“I have an idea.” He looked at her, the fading glow of sunset highlighting the room in gold. “Since you read numbers faster, why don't you take the ledgers, and I'll take the receipts. If there are any letters, I'll give them to you too. You can read them faster than I can.”
He wasn't certain what he'd expected from her response, but the look of admiration she sent him settled in his chest like winning some sort of award. His weaknesses failed to diminish him in her eyes. In fact, if he guessed right from her expression, she didn't think badly of him at all.
“All right.” She drew out a ledger.
“Perhaps this will help.” He tugged a flashlight from his pocket, catching Kizzie's attention.
“What in the world is that?”
He grinned and held it up for her perusal. “A flashlight.”
Her nose wrinkled with her frown, inciting his grin. “A what?”
He flipped the switch on the small tube and watched her eyes widen as a dim light poured from the other end. “Well, look at that.” She peered closer. “How does it work? I didn't see you light a match.”
“Batteries.” He shone the beam over the papers before them. “But I'm not sure how long we have with it. I've never gotten one to last long before it turns off.”
“Then we better stop talking and start working.”
A few minutes in, Noah found a receipt to Mr. Lawrence, one of the shopkeepers in town his brother had overcharged. He tilted the paper toward Kizzie.
“Those dates fit the timeline,” she said. “We'd better take that one.”
He nodded, folded the paper, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
“When did George start courting Miss Malone?”
Noah thought. “Six months ago.”
“So I'd imagine he didn't start hurting for money until after that, so …” She closed the ledger. “These dates would be too old.” She moved through two more while he scanned other papers.
“Here.” She turned the book so he could see. “This one has some of the dates we're looking for.”
He shifted a step closer to her in order to shine the light more fully on the book, but his hip rubbed against something on the desk, and a pile of books and papers crashed to the floor.
Noah met Kizzie's wide-eyed gaze.
“Did you hear that?” A voice rose from downstairs, carried up from the production room floor.
Sykes.
“Where did it come from?” Jones’ voice rose too loud, like he was attempting to warn them.
“Upstairs.” They heard rushed footsteps.
Noah scanned the room, searching for a hiding place. He grabbed Kizzie's hand and rushed across the room to the little closet behind his unused desk. After tugging her inside the cramped space, he brought the closet door to a close just as the footsteps made it to the hallway.
“Your flashlight.” Kizzie looked down at his free hand, light glowing through his fingers because of the way he held the light.
He switched it off just as the clipped footsteps entered the room. A glow swooped from beneath the closet door, giving Noah a better view of Kizzie's silhouette beside him, though her fingers wrapped around his certainly highlighted her nearness. He gave her hand a squeeze and tugged her a little closer, turning so his body created an additional buffer between her and the door.
She edged against him, likely to orient herself in the tiny space, but he rather liked the nearness. The touch.
“See anything?” This from Jones. Footsteps, heavier ones, likely Jones moving near the closet. Did he suspect they hid in there?
Good man.
“A mess on the floor by Mr. Lewis’ desk.”
