Page 128 of Rules to Love By

“What’s odd?” Marcus stared at the deadbolt keyhole too, but saw nothing odd about it, apart from the steel door’s paint being scratched and the door itself dented in places near the latches.

“The front and back doors showed no signs of damage from being forced.”

“Why would they? Johnathan had a key.”

“But he didn’t have a key to this door?” Eli asked.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t. I did, and he took my keys.”

“But you can see there.” The locksmith pointed to the deadbolt lock. “There’s a key broken off in the lock.”

Marcus leaned closer to peer into the hole. “Huh.” He straightened, ran his fingers over the lock, and felt the jagged edge of broken metal. There was a soft click, a metallic rattle, and the stub of the key wiggled out and fell to the floor, bouncing off the toe of his boot to the tiles.

“Well, I’ll be…” the old man whispered. “She does like you, son, doesn’t she?”

The door swung slowly inward.

“Shall I change this lock?” the man asked.

“I don’t think you have to,” Marcus told him, even as he peered up into the darkness.

“But if Johnathan has a key,” Eli protested.

“He doesn’t anymore.” Tris picked up the bit that had fallen from the lock. “Marc’s diner saw to that.”

“Come on.” It was Marcus’s turn to prompt the others this time. Because if Johnathan hadn’t been able to get past the steel door at the bottom of the stairs, then maybe the office and the apartment above hadn’t been ransacked like the diner itself. Maybe some of his life remained intact.

Iris had set up the restaurant’s office in the first available room at the top of the stairs. It was smaller than the front room, which she’d used to store a few things like sign boards and extra chairs, but too large to be a bedroom. It must have once been a dining room, since it was at the front of the building, but had a second door that opened into an unused kitchen.

The door to her office was ajar, and daylight streamed out into the hallway through the opening.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he whispered to himself.

“Of course it is.” Tris patted his arm and followed him down the hall.

Iris’s desk was a huge, ornately decorated situation covered in the lifetime’s work of some carving master with a love for birds, squirrels and acorns. Oak leaves scattered along the edge of the top, and he recognized the likeness to the ones he’d carved for Kreed.

“I forgot about these,” he said as he ran a hand over the shallow relief.

“Well, you didn’t. Not completely, because now Kreed has them too, on his handrail,” Tris pointed out, his fingers following the path Marcus’s had.

A lamp clicked on, and Marcus started.

“The hell?” Tris muttered.

“Iris put everything on timers,” Marcus remembered aloud. “Must still be hooked up.”

He rounded the desk but then stopped, staring at the well-loved red leather of Iris’s office chair.

Tris had followed, and he squinted at the heavy brass locks on each drawer. He tugged at the big filing drawer on the bottom.

The overhead light flickered, and Marcus narrowed his eyes at it.

“What is that about?” Tris asked, following his gaze.

“No idea.”

Tris tried the other file drawer.

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