fingers over the words written on the otherwise blank title page:
Blue’s Canyon.
Gaige turned the page, and read the first line of text aloud:
Serena was exceptionally lovely when she stood before the window, the golden halo created by the sun’s morning rays giving her the appearance of an angel sent from the heavens.

“Look, there.” Cyrus pointed to the bottom right corner, where a “1” was scrawled. The number on the next page was “2”. “This must be the first section of the manuscript. Flip to the end,” he instructed.

Obediently, my partner followed orders, though the slightly wistful expression he wore told me that he wanted to read the story. I didn’t blame him. Rosenthal’s writing had a way of capturing readers, sucking them in to tales of love, loss, and heartbreak.

On the last page, the final line of text simply read:
Serena’s delicate touch was all Tate needed to…

“To what?” Gaige demanded urgently.

Cyrus clapped him on the back. “Well, thanks to you, the world will soon know,” our boss told him. “Now, start scanning. We’ve been here way too long already.”

“Yeah, okay.” Gaige reached into his toolkit and retrieved a handheld image scanner—a long, thin object with buttons on one side and a row of LEDs on the other. He hit the start button and began scanning the pages one by one.

The LEDs normally emitted a soft blue light, but it appeared more greenish-yellow and impossibly bright with the night vision contacts. Nervously, I glanced towards the windows at the front of the store. There were no curtains or blinds to shield us; only the darkness had kept us safe this long. A knot began to form in the pit of my stomach. Something felt off.

“Hurry up,” I warned impatiently.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Gaige grumbled.

I caught Cyrus’s eye. My boss seemed unusually anxious, as well. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, tapping the toe of his boot on the floor.

Not good,
I thought.

Ten silent, agonizing minutes later, Gaige mercifully proclaimed, “Last page. Almost done, guys.”

I began to relax.
You’re just jittery after last night,
I told myself.
Thirty seconds, tops, and we’re in the clear.

The scanner beeped twice to indicate the imaging was complete. I sighed, relieved. We weren’t going to spend another night in an interrogation box.

What’s that saying about not counting your chickens before they’ve hatched? I should really remember it in the future.

A short, sharp siren burst was all the warning we received before a loud voice blared through a bullhorn.

“Come out with your hands up!”