Hidden Hero: His Time to Shine novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: No Signature

Caleb refuses in front of the annex staff, loses his badge, and watches Lyle take Morris's logbook in the parking lot.

I held the pen over the line for a long time.

Nobody in the room breathed.

The one analyst Lyle had left us sat three desks over with his headphones around his neck, pretending to read.

Ellen Malone watched my hand.

"Morris would want you safe," she said.

"Morris would want me to finish."

"You can finish. Quietly. That is the whole point of you."

I looked at the page again.

It said my work would be credited to the Lantern Line's public leadership.

It said I would take no action to correct it.

Public leadership meant Brant.

"He made a joke about my bus fare," I said.

"I know."

"Fifty people laughed."

"I know, Caleb."

"Morris is lying in a box and that man used his funeral as an advertisement."

I put the pen down.

"No," I said.

"If you don't sign, you lose access to every system in this building."

"Then I lose it."

"Your pay stops."

"Then it stops."

"You are the only person living who can run the key, Caleb."

"Then you'd better find a reason for me to do it that isn't an order."

Ellen stood up, and she was shorter than me by a head, and she did not look any smaller.

"Hand me your badge," she said.

I unclipped it from my pocket.

It was a gray plastic rectangle with a photo of a younger man and the words RECORDS CLERK GS-5.

She took it and snapped it in half over Morris's desk.

The pieces hit the keyboard.

"Security will walk you out," she said. "I am sorry. I cannot protect what I cannot control."

"Morris never controlled me either."

"He asked."

I stopped.

"He asked," she said again. "That was the difference."

Two guards came in through the steel door.

I recognized one of them from the chapel.

He had put his hands on me four hours ago and he would not meet my eyes now.

"Wait," Jo said.

She walked to Morris's desk and picked up a battered green notebook from beside the lamp.

"This is my grandfather's personal logbook. It's not classified, it's a diary."

Ellen looked at it and then at me.

"Take it," she said. "Then go."

I held the notebook against my chest.

The cover was soft from years of his hands.

The guards walked us up two flights, through the dead rooms of boxed paper, and out through the loading dock into the night.

The lot was nearly empty, two cars under one orange lamp.

One of them was a black SUV with its engine running.

Lyle Fitzpatrick was leaning against the door with his arms folded.

"Mr. Benton," he said pleasantly. "Finally. I was starting to think you'd gone home."

"Get out of my way."

"You've had a rough day."

"You've had a better one."

He smiled.

"I heard Ellen revoked you. That's a pity. It's so hard to find work after a termination for cause."

"I wasn't terminated for cause."

"You will have been, by Monday."

Jo stepped up beside me.

"You're the man who cut his staff to three," she said.

"And you're the nurse who wasn't in the room when he collapsed."

Lyle looked her up and down.

"Grief is such a heavy thing. It makes people say reckless words."

"It was fifty hours."

"It was a very dedicated old man."

I did not know I was moving until I was close enough to smell his cologne.

"Careful," Lyle said softly. "The cameras on this lot are mine."

I stopped.

Behind him the loading dock had two cameras, and I knew he was telling the truth.

His eyes dropped to the notebook in my hands.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

"Morris's logbook," he said. "May I?"

"No."

He nodded to the driver, a big man in the front seat, who got out.

Before I could turn, the driver had taken the book out of my grip with one hand and held my wrist with the other.

It took three seconds.

I had never been in a fight in my life.

"Evidence," Lyle said, as the driver handed him the notebook. "Government property. You'll get a receipt."

"It's a personal diary!" Jo shouted.

"In a government building." Lyle paged through it, his eyes moving quickly. "Interesting. Lots of arithmetic."

He tucked it inside his jacket.

"You know the funny part?" he said. "You think you were a hero in there. You were a file clerk who got fired for stealing."

"I'll get it back."

"With what? Your good looks?"

He got into the SUV, and the driver followed, and the tires spat gravel across my shoes.

Jo let out a long breath.

Then she lifted her hand and held up her phone.

The red recording dot was still lit.

"I got his face, his voice and his plate," she said. "He said 'evidence' on camera."

I stared at her.

"I told you," she said. "I'm not scared of cameras."

We stood there, two people with a cracked phone and a broken badge, in the orange light.

Then the second phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out.

There was one new message, with a date stamp of seven days ago.

SENT BY: W. CUNNINGHAM.

Scheduled, to deliver tonight.

"Caleb," it said. "If you're reading this, I am tired and you are angry. Go to my house. Third drawer."

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