They Gave My Sister the Hotels, So I Stayed to Take Them Back novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Brass Key

The service stairs came out by the linen store, and I heard the hand truck before I saw it.

Wheels on concrete, squeaking under weight.

Dorinda stood flat against the wall by the laundry chute, her phone still in her hand.

She pointed down the corridor with her chin.

The records room door stood open.

The new padlock hung from the hasp in two pieces, the shackle cut clean through.

A pair of bolt cutters leaned against the wall beside it.

Light spilled out across the floor.

Noah came down the stairs behind me, and I put my hand back to stop him.

The night supervisor backed out of the doorway, pulling a hand truck stacked with four cardboard file boxes.

He turned and saw the three of us.

He stopped so fast the top box slid and he had to catch it with his chest.

"Those aren't from in there," I said. "That room's been empty for weeks. You told me so yourself."

He didn't answer.

I walked up and lifted the lid off the top box.

The originals.

Not copies on a screen. The paper Damon had signed with his own pen, on its way to be crushed.

"Where were you taking them?" I asked.

"The compactor." His voice cracked. "Trash goes out at five."

"Whose idea was the bolt cutters?"

He looked at the cut padlock like it might bite him.

"Mr. Halberd didn't want his key near the room tonight," he said. "He said if anyone asked, you'd cut it. You're the one with a key around your neck."

Noah made a low sound behind me that wasn't a word.

"He's been telling everyone you're unstable," the supervisor said. "A broken lock fits. That's what he said. It fits."

"And you were going to let it fit."

He swallowed.

He was maybe twenty-six, in a blazer that had been taken in at the shoulders by somebody who loved him.

"My mother works in laundry," he said. "Nights. She's one of your eleven statements."

"I know whose statements they are," Dorinda said quietly. "I collected them."

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