Chapter 2 - A Voice Behind the Archive Door
Darkness erased the library so completely that Camila could hear Noah’s breathing change beside her. The alarm continued to pulse through the building, but without the lights, every sound felt closer.
A shoe brushed against tile somewhere beyond the circulation desk.
1 of Christian’s men whispered that the emergency system should have switched to backup power.
Camila kept 1 hand on Noah’s shoulder and reached beneath the desk with the other, searching for the small flashlight taped beside the panic button.
Her fingers found cold metal.
She clicked it once, shielding the beam against her coat so it would not announce their position.
Christian stood less than 3 ft away. In the narrow light, his face looked carved from shadow.
“The backup generator is in the basement,” Camila said quietly.
“Can someone shut it down from inside?”
“Only with a staff key or access code.”
Christian’s gaze dropped to the key ring clipped at her waist.
“How many people have either?”
“5 employees, Evelyn Shaw, 2 maintenance workers, the head of security, and me.”
Noah gripped her sleeve.
“Camila, is somebody stealing books?”
The question almost broke her heart because he still believed books were the worst thing anyone could lose in this building.
She crouched so her voice would reach him without carrying.
“Someone made a bad choice. We are going to make a better one. Stay close to me.”
He nodded.
Christian removed his jacket and placed it around Noah’s shoulders. The gesture was quick, almost impatient, as though kindness embarrassed him.
Then he looked toward the staircase.
“The person downstairs has access or took it from someone who does.”
Camila said the head of security should have been near the east entrance. She had not seen him since Christian arrived.
That absence now felt less like negligence and more like a warning.
Camila led them behind the circulation desk toward a narrow staff corridor. She knew the route by memory.
7 steps to the copier alcove.
A right turn beside the framed photograph of the library’s opening day.
12 ft to the locked records room.
Every object had a place in her mind, even when she could not see it.
Christian followed without questioning her directions. His men moved behind them, careful and silent.
At the records room, Camila used her key. The door opened with a soft click.
She guided Noah inside and pointed toward a low cabinet beneath the interior window.
“Stay here. Do not open the door unless you hear my voice.”
Noah looked past her at Christian.
“Are you going with her?”
Christian answered before Camila could.
“Yes.”
Noah seemed satisfied by that.
Camila was not.
She stepped back into the corridor and closed the door.
“You should stay with him,” she told Christian. “Your people can check the basement.”
“My people do not know this building.”
“Neither do you.”
“That is why I am following you.”
There was no arrogance in the statement, only certainty.
Camila disliked how reassuring it sounded.
The staff stairwell waited at the end of the corridor. When she opened the door, damp air rose from below, carrying the smell of stone, dust, and old paper.
The basement archive had once connected to a municipal records tunnel beneath 42nd Street, but the passage had been sealed after a flood decades ago.
At least, that was what every employee had been told.
Camila descended slowly, keeping the flashlight angled toward the steps. Christian stayed close enough that she could hear the quiet movement of his shoes behind her.
“Why did you ask for the Hayes collection?” she whispered.
“This is not the time.”
“Someone disabled my building and stole a book connected to my dead mother. I think the time has arrived.”
Silence stretched between them for 3 steps.
“A man contacted me yesterday,” Christian said. “He claimed the book contained evidence my father hid before he died.”
Camila stopped.
Christian nearly walked into her.
She turned, lifting the beam just enough to see his expression.
“Who contacted you?”
“He never gave a name.”
“And you came anyway?”
“He knew something no stranger should know.”
“What?”
Christian’s eyes held hers in the dim stairwell.
“Your mother’s final message.”
Camila forgot the cold. Forgot the alarm. Forgot the footsteps that might be waiting below.
Her mother had died in a car accident when Camila was 10.
There had been no final message. Only a hospital call and an empty house that never felt like home again.
“What did she say?”
Christian looked toward the basement door below them, where a thin line of pale light had appeared beneath the frame.
Someone had restored power to 1 room.
Then a calm male voice drifted through the door, familiar enough to make Camila’s skin turn cold.
“She said the Barons would come for page 317,” the voice called. “And when they did, Camila Hayes would finally learn why her mother had to disappear.”
Camila knew the voice.
Daniel Mercer.
Blackwood Library’s head of security.
The man who brought coffee for the morning staff and complained about the Yankees every October. The man she had trusted with closing procedures, master keys, and the code to the basement generator.
Now his voice waited beyond the door like a locked room she had never noticed inside him.
Christian moved 1 step ahead of her, but Camila caught his sleeve.
“No. He wants you to enter first.”
Christian looked down at her hand, then at her face.
She released him immediately.
“You recognize him.”
“Daniel Mercer. He has worked here for 9 years.”
“And tonight?”
May you like
“Tonight he knew my mother’s name.”
She had come downstairs hoping to retrieve a stolen object. Now the object seemed almost incidental. Daniel had watched her grow into this job, attended her promotion dinner, and once carried a bookshelf up five flights when she moved apartments. What could convince a person like that to stand on the wrong side of a locked door? She pressed the question down. Noah was still upstairs. An answer worth having would have to leave him alive to hear it.
