Page 101

“I know.”

“You can look again when he has the shirt.”

I leave the screen dark. Outside, the buildings give way to lower roads and trees. The drive feels longer than it is. Every mile takes me farther from the last place Connor worked, though it brings me closer to what he hid.

Harris opens the bookstore’s front door when he sees our vehicles arrive. Cole comes in behind us and remains near the windows. The store smells of coffee Birdie must have made while she waited. A few lamps glow between the shelves because the clouds have dimmed the early afternoon.

Birdie meets me beside the counter. There’s paint beneath one of her fingernails, and a pencil sits behind her ear, as if she dressed for a day in her workshop before Connor changed it. She hugs me hard, then releases me and looks over my face.

“You’re okay?” she asks.

“I am.” I glance toward the rear table. “Show me.”

Harris leads us past the children’s nook. Murphy lifts his head from a stack of books when he sees me, then climbs down and brushes against my legs. I reach to stroke him, but he spots Andrei and follows him toward the rear table.

Birdie points at the shelf where she found the hardcover before taking us to the table. Harris has photographs of its original position on his phone. He shows us the repaired spine, the shelf beside the donated cartons, and the book resting beneath the shop light after they moved it.

I read Grandma’s name inside the front cover. Her letters lean a little to the right. She wrote the year she bought it beneath her name, then added a note about buying it in the rain because she couldn’t bear to leave it in a shop window. I remember her reading in the chair by the front window, one slipper sliding off her foot as she turned the pages.

“She repaired this years ago,” I tell Birdie. “The cloth wasn’t loose then.”

“That’s what I thought,” Birdie says. “It looked as if someone had lifted the top and pressed it back down.”

Andrei stands beside me, close enough that his sleeve brushes mine. “May I see it?”

I give him the book. He examines the raised edge without pulling at it, then hands it back. “There’s room under the repair. Let Harris photograph it before you open it.”

Harris does. I slide a thin letter opener beneath the cloth where the glue has already given way. My hand trembles, so I stop and set the tool down for a moment. Birdie puts her hand on my shoulder.

“Take your time,” she says.

“Connor didn’t leave this for me to admire the repair.”

“No,” she says. “Grandma would want to know whether he did a decent job putting it back.”

I laugh once, though my throat hurts. Then I lift the cloth enough to expose a narrow hollow cut into the binding. A small USB drive lies inside, wrapped in a strip of paper to keep it from rattling against the cover.

I ease the drive free. The paper has no writing. Connor hid the drive where Grandma once hid a tear in the spine, trusting me to come back to the book even if I failed to find it the first time.

“I want to see what’s on it,” I insist.

“Your laptop is upstairs?” Andrei asks.

I nod and hurry to the apartment. When I return, I set the laptop on the rear table and plug in the drive while Andrei calls Reid and puts him on speaker. A row of folders appears on the screen. Birdie pulls up a chair beside me as I open the first one, and Andrei tells Reid what we’re seeing.

Connor has named the folders by loan number. Inside are applications, copies of Dragorin invoices, company registrations, and notes in his own clipped style. Reid compares the first loan number with the files Linda sent him earlier. It matches.

“Rick approved this one,” Reid says through the speaker.

Andrei opens the next file. Rick’s authorization appears there too. He checks a third while I read Connor’s note beneath the application.

R.W. approved. Need to establish whether he knows source of documents. Pressure possible. Do not assume consent.

I read it aloud. Birdie leans closer to see for herself.

“Connor didn’t know whether Rick was in on it,” I say.

“He knew Rick approved the loans,” Andrei replies. His hand rests beside the laptop. “He was trying to work out why.”