Chapter 7 - THE ARCHIVE BEHIND THE LIBRARY
Henderson disappeared between the storage sheds and the river fog swallowed him whole.
Roman started after him, then stopped when two men stepped out of the SUV.
Preston’s private security.
Not police.
Not yet.
Lydia quietly photographed them before they recognized her.
Roman’s voice dropped to ice.
“We’re leaving.”
Back at Elena’s townhouse, Henderson’s key card sat in the center of the table like a dare.
“He ran,” Iris said.
“He panicked,” Elena corrected.
Roman removed his coat.
“Preston knows Henderson talked. That makes him either more useful or already dead weight.”
Iris stared at the card.
“You still think we shouldn’t go?”
Roman looked at her.
“I think if we do, you don’t move unless I say move.”
That might have sounded controlling from another man. From Roman it sounded like a man already calculating how badly he would blame himself if she got hurt.
At 11:18 p.m., under a rain that turned the estate lights hazy and ghostlike, Iris entered Heartwell Manor through the service entrance wearing a borrowed housekeeping coat. Roman remained outside with Lydia and a security specialist in an unmarked van, listening through an earpiece hidden beneath Iris’s hair.
“Left hallway,” Roman murmured. “No cameras active in the staff passage.”
That alone said enough.
The key card opened the library corridor. Behind a carved panel stood a narrow archive room lined with cabinets, ledgers, and fireproof drawers.
Iris moved quickly.
“Look for Arthur Cross or stewardship schedules,” Lydia whispered through the earpiece.
She found catering invoices, donor lists, renovation plans, event contracts.
Then a locked drawer labeled FOUNDATION RESTRICTED.
The key card did nothing.
“Can you force it?” Iris whispered.
Before Roman answered, footsteps sounded beyond the library doors.
Male voices.
Preston and Vanessa.
Iris shut off her flashlight and crouched behind a shelving unit.
The doors opened.
“I told you to move the donor ledger first,” Vanessa hissed.
“And I told you the girl wouldn’t get far,” Preston answered.
Their voices came closer.
Iris barely breathed.
Then Preston unlocked the drawer himself.
She watched through a narrow gap as he removed a stack of files and one smaller sealed packet.
Vanessa touched his arm.
“What if Roman already has enough?”
“He doesn’t,” Preston said. “If he had Arthur’s conditional schedule, he’d be in court with it tomorrow.”
So that was the missing weapon.
Vanessa’s voice dropped. “And Henderson?”
“Cowards always choose the wrong side too late.”
Iris’s hand tightened against the floorboards.
Preston slid the packet into a leather folio.
Then, as suddenly as they had come, the pair left the room.
Roman’s voice returned in her ear.
“Did you see where he put it?”
“Yes.”
“Then get out.”
Iris stood—and her shoulder brushed a metal shelf.
A ledger fell.
The crash rang through the archive.
Silence.
Then Preston’s voice from the hall:
May you like
“Someone’s in there.”
The library doors swung back open.
