Chapter 9 · The Archive Trap

The archive room smelled like cold metal and paper dust, and the only light was the strip over the aisle, the color of weak tea.

Thirty-eight minutes I'd been down there. Long enough for my badge to log it. Long enough for the camera in the corner to get a clean shot of my face, my hands, and the drive in my palm.

I cranked the handle on the second row. The shelving rolled with the sound of a train braking in a tunnel, and the aisle opened, and there it was. Vance & Partners. Client intake. Sterling Holdings. Box eleven.

Five years I'd built this firm's good name out of other people's disasters. Tonight I was robbing my own file room at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday.

"Get it together, Helena," I said. Out loud. Because the quiet down there was starting to crawl on me.

The lid came off with a puff of dust straight up my nose, and my body — my new, traitorous, six-week-and-change body — gagged so hard I had to brace a hand on the shelf.

I swallowed it down. Twice. Then I sat on the floor in a five-hundred-dollar skirt and started reading.