“Yeah,” I answered, pinching the phone to my cheek with my shoulder in order to keep both of my hands rotating in front of the heater vents.
“What the hell just happened?” demanded Lauren. “One minute, I see you creeping along, and the next, both you and your stalker have disappeared.”
“It was Jo Mitchell,” I explained. I put the car in reverse, backing away from Lockwood Inc.’s facility. I would be glad to see it disappear in the rearview mirror. “She’s been tracking the Raptors. We found O’Connor’s car.”
“Oh. Did you find anything else?”
“Nope. No sign of Wes or O’Connor’s body. I did find O’Connor’s cell phone though,” I added. “From the looks of it, he tried to ditch it before BRS could find it, which makes me think he might’ve been storing additional information on it. It’s wrecked. Water damaged. What are the chances you could still access the contents?”
“Slim, if the phone’s been fried. Where are you?”
“I just pulled out of the storage facility,” I said, guiding the vehicle back out onto the access road. “Can we meet up somewhere?”
“Way ahead of you,” said Lauren. “I’m sending you an address. It’s for a bookstore called Floorboard Lit. Park around back, come inside, and ask Ben—he’s usually behind the cafe counter—if they have an autographed first edition of Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre.”
“Lauren, no offense, but I’m not exactly in the market for overpriced existentialist literature,” I said.
“It’s the code phrase, smart-ass. The bookstore has a basement, and Ben is the only person who can let you in.”
“What is with the Raptors’ obsession with underground hideaways?” I grumbled. The burner phone beeped, and I switched on the speakerphone so I could look at the screen. The address for Floorboard Lit had come through, so I programmed it into the navigation.
“It was either this or a portable toilet behind the construction site on campus,” deadpanned Lauren. “Just get here as quickly as possible. We need to keep this investigation moving.”
Floorboard Lit was just far enough off the beaten path that the area of town was a little less taken care of than that of the Waverly campus. Bits of trash decorated the streets, asphalt crumbled beneath the wheels of Lauren’s car, and the cloak of clouds above muted everything to a fixed, ever-present gray. As I pulled into the parking lot, I took in the sights. The bookstore was actually a renovated house with wide, curtained front windows, weathered porch steps, and a welcoming but worn sign in the yard advertising fresh drip coffee. I parked and headed up the stairs, listening to the porch creak beneath my footsteps. A bell jangled overhead as I pushed the door open. Inside was warm and softly lit, and it smelled deliciously of hazelnut coffee and cinnamon. Books were stacked haphazardly on every surface, but their delicately placed price tags indicated some order to the chaotic system. Trusting my nose, I followed the comforting scent down the hallway past the stairs that led to the second floor of the house. In the back room, a small cafe, complete with counter service and tiny two-top tables, had been erected. A few students from Waverly milled about, sipping lattes and bent over textbooks, and behind the counter, a middle-aged man with a shock of auburn hair steamed milk at a cappuccino machine.
I approached the counter and cleared my throat.
“We’re out of the house roast,” said the man without taking his eyes off of the milk. “Be happy to make you just about anything else.”
“I’m fine, thanks. Are you Ben?”
The loud hum of the cappuccino machine ceased, and the man turned to face me. With an expert whirl of his wrist, he tipped the milk into a small cup of espresso and handed the cappuccino off to a patient patron.
“That I am,” he said, wiping his hands on a damp dish towel. “What can I help you with?”
“Er, my friend sent me to ask if you have an autographed first edition of Sartre’s Nausea.”
There was no obvious beat of hesitation before Ben ducked under the countertop to join me on its other side. He flipped the towel over his shoulder and beckoned me toward the adjoining room. “Let’s have a look. I keep the more expensive literature in here. Humidity controls help preserve them.”
We slipped into the other room, and Ben closed the door behind us. It was an intimate space—I stood uncomfortably close to Ben—and the neatly stacked books made the room seem even smaller.
“’Scuse me,” said Ben, and I shifted forward to allow him access to a short chain that hung from a lightbulb on the ceiling, but to my surprise, when Ben gave it a quick yank, it wasn’t the bulb that responded. Instead, the floorboards in the far corner of the room shifted to reveal a small opening and a steep set of stairs.
“I get the name of this place now,” I muttered, peering down.
Ben chuckled warmly. “They used to hide booze down here during Prohibition. Sartre waits for no one. Off you go.”
Cautiously, I stepped below the first level. As I descended, the floorboards above me closed up again, but a series of modest electric candles guided me farther downward. The basement of Floorboard Lit was no less cozy than the main house. Handwoven carpets cushioned the floor, and across from the stairs, a soft leather couch, draped with several fluffy afghans, begged me to take a nap on it. On the opposite side of the room, sitting at a gorgeous antique writing desk, was Lauren.
“Good, you found it okay,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me as I padded across the basement toward her. She was working at her personal laptop, the screen of which was filled with rows upon rows of computer code.
“Yeah.” I leaned over the desk, but I had no hope of making sense
