CHAPTER SEVEN

WITH A SINGLE finger, I tugged down on the top of the binding. It held fast. Evie clung to me tighter. I licked my lips. “These books probably haven’t been disturbed for over a decade. The greases from my finger have already decreased the value of the antiquity by a few bucks.”

“Have I ever told you scientists can be a drag?”

“I believe so, yes.” Damn, she was right. I wasn’t thinking like a man with dirt under his nails. “Stand back.”

Evie backed away reluctantly.

Prepared to either tear the binding clean off or open a portal to hell, I squared my feet and yanked downward.

The book tipped forty-five degrees and stuck solid. A loud click reverberated from behind the wall or above the ceiling. The book shelf jolted in place as a creak gave way to a snap. For a few seconds I heard nothing except Evie’s gasp and the pounding of my heart.

In the pause, I unintentionally severed the background memory loop of my fight with Evie. Staving off another cascade, I assigned the mental static with the task of sorting every observation I’d ever made about my office taking into consideration the new discovery.

A violent reverberation shook the floor, a collision from a great distance, like a wrecking ball slamming into the outer wall. Or… a heavy ballast slamming into a floor several stories below.

Mierda. I had broken it. Wait. I’d broken a secret passageway leading to a clandestine lab opening off of my own Sergio Leone office. Wide eyed, I gripped Evie by the shoulders. Simultaneously, we burst into an awkward jig.

“What just happened?” Evie asked.

Before we could finish dancing, my subconscious interrupted with a myriad of red flags. “I don’t know.” Why was my office the only room in the main building with an upgraded palm scanner? Why had I been given this office and who else knew what I had just discovered? Those were among the first ones I deemed important.

As much as the moment felt like a childhood adventure come to life, I forced myself to recognize the potential for real danger. “I don’t know, but we have to remember where this book came from. Seventeen lives were taken just this morning.”

“Hopeless. Really. Now give me a hand.” Evie ran her fingers along the edge of the bookshelf.

“I’m serious. For all we know the THS is planning on me opening up a forgotten access route to the heart of campus just in time for a surprise attack.”

“Listen to yourself, professor. You can’t possibly believe that.” She put her ear to the spine of a large volume on theoretical physics.

I swallowed, running my hands through my hair. “I think this is the part that shifted the most.” Joining her in the search for cracks around the perimeter of the shelf, I reassured myself the THS couldn’t possibly benefit from attacking the campus. Still…

I templed my ARGs. “List all devices streaming or capable of streaming data from this location, five meter radius.”

“Oooh, good idea.” Evie paused her search.

In less than a second the lens view scrolled a short list: my ARGs, my tablet, my console…and an unknown source coming from behind the bookshelf, archaic.

“What does it say?” Evie tugged a section of shelf, rocking it back and forth.

I drew a deep breath, “devices currently streaming.” The response appeared immediately. None.

She stopped. “You found something!”

“No, nothing. False alarm.” Keeping my fingers moving around the edges of the shelf, I tried to shake off my paranoia. But for weeks I’d been stirring it into my morning coffee.

The administration had no doubt been keeping an eye on their loose cannon of a professor since they hired me. For at least a month the main firewall at the lab had been routinely compromised. Nothing more than low level routines and mundane assays, so I never bothered raising the alarm—a measure I considered counter intelligence. If people were intent on keeping an eye on me, I wanted them to think I didn’t know.

Evie resumed the search. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Only with you.”

“Oh thanks, I guess.”

“Here.” The middle section of the bookshelf had shifted outward a fraction of an inch before the ballast snapped free. I scavenged a metal straightedge from the top drawer of my desk and jammed it into the crack. After prying the entire middle section of the shelves outward a few inches, we discovered little resistance. The weight which had held the charade in place had broken free. What had been a bookshelf became a door unhinged.

Lost in the thrill, we savored the moment. Finally, her gripping the shelf low, me gripping it high, we threw it open together.