I tell myself to focus on all that’s good about tonight. Mel was celebrated, even without me being there. And, according to Chip, there’s more work of hers waiting for me, which I might have already read but maybe not. Andifnot, it might provide a fresh glimpse of the girl I struggled so hard to know.
And yet I feel unnerved. And ragged, too, as if I’m coming apart at the seams.
I’m suddenly desperate for the sound of Bas’s voice. As I grab my phone to call him, it strikes me that he still hasn’t responded to my text from the morning or the call I made. Which must mean he’s seriously under the weather and might even be sleeping. I send him a text instead of calling.
Hey, hope you haven’t been felled by your cold. If you’re still up, give me a call, okay?
I wait a minute or two for a response, but none comes. Is it possible he found the text I sent this morning dismissive, me saying that I’d wait until I returned to fill him in?
I carry my phone into the bathroom, lay it on the counter, and fire up the shower. The hot water ends up bringing minor relief to both my wrist and my hip. Once I’m done, I slip into the complimentary terry-cloth robe and wander back into the bedroom, dabbing antibacterial ointment from my toiletry bag onto the cut on my forehead.
A knock on the door makes me jerk in surprise. Before I can respond, a voice comes from the other side.
“Bree, it’s me, Logan.”
“Uh, give me a sec,” I call out. I shrug off the robe, grab the nearest clothes, then wince as I pull the jeans over my bruised hip. When I finally open the door, I find Logan with flushed cheeks—from either the wind or hurrying or both. He’s carrying two plastic bags.
“Can I come in?” he says. “I want to see how you’re doing. And I brought you something to eat.”
“Sure, and thanks. The only thing I’ve eaten since breakfast is a bag of chips.”
He heads for the small round table by the armchair and begins to unpack the bags. It’s obviously food from the reception: crackers and cheese, a napkin full of boiled shrimp, and a plastic container of cocktail sauce. He’s also got a bottle of red wine, which I assume he grabbed from the parlor downstairs. He pours us each a glass, using the two goblets on the dresser.
Okay, there’s no world in which we should be sharing wine and jumbo shrimp in a hotel room, but I need to fill him in, and more than that, I can’t bear the thought of being alone. Someone came after me tonight, and I don’t know who. I’ve booked my trip home, but none of the answers I’m going back with make me feel any better. And thoughI’m responsible for the disconnect with Bas—and maybe his failure to get in touch today—that’s no consolation.
“Is your head okay?” he asks.
“Yes, seems to be.”
“Here, sit,” he tells me, nodding toward one of the chairs by the table.
As I fall into the chair and help myself to a piece of shrimp, Logan slips out of his navy blazer and sits down himself.
“Now please tell me what the heck happened,” he says.
I toss the shrimp tail onto a paper napkin. “Okay, I went to see theMuseoffice, as planned, and while I was in there, someone turned off the light, shut the door, and dragged a worktable in front of it so there was no way I could budge the door open.”
Logan stares at me, aghast. “How did you manage to get out?”
I explain about hollering and banging until the custodian finally responded.
“Could it have been a mistake?” he says. “Someone not realizing you were in there?”
I give my head a shake. “That’s what the custodian said—that someone from the work crew must have done it. But don’t you think it’s odd they blocked the door with a table? Why not just use a key to lock it?”
“Maybe there’s no working lock yet. Besides, who in the world would want to trap you like that? Who would have even known you were there?”
“Jeffrey Handler might have known,” I say. “He happened to be watching the quad from his office window when I walked into the building, and I think he saw me.”
He furrows his brow, not sure where I’m going with this. At last I divulge what I’ve experienced with Handler this week—his apparent unease with me, his failure to share the information about the archive, and how I didn’t help matters by being caught sneaking around his property in an attempt to learn more about him.
“Why would he be uneasy or act weird about you seeing Mel’s stuff?”
“Okay, I know this might sound far-fetched, but hear me out. From what I’ve put together, Handler’s a cheater, and I keep wondering if he might have been Mel’s secret crush, the one Harry mentioned.”
I wait for his eyes to widen with incredulity. Instead, he steeples his hands and exhales a ragged breath into his fingers.
“I wondered the same thing once,” he says.
