The Warlord Returns novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Safe

I didn't wake Jack.

I told myself it was because he'd had no real sleep in days.

The truth was I wanted this one for myself.

I pulled his shirt over my head, took the hall stairs barefoot, and kept to the wall where the boards didn't creak.

The study door was open a crack.

Light flickered inside.

I put my eye to the gap.

Margaret stood at an old iron fireplace with her back to me.

She was feeding paper into the flames, sheet by sheet, from a leather folder.

I could see columns of numbers and blue ink.

The same ink as Carrie's photographs.

Behind her, on the far wall, a painting of a harbor at sunrise hung open on a hinge.

Behind it was a steel safe.

The door of the safe stood wide.

She'd opened it herself.

She was destroying the pages.

I had perhaps a minute.

My heart was going so loudly I thought she must hear it.

Margaret turned to fetch more from the safe, her face pinched and gray in the firelight.

I ducked.

She went to the safe and pulled out a thick green book with a cracked spine.

I knew it from the photographs.

The ledger.

She stood with it in both hands, looking down at it.

Then she carried it to the desk and set it beside the fire, and bent to the folder for another handful of sheets.

I didn't plan anything.

I walked in.

"Don't burn that one," I said.

She spun around.

For one frozen second, she looked old and frightened.

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