I rushed back inside, slamming the office door behind me. Beneath O’Connor’s desk, I punched in the random six-digit number on the safe’s code pad, holding my breath as I hit the Enter key.
The code pad turned green.
I pulled open the door, and my jaw dropped. It turned out that O’Connor’s text message had been slightly deceiving. “Sevral docs” didn’t even begin to cover the contents of the safe. It was overflowing with papers and folders, jammed in so haphazardly that most of them were crumpled and damaged. I extracted a few from the top and shuffled through them. From what I could tell, they were mostly old newspaper articles, student files that O’Connor technically shouldn’t have had access to, and a few handwritten letters that I didn’t even bother to glance at. All in all, it looked like a bunch of trash.
With increasing agitation, I rummaged through the rest of the safe. It was pages upon pages of the same crap. I was two seconds away from slamming the safe shut when my fingers found the sharp corner of something other than paper. I dug the object out of the rubble and sat back on my heels. It was a small wooden box, decorated with elaborate carvings. Near the fissure, where the top part of the box met the bottom, was what I could only describe as some sort of puzzle. The pieces of it spun individually like the code for a padlock, except this one was twelve spaces long and had letters instead of numbers. I fiddled with it for a minute, spinning each space while holding the box to my ear, as though I might be able to hear when the correct letter clicked into place. No such luck.
“O’Connor, you prat,” I scolded, shoving the puzzle box back into the safe. I slammed the door shut and punched in the same code to lock it. The pad blinked at me again, and I pushed myself up from the floor of O’Connor’s office. I’d wasted enough time. If O’Connor really wasn’t messing with me and actually needed me to collect the junk from inside the safe, I was going to need clearer instructions. I vowed to give my advisor a piece of my mind. I didn’t care what kind of nighttime jaunt he had gone on or what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into. It was disrespectful and rude to keep your best student—debatable as that was—and only teaching assistant waiting.
Now I was late for lunch with Wes, and even worse, I still had no idea what the hell to write my thesis on.
Thankfully, the local police station was only a few blocks away from Waverly. I headed in that direction, still mulling over O’Connor’s messages. The cold air helped to clear out the lingering aggravation of that morning’s events, and I listened to O’Connor’s voicemail message again, this time worried that I might’ve judged him a tad too early. From the sound of it, O’Connor might’ve been involved in a car accident. The time stamp on the text message was later than that of the voicemail, so I at least knew that he’d survived whatever incident had cut his voicemail short. When I called O’Connor’s cell phone, a prerecorded message told me that the number could no longer be reached. I resolved to ask Wes to check if any reports of car accidents had come into the station last night.
I stopped by our favorite deli, Stefano’s, to pick up sandwiches for me and Wes. It was owned locally by a loud Italian man—Stefano Junior, of course—and his wife, who were somehow always in the middle of an argument every single time I walked in. As Stefano sliced prosciutto for Wes’s sandwich, his wife berated him for making a mess of the stockroom. I suppressed a giggle as Stefano hollered back. It took a good minute for the couple to wrap up our meals and ring me up, but Stefano’s Deli had the best cold cuts in town, and it was totally worth it. I left with our lunch in a paper bag and a smile on my face.
As I approached the station, the front door swung open and Officer Wilson, one of Wes’s bosses, stepped out.
“Hey, there, Nicole,” he said gruffly, holding the door open for me.
I stepped across the threshold, nodding my thanks, and wiped my damp boots off on the mat inside. “Hi, Daryl. How are you?”
“Cold,” he huffed, zipping up his jacket. “You got lunch plans with Wes?”
“Sure do. Is he around?”
“He’s desking today,” Officer Wilson said. He pulled on a pair of black gloves, eyeing the Stefano’s bag. “Wish my wife would bring me lunch. Lucky guy to have such a nice girl like you.”
I grinned. “He sure is.”
Wilson tipped his hat in farewell. “See you later, Nicole. Enjoy your lunch.”
“Thanks.”
He let the door close, and the warmth of the station fully engulfed me. I shook off my coat and hung it on the rack near the door, waved hello to some of the other officers, and set off toward Wes’s desk. He was bent over the keyboard of his computer, typing up some kind of report. I snuck up behind him and covered his eyes with my hands.
“Hi, Nic,” he said without missing a beat. He spun around in his chair. “Ooh, Stefano’s.”
“Daryl says you’re a lucky guy, by the way, for having such a splendid girlfriend,” I boasted, flipping my hair over my shoulder as I sat down on his desk.
Wes ripped open the Stefano’s bag and reached in for his sandwich. “I find it odd that you’re on a first name basis with my boss. Listen, did you see O’Connor today?”
I shook my head, taking my own sandwich from Wes. “He didn’t show.”
Wes unwrapped his sub and bit off the end of the Italian roll. “His wife called this morning and filed a missing persons report.”
I
