“Don’t do th—” Henry started.
Abe held up his palm and Henry stopped.
“What’s interesting,” Abe began cautiously, “is that the mutual trust and respect you have for each other—plus your complementary skill sets—is one of the reasons why you make such great partners. If this hadn’t come up, I would have paired you up again by the next case.”
I felt an unexpected thrill at those words—to do this, I had to forcibly ignore how much I’d enjoyed working with Henry; that in the best of both worlds, we could be together and hunt down book thieves at the exact same time.
There was another long, excruciating pause. What was he waiting for?
“But even though that might be true, I still believe romantic entanglements are a dangerous distraction, and if the two of you are to continue working here, it is not something I take lightly.”
“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “What did you say?”
Abe picked up our letters, stacked them together. And tore them clean in half.
He looked down at the floor. “The fact that you were both willing to sacrifice your job for the other tells me that this relationship is very real.” He appeared painfully awkward as he scooped the pieces of our letters into the trashcan. “But you’ll be prohibited from working cases together until I can trust the two of you. Is that clear?”
I considered Henry—whose eyes were wide behind his glasses. When the words finally, truly, sunk in, the smile that spread across his face was magnificent.
“I also won’t hesitate to ban eye contact between the two of you.”
“Yes, sir,” I said quickly.
“I’ll never look at her again,” Henry agreed.
“Moving forward,” Abe said, “we need to be honest with each other. There will be no more chances.”
Henry and I were nodding so vigorously I worried we’d fall off our chairs.
Abe let us stew for a minute longer…and then the ends of his lips curved up in an almost-smile. “We might as well have a staff meeting if we’re all in.” He opened the door. “Freya, get in here.”
She strode in, fixing her bun with a pen between her teeth. “I’m guessing…we’re a team of four again?”
“Yes,” Abe said.
Freya arched an eyebrow at me, and I actually blushed.
“Well, good,” she grinned. “I’d hate to see Henry go. It’s nice to have another Ravenclaw on staff. And four is the perfect number to catch thieves.”
“Speaking of,” Abe said, “I have updates on Victoria.”
And just like that, the universe balanced, my world righted, my mind was clear, and my heart was true. Henry. Me and Henry. Not only together but also still here at Codex. The feeling was momentous enough to have me giving Henry the tiniest smile—a smile brimming over with joy and hope and all that was good on this earth.
I leaned forward in my seat toward Abe, content to know my love for Henry was now out in the open for all to see.
“The FBI completed their interviews with her, and our kooky heiress sang like a canary.”
“Smart move,” I said, shaking my head. “Although I’m sure it must have hurt her ego to admit she wasn’t the highest up on whatever chain of command exists in that world.”
Abe was flipping through his files. “And no word from Victoria on Bernard.”
“She didn’t give up his whereabouts?” Henry asked. “She has to know where he is.”
I felt a strange warmth in the center of my chest. Because I knew why not.
“She’s in love with him still,” I said, recalling our conversation in the cloisters.
“Interesting,” he said. He slid a photo our way. “Victoria gave up Alistair.”
“The man from the auction house?” I asked.
“Bernard’s intern.” Henry picked up the picture and rubbed his jaw. “Did Alistair give anyone up?”
“He’s still in the process of being sentenced, but it’s not looking likely.” Abe tapped his fingers together. “This comes from my FBI contact and isn’t public knowledge, so don’t repeat it. Victoria paid Alistair a fantastical sum of money to steal it for her, relying on the access she could give him to the manuscript as the board president. The plan all along was for her to move it to her beach house in Santa Barbara, which holds a special significance to her because that’s where her mother was born.”
“So she wasn’t going to, like, sell it to another collector? She stole it for herself?” Freya asked.
“For her mother,” I said softly. “She stole it to feel closer to her mother.”
Victoria Whitney was a wildly complicated philanthropist, a charming egomaniac, and a thief that believed she existed above all law. She was all those things—and probably more. Victoria was the gray area.
And I was okay with that.
“According to Alistair, they were supposed to move it the night before the party, but there was some massive bungling and it was delayed by twenty-four hours.”
“Good thing or we’d never have gotten it,” I said. “What about the guards?”
“There was trouble in paradise between the Victoria and Alistair partnership from the very beginning. I’m not sure the trust was ever really there, although money can certainly fake that. Alistair hired those guards for Victoria, I’m assuming because he recognized that her ego might get her in trouble, therefore possibly getting him in trouble.”
“Which it did,” Freya added.
“Victoria’s very famous lawyer is working on a plea bargain. House arrest and a fine. According to Francisco, she’s telling anyone who will listen that the Copernicus was ‘just a bit of fun’ and she didn’t realize how serious it was.”
I shook my head in disbelief, laughing a little at Victoria’s sheer lunacy. Of course Victoria Whitney could get away with something like this—and probably come out of it smelling like a rose. “She’ll do it again,” I finally said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we bump into our kooky heiress a year from now at the auction house.”
“A person like Victoria continues to believe she’s above the law even while in prison,” Freya said. “Whatever she takes again, we’ll get it back.”
“Where does someone like Bernard fit into this? Or Codex?” Henry asked.
Abe seemed thoughtful. “I still believe that what we’re starting to see is an organization, or a ladder or a pyramid or some kind of cohesive group that is orchestrating these larger, more skillful thefts of rare books and antiques,” he said. “With one person at the top, pulling all of the strings.”
“Bernard?” Henry asked.
“Maybe he works closely with that person. Or maybe he is that person. The majority of our casework will still be going after quick, poorly planned thefts that are more sudden opportunities than well-planned heists. But an organized attack makes our job a lot harder. They can hide the books faster and better than what we’ve been seeing.”
“It also makes our job more exciting,” I said, feeling that old, familiar thrum in my veins. Adrenaline, the hunt, justice…all of it making me feel completely alive.