“No.” He turned and ran toward the study door so quickly that he sent a side table toppling. “No one is permitted in that study without my supervision.”
“Exactly why we thought you should know,” Brent said, following hot on his heels. Immediately, all the other hunters rose and followed, each just as eager as the next to see what mysteries were hidden within the Employer’s study.
Ambrose strode down the corridor and reached out to try the handle.
The study door was still locked.
Pale as a ghost, Ambrose fumbled for his keys and after a great deal of clattering the key in the lock, the door creaked open. He rushed inside, eyes darting from desk to shelves to cabinets, then crossed to the window and stared at the undonelatch. All the bounty hunters clustered around the door, hanging in to look and each appearing just as disappointed as I’d felt the night before.
“Thought there’d be something a little more interesting in here,” one of them muttered.
“Maybe Ambrose just forgot to lock the window,” I piped up.
“Yeah, right,” someone behind me chuckled. “Someone must’ve broken in. Maybe even one of the Nightsworn. They might’ve found our base. Did you hear anything, Ambrose? You sleep here every night.”
Ambrose’s former paleness gave way to bright red as he flushed. “There must be a mistake! It was all quiet last night.”
“Did they steal anything?” I asked. “I bet they were creeping through the whole house.”
“Nah, the door was locked and the window was the only thing open. They couldn’t relock it from the outside.”
“But they couldn’t have opened it from the outside, either,” Brent pointed out. “Not without breaking the glass, and it was intact. So it must not have been locked. And it wasn’t the Nightsworn or they would’ve taken everything.”
I let out a low whistle. “But why would someone come in here?”
“They must’ve been curious, then been just as bored as everyone else. There’s nothing valuable here to steal.” Brent pointed near the wall. “What’s that?”
Ambrose picked up the two pomegranate seed pods and blinked. “What are these doing here?” he muttered to himself.
I tilted my head. “What are they? Hold them up, I can’t see.”
Ambrose closed his hand over the seed pods to hide them, but Brent let out a snort. “They’re pomegranate seeds. Elvin has been eating those things constantly.”
Ambrose’s mouth tightened and he glared at Brent. “Correlation does not equal guilt. Gil was asking aboutRoderick’s file yesterday. He knows I keep bounty files in here. Maybe it washim.”
I let out a squawk of indignation. “But it wasn’t,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “I didn’t take a file and you told me he would be too difficult to catch. I told you I’d find someone else and I asked you to post a bounty.”
“You could’ve just told me that to let the matter drop then come back to break in.”
All the other bounty hunters were snapping their heads back and forth to follow the argument like we were at a badminton tournament.
“If I had broken in, why would I come back?”
“Maybe you didn’t find the file you were looking for.”
I rolled my eyes. “I might be young, but I’m notthatdumb. It would’ve been in one of those filing cabinets, either R for Rodney or V for Vale. Check it. If he has a file, it should be there.” Then I thought. “Unless Elvin wanted you tothinkI took it and he took it himself to frame me.”
“I’m sure Elvin wouldn’t take it,” Ambrose grumbled, riffling through with ever-thinning lips until he found the correct file and pulled it out. “And it was Roderick Vane, not Rodney Vale.”
I shrugged. “I don’t have as good a memory as you do.”
Everyone was quiet and watched from the doorway as Ambrose went through the entire file, checking each page and finding every scrap of information exactly where I’d left it. Ambrose exhaled slowly.
“Well?” Brent prompted him.
“It’s all here,” Ambrose admitted.
I shrugged again. “I told you I didn’t do it. Maybe whoever opened the window was interrupted and ran before they got inside.”
