“Uh no,” Freya said, snapping her fingers. “Is that your inbox? It’s 5:01 p.m. Which means you’re officially on vacation.”
“My red-eye’s not for five hours,” I said, sounding peevish. “What update do you have for me on the contract from the Allegheny Museum?”
“I will be sharing all updates in our staff meeting with our working employees,” Freya said.
Sam Byrne walked into the office carrying a plastic bag. “Leave him alone, Frey. He’s a workaholic in recovery, like me.”
“In recovery seems a bit bold for a simple, ten-day vacation to London,” I said. “Where I’ll have full access to my—”
“Email and phone the entire time,” Delilah and Freya droned in unison. “Yeah yeah, we get it,” Delilah said. “We shall be expressly disobeying those orders for the duration of the ten days.”
Sam gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be okay, Abe. The first few days will be a struggle, but once your brain lets go of the stress, you’ll be able to enjoy it, I promise.”
Sam and Freya had just returned from a four-day vacation to Prince Edward Island. Which was one of the reasons why I’d decided to plan this trip. It was true that my last vacation had been taking my mother to Sedona when I was twenty years old.
It was absolutely true that I’d been working long hours, catching up on cases and paperwork after Sam and Freya had infiltrated a secret society of book thieves two months ago. The publicity had led more libraries our way, which we were thrilled about. Still I was tired. Tired in a way that I hadn’t been for a while, exhaustion snapping at my heels, leaving me feeling unhinged.
Of course, deep down I knew where this unhinged feeling sprouted from.
I felt another twinge in my chest and ignored it. I had always wanted to spend real time in London—not for the occasional business trip but for leisure. Pleasure. Culture, literature, history, good whiskey, art—London was filled with the things I wanted to enjoy whenever I had free time. It was the right pick for my “rejuvenation.”
It just wasn’t the entire story.
With a respectful nod to me, Sam sank into the chair next to Freya, his undercover partner. And girlfriend.
When he didn’t think I was looking, Sam tugged on the end of her braid. She literally beamed at him. The team had recently deemed me as “going soft” because I’d allowed the four of them to pair off, romantically. Soft had nothing to do with it—I was merely a professional who recognized the loss of skills and expertise my firm would incur if these four brilliant, skilled, and talented detectives left. I didn’t relish the idea of starting over when I’d worked so damn hard to build this company from the beginning.
“He’s snappy because he’s going to miss us,” Freya said.
“I wouldn’t dare,” I promised. “You have my word.”
Sam smirked and opened his bag. “I’d like you to know that this was not my idea.” Out of the bag he pulled glow sticks and body glitter.
“For raves,” Freya said. “London has the best raves.”
Henry was trying not to laugh, and Delilah was snorting. Sam’s shit-eating grin mirrored Freya’s.
“The things I love the most in this world,” I said, carefully picking up the body glitter, “are being pressed against strangers in the dark while dance music annihilates my ear drums and everyone is using illegal substances.”
“This is your going-away vacation package from your highly competent team of detectives,” Freya said. “Enjoy. I know you think of yourself as the Codex Dad or whatever—”
“I’m nine years older than you, for fuck’s sake.”
“—but bosses need breaks.” Her face, and tone, turned serious. “Especially good bosses, like you. Which, all joking aside, is why I’m so fucking happy you’re doing this.”
I sighed, shifting in my chair. Her sincerity was kind but unnecessary.
“Burnout is real,” Sam added. “You know how affected I was by it two months ago. I think—” He looked around at the team, who were all watching me with very real expressions of tenderness. “I think we were all relieved when you told us you’d booked this trip.”
Sam had also been my student at Quantico, and we’d worked together in the FBI’s Art Theft unit before I left. His father was the Deputy Director of the FBI, and Sam had been raised in his father’s stern image.
After a work scandal, Sam had consulted for Codex on The Empty House case—and had ended up resigning from the FBI and becoming a private detective in the process.
Freya had a lot to do with that life-changing decision. Secretly, I’d been pleased. Freya and Sam had a notorious rivalry as trainees, though beneath their sniping I’d sensed a working partnership that was special. Deep down, I’d also suspected they were in love. I’d certainly never shared that suspicion.
Soft.
“You know we care about you Abe,” Delilah said. “We care a lot, actually.”
Their earnestness and carefree kindness towards me was too much to handle—a beautifully wrapped gift I both didn’t deserve and was terrified to open.
“Yes well…” I cleared my throat. “This is good then. I will pack these shirts and Wed to the Pirate Captain.”
Freya and Delilah did a little cheer.
“Now shoo,” I said, waving my hand. “Go work on something that will make us a lot of money.” I stared at my laptop as they begrudgingly headed out into our large workspace. The Codex offices were located in an historic Philadelphia carriage house. The first floor was a used bookstore, and we occupied the second.
Sam hung back with a file folder in his hand.
“Updates?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, per your request,” he said. His natural tendency toward deference revealed the FBI protocol still ingrained in him. I understood it—even three years after leaving the Bureau, it was hard for me to shake over a decade of hierarchy and power struggles.
“I spoke to my Bureau contact yesterday,” Sam said, “and he informed me that resources for continuing to search for Bernard are disappearing, at least in the US. Enthusiasm is flagging.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said.
He gave a shrug. “Interpol agents have been tracking Bernard’s credit card being used in Prague and Germany, so they’ve sent a team there to do surveillance. The teams in London and Oxford have come up empty-handed. They’ve started to pull in his colleagues for questioning, but they won’t be able to maintain secrecy much longer.”
Bernard Allerton had been on the run—and evading the authorities—for eleven months now. Which seemed insignificant to me. I’d suspected the famous, and beloved, librarian was not who he seemed for ten years. Thus far the strategy, from what we could piece together, was for the Bureau and Interpol to keep his name from the papers, an attempt to lull him into a false sense of security that would lead to him eventually coming out of hiding. And into a waiting pair of handcuffs. To the rest of the world, Bernard Allerton was simply on a mysterious vacation. A lie that seemed to be holding, for now.
During my long career working in white-collar crime, the most obvious truth I’d learned was that respect and wealth could conceal a bevy of wrongdoing. The wealthy could survive the scrutiny of the law using money as a shield and trust as social currency.