Chapter 2 - The Book Nobody Wanted Read
I had learned several useful things from working in rare books.
Never place adhesive tape near old paper.
Never trust someone who called water damage “atmospheric.”
And never let a valuable object become more important than the person carrying it.
That last rule was Ruth’s.
I heard her voice clearly as the assistant’s hand left the deadbolt.
I set my phone facedown on the table.
“Open the door.”
Dr. Wescott spread his hands.
“There’s no reason to become upset.”
“I asked you to open the door.”
“We simply require privacy.”
“Then you should have rented a room without inviting me into it.”
His assistant looked toward him.
A small uncertainty passed between them.
Good.
I raised my voice.
“Open the door.”
The assistant stepped closer.
I picked up the heavy desk telephone and pressed the button marked FRONT DESK.
Dr. Wescott reached for the receiver.
I moved it out of reach.
“Suite seventeen-oh-six,” I said when someone answered. “Two men have locked me inside. Send security.”
Everything happened quickly after that.
Wescott cursed.
The assistant unlocked the door.
I took my case, leaving the manuscript on the table rather than giving either man a reason to grab me.
By the time hotel security arrived, I was in the corridor.
Luca Ferraro stepped out of the neighboring elevator behind them.
For a moment, I wondered whether I had somehow summoned him by having an exceptionally bad day.
Then I saw the manager beside him.
“Are you hurt?” Luca asked.
“No.”
“Do you want the police?”
The question steadied me.
“Yes.”
Wescott appeared in the doorway.
“This is a misunderstanding concerning ownership.”
“The ownership didn’t lock the door,” I said.
The manager looked as though he wished the marble would swallow him.
Police officers arrived twenty minutes later.
I gave my account.
Wescott gave a different one.
The hotel’s corridor camera could not show what had happened inside, but it showed me leaving visibly distressed and immediately asking for help.
The manuscript remained in the room until the officers documented where it had been and confirmed that Wescott’s agreement gave him no right to retain it.
Ruth arrived before I finished my statement.
She was sixty-eight, wore sensible boots with magnificent coats, and had once reduced a hedge-fund manager to silence over an improperly handled atlas.
She took one look at me and opened her arms.
I nearly cried.
“Did you touch the repair?” she whispered.
I stepped back.
“What?”
Her face changed.
“Clara. Did you?”
Across the corridor, Luca stopped speaking to the manager.
I looked from him to Ruth.
A terrible suspicion formed.
“Everybody knows something about this book except the woman carrying it.”
Ruth closed her eyes.
“I should never have sent you.”
“No,” I said. “Apparently you shouldn’t.”
One officer approached with questions about the loan paperwork.
Ruth answered them, then requested that the manuscript be secured while its ownership and the incident were reviewed.
By then, Wescott had called a lawyer.
By then, Callum had vanished from the lobby.
And by then, Luca Ferraro was looking at Ruth as though he recognized more than her name.
“Mrs. Gray,” he said.
“Mr. Ferraro.”
The temperature between them dropped.
“You know each other?” I asked.
“Your father knew his family,” Ruth said.
The corridor seemed to tilt.
“My father restored books.”
“Yes.”
“He died when I was sixteen.”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with any of this?”
Ruth glanced toward the police officers.
“More than I understood yesterday.”
I stepped away from both of them.
My father, Daniel Bennett, had died after a warehouse fire in Brooklyn. For years, people had suggested he had been storing stolen objects.
No charges.
No chance to defend himself.
Just a stain that outlived him.
I had spent my childhood hearing adults lower their voices when his name came up.
Luca spoke carefully.
“I didn’t know you were his daughter.”
“Would you have let me out of the elevator if you had?”
His expression tightened.
“Yes.”
My phone vibrated again.
Callum.
This time, a photograph.
My apartment door.
Taken from inside my hallway.
Beneath it:
We need to talk before you make this worse.
I showed the officer.
Then, despite myself, I looked at Luca.
Something in his face had gone very still.
I pointed at him before he could speak.
“No disappearing men. No favors I don’t understand. No deciding what happens next.”
He held my gaze.
“All right.”
Ruth reached for my hand.
I did not take it.
May you like
“Start telling me the truth,” I said.
“Both of you.”
