Chapter Nine

The library hadn’t changed much in the past fifteen years. The puffy blue couches in the children’s section had been reupholstered but were the same. The glass study rooms in the back hadn’t changed much, either.

They’d parked the truck a quarter mile away—he hadn’t wanted to take any chances on it being spotted near the library. Claire hadn’t wanted to leave Khan behind. A backpack Luke had forgotten about and found stuffed under one of the truck’s seats did the trick. Nestled in there, with the top unzipped a bit for air, the cat only meowed occasionally.

It was impressive, really, the amount of trust that animal had in his human. Then again, she’d no doubt worshipped the little furball from the start.

Kitten .

Luke smiled to himself. Claire was definitely more of a kitten than Khan was.

They slipped in separately about an hour before closing, long enough ahead of time so the librarian wouldn’t be paying attention. Claire headed back to the fiction section and Luke ended up in poetry.

He was the least poetry-reading guy he’d ever known but forced himself to crack open a book anyway. Walt Whitman wasn’t so bad.

A mom with three young kids came in about twenty minutes before closing and couldn’t have provided a better cover if Luke had been designing it himself. The librarian’s attention was immediately homed in on them, undoubtedly because the older man didn’t want to have to clean up whatever the kids dug out right before closing.

Still, finding a place to hide where he wouldn’t find them wouldn’t be easy. Luke started scoping it out. He was back in the nonfiction section when Claire found him and motioned for him to follow.

“I can’t believe it’s still here,” she whispered.

“What?”

She didn’t answer, just gestured for him to keep following as they took a back aisle toward the children and teens section. The librarian was busy checking out the books for the mom and kids.

“Here.” She walked over to a display that took up the entire back corner of the room. Worldwide scenes lit up the front, telling kids that reading could take them wherever they wanted to go.

“It’s really nice.” Luke didn’t know what more to say. He vaguely remembered the display from their time here.

She walked over to the side of the display. “It’s also still got a false back...”

“What?”

Claire pulled the back of the display from the side it should’ve been attached to. Sure enough, it created an opening big enough to slip into.

An announcement came over the speaker that the library was closing in five minutes.

“Is it big enough for both of us?” he asked.

She nodded. “As long as you’re not claustrophobic.”

“Closed-in spaces aren’t my favorite, but I’ll manage.”

He followed her as she slipped inside, then pulled the back panel into its rightful place.

It was definitely tight between the two of them and Khan’s backpack. But claustrophobia was the last thing Luke was thinking about.

How could he when Claire’s body was pressed up against him from head to toe?

“Hi,” he whispered.

Her head dropped against his chest. “Fancy meeting you here. This space seemed a lot bigger when I hid here as a kid.”

He put his hands on her hips. “You doing okay?”

He pulled her closer when she slid her arms around her waist. “Yeah.”

They fell quiet, both smiling as they heard the librarian sing Broadway show tunes as he went about his closing duties. A few minutes later, when they heard everything switch off, Luke knew they were probably in the clear.

“Do you think it’s safe to leave?” she whispered.

“I think we better stay in here a few more minutes.”

A plan that had nothing to do with the librarian and everything to do with him tilting up her face and bringing his lips down to hers.

He kept the kiss gentle and lazy, giving her plenty of opportunity to pull away if she wanted, and it wasn’t long before he could feel her fingertips pushing against his back, bringing him closer , not away.

She wanted him, but it couldn’t possibly be as much as he wanted her. He could stay here for hours and worship the generous curves of her mouth.

And that was nothing compared to what he’d like to do to the rest of her body.

But he forced himself to ease back. This wasn’t the time or place for all the things he wanted to do to her, wanted them to do to each other.

He tilted his forehead against hers. They were both breathing heavily. “As much as I want to continue, we should save this for another time...”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Khan meowed softly as if to offer his agreement, too. They both chuckled.

“Do you think it’s safe to come out now?” she whispered.

“Yes.” Luke turned so he could edge the back of the display open again. It was dim in the library. “Stay here while I double-check.”

It didn’t take long to confirm the building was empty. He returned to Claire and helped her out from the display.

She immediately set the backpack down so she could let the cat, literally, out of the bag. Khan stretched and walked around as if he owned the place.

“Okay, what do you need?” he asked.

“The computer lab. I’ll hack into the statewide system so it hides where we are, then I will need to backdoor into Passage Digital.” She began walking toward the lab.

“Stay away from the windows.” It was dim in here, but not completely dark. They couldn’t take a chance on being spotted by someone out walking their dog.

“Okay.”

She chose the computer station in the back corner of the lab, fired it up, and started typing right away. There was no hesitation whatsoever.

“First, I have to bypass their password system.”

He watched from over her shoulder. “How long will that take?”

“Already done it.” Pleasure filled her voice. She was in her happy place.

“Already?” It took him longer than that to remember his own password most days.

She seemed not to hear him. With Khan at her feet, she was completely focused on the task at hand. He respected that kind of concentration and left her to it.

He moved back out of the computer lab and into the main section of the library, walking over to the side of a window and peeking out. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening in the empty parking lot. A glance out a window on the other side of the building, looking out into a playground and other buildings, resulted in the same.

This place brought back some good feelings for him. There weren’t a lot in his earlier years. His life hadn’t been too traumatic—nothing like what his brothers Chance or Brax went through—just a lot of hunger, combined with kicks and hits and well-placed bruises.

Life with the Pattersons had changed all that. Which reminded him that he needed to call his brothers.

He used his burner phone to dial Brax’s cell number.

“Brax Patterson.” Brax’s voice was tense.

“It’s me.”

His brother let out a long exhale. “You all right? We saw the news.”

“Yeah. We’re both still alive.” Luke leaned around a shelf to check on Claire. She typed away with laser focus, though her brown wig was askew.

“We’ve been waiting for you to call. The cops came by looking for you.”

Even though it was news he’d expected, it still made Luke tense. “What did you say?”

“Exactly what you did. That you were away on a fishing trip. We even showed them the text.”

“Did it throw them off?”

“They were still suspicious. Weston had a tail on him when he went out today. Where are you?”

“Somewhere that Claire can get the info she needs to clear her name.” He lowered his voice. “She witnessed the murder of a coworker at Passage Digital. Now the CEO is trying to frame her for it. He’s using all his political connections to bring her down hard.”

Brax cursed sharply.

“Yeah, my feelings exactly.”

“How can she prove her innocence?”

“Ballard isn’t only guilty of murder. He’s trying to use some app to illegally collect data on minors to be stored and used later—think access to bank accounts and private identity when the kids come of age.”

Brax cursed again.

“She has proof of that on a drive,” Luke continued. “But it’s only readable through some proprietary software at Passage, so she’s trying to hack her way into that. Once she can prove Ballard is guilty of identity theft, she’ll be able to go to the police and show that he was using her as a scapegoat.”

“What about the murder?”

“She’s got video footage of it stuffed into the Passage Digital intraweb. She can’t access it from outside, but if they arrest Ballard and let her into Passage, she’ll be able to access it.”

“Sounds like she’s some sort of computer genius.”

Pride filled Luke. “Exactly.”

“How long will that take for her to get what she needs?”

“A few hours maybe. Hard to say.” He rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t like the thought of being in one spot for so long, but there was no way around it. “Listen, once she gets what she needs, I need you to get Weston to meet Rick and arrange for us to come in tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Go see him face-to-face. Calling is too dangerous,” Luke warned. “Rick left his office to use a pay phone earlier to call me. He thinks this whole search for Claire smells rotten.”

“That’s because it is. We’ll take care of it. You worry about everything on your end. I’ll contact you in a few hours.”

“Thanks, Brax.” Some of the tension left his shoulders. He could always count on his family to come through.

Hanging up, Luke pulled one of the granola bars he’d picked up at the supermarket from his pocket and went back to the computer lab.

Claire was hunched forward, her face inches from the screen. “Dumb general user interface... So unprofessional...”

“Hey.” He leaned against the wall next to the computer. “Time to eat something.”

Her gaze remained fixed on the computer. “I’m not hungry.”

“You need to keep your energy up. It’s a stressful situation. You’re burning more calories than you realize.”

She extended a hand in his general direction but missed the granola bar by about a foot.

Chuckling, he slipped the bar into her palm. She promptly slapped it on the table next to the keyboard.

“You need to put it in your mouth for the eating thing to work.” He crouched beside her and opened the wrapper. He took her hand off the keyboard and put the granola bar in it.

He stood back up when she gnawed on the snack with one hand still typing. Khan stretched out under the desk, waving a paw in the air. They were both in their zones, with only Luke left with nothing to do.

But he could do what he’d done for Claire even when they were kids—he would look out for her.

Leaving them at the desk, he walked to the other end of the library and back. He constantly kept diligent watch out various windows in between checking on her.

An hour went by.

Then another.

Then another.

By the time five had passed, and it was closer to dawn than sunset, he was starting to feel itchy. They’d been here too long. His instincts were starting to holler at him.

He wanted to give her as much time as possible, but time was running out.

“That’s right...” she mumbled, as wide-awake as she’d been when they stepped into the library. “What do you think of that, Khan?”

He smirked from his perch near the periodicals. She’d been talking to the cat all night, and it made her even cuter.

But then she stiffened and stopped typing, the first time he’d seen her do that all night. “Uh-oh. That’s not good.”

He straightened and in a handful of strides, reached her chair. “What?” The coding stuff on her screen was all but a foreign language to him.

“I had to access the Passage Digital system remotely to be able to do what I need to.”

He nodded, although he wasn’t exactly certain what that meant.

“I knew they would see my intrusion into the system. I set it up so it looked like it was coming from one of the remote offices in Canada—nothing they’d deem too suspicious, just someone working late.”

“What was the uh-oh about?”

“A few minutes ago, I thought maybe they’d caught me. An extra firewall went up.”

“And that’s bad?”

“Yeah, but expected. I was about to work my way around it, but then it dropped on its own.”

“Why would it do that?”

She looked at him. “I’d like to say it’s because the system doesn’t see what I’m doing as a threat. But—”

“But it’s more likely they’re trying to keep you online,” he finished for her.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“How much more time do you need?”

“An hour. Maybe two. This is the most critical time.”

“That’s too long. Can you get any info at all in a shorter amount of time?”

“Maybe. It’ll be a smash-and-grab, but it might work.” She immediately started typing again; if possible, her fingers flew faster than they had been before.

He went back to the windows.

If they wanted to keep Claire online, it was because they were trying to track her.

He’d give her twenty more minutes, tops. After that, they had to go. It would no longer be safe here.

But less than a minute went by before one of the shadows out near the parking lot caught his attention. It was different than it had been before. Three hours of watching out these windows had ingrained the specifics of these shadows into his brain.

Sure enough, a few moments later, someone darted across the edge of the parking lot, moving from shadow to shadow to the side of the library. The only gleam that gave him away was when the moonlight reflected for a split second off the gun in his hand.

They didn’t have twenty minutes.

“Claire,” he said, raising his voice, “pack it up. We’ve got to go right now.”