Page 73 of Hidden Ascent

“Do you think Carl’s guy set us up?”

“No. Carl wouldn’t have arranged this unless he knew the man could be trusted. He wouldn’t put me in that position.”

“Maybe Sharpe made it look this way on purpose.”

“What would that accomplish?”

“If he has documents he wants to hide, this doesn’t look like a place to hide it. Maybe that’s the cover.”

“Maybe.” Jay pulled open the top drawer of a filing cabinet and removed a pile of papers, flipping through them before replacing them. “Inventory.”

“Of what?”

“Nothing we’re looking for.” He tried the next drawer.

“I’m not having better luck at the desk,” Isla said as she riffled through a drawer. She lifted a ticket stub. “Opera. Madama Butterfly. I wonder if he liked it.”

“The bigger question is, why leave a ticket stub in this room?”

“I don’t know, but the only other thing I can find is a notebook.”

“You want to try the old pencil shading trick? See if something was written on the page above?”

“There are no indents. It looks like it’s never been used.”

“It would have been nice if he left us a list of the people he works with.” Jay was on to the next filing cabinet.

“Yeah. It’s very inconsiderate that he hasn’t written anything down to lead us to the evidence we need to convict him.” Isla ran her hand underneath the desk and along the edges, looking for a catch or anything to suggest a hidden compartment, but it was clean. “There’s nothing here.”

“I’ve come up empty-handed too. I’m not sure what he uses this room for, but it’s definitely not storing anything important as far as I can tell.”

“Maybe he keeps it in his other office after all.”

“I couldn’t see him doing that. He’d want to keep it somewhere unconnected to his official business.”

“If it’s not in here, it could be anywhere in this building.”

“I don’t know.” Jay looked around the room. “Now that we’re here, I wonder if we should have bothered coming.”

“I thought we both agreed it was a good lead?”

“It was, but standing here, it suddenly dawned on me that it’s unlikely Sharpe would leave anything valuable in the protection of the Red Wolves.”

“Why not?”

“These guys aren’t his trusted companions. He uses them to get what he wants, not to hide anything important.”

Isla went to the other side of the room and lifted a painting off the wall. “Our friend at the door said he never comes in here because he’s not important enough. Before we give up, we should at least give this place a thorough look.”

She had no luck with the first painting, so she went to the only other piece of art in the room, lifting it off the wall.

“Nope. Nothing.” She examined the floor and stamped her foot. “Concrete. And no rugs to hide anything. I think we’re out of luck for this room, but this is a big building—” She turned to find Jay was pointing a gun at her. “What are you doing?”

Jay’s eyes diverted to the floor, and he frowned.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The back of Isla’s neck prickled. “For what?”

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