Page 98 of Chasing Infinity

“Parks,” I press on. “Just give it a chance. Givemea chance.”

“Look, Noah, I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I can’t,” she pleads with me. “I can’t. Not right now.”

My shoulders drop with a heavy exhale. Cutting my losses, I realize that she’s not at all ready for what I want to say to her. Honestly, I want to lay it all out and put everything to rest right here and now. I want to tell her how I’m really feeling and what her slip-up in the lab meant to me. But she’s not ready.

So I take a different approach, improvising on the spot with something I manage to come up with right then. The plan formulates in my head, and I go for it before I can talk myself out of it.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” I ask her.

She blinks at the abrupt change in subject and stares at me as if I’ve grown two heads for a moment, but she shakes her head. “No, I’m not.”

“You don’t have plans with Monty?”

Parks gives me an exasperated look as if she can’t believe I’m asking that right now, given the subject matter of our last conversation. “No.”

“Good. You know what tomorrow is?”

Addison looks wholly unamused. “Of course. Tomorrow is your birthday.”

“And I’m going to cash in on my birthday present. I’ll swing by to pick you up tomorrow at six-fifteen. Don’t worry, I’ll bring coffee, but you might want to dress warmly.”

Finally, I have her full attention. Her hazel eyes peer at me, intrigue playing behind those golden flares. “Six-fifteen? On a Saturday morning?”

“Yep,” I say, popping the end of the word. “You in or no, Parks?”

She narrows her eyes and thinks about it for a moment before giving in. “Sure, why not. I’m in.”

I grin at her and dip my chin. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

We say our goodbyes after I walk her back to her table. Grace watches us with suspicious eyes, and I’m sure she will grill Addison about our conversation. I leave to hit the gym and spend the rest of the evening planning everything I will need for tomorrow morning.

When I get home, thankfully, the house is empty. My parents must be at a meeting or out to dinner. Even though I’m alone, I tread with caution as I go upstairs and head straight for the third door on the left—my father’s office. I’m not usually allowed in here when my father is home, so I can only imagine the shit I’d be in if he found me snooping around while he was gone. I decide to make this quick and shuffle in, closing the door behind me.

I make my way over to the massive oak executive desk. The workspace is cluttered with an assortment of paperwork and scribbled notes. It’s as if he was in the middle of working on something and got called away before he had a chance to finish his work. My feet carry me over to the big chair sitting behind the desk. I gingerly sit down, taking a moment to appreciate what it would feel like to be Declan McCoy sitting behind this regal throne.

Reaching for the pencil drawer under the main workspace of the desk, I slide it open and rummage through the sticky notes and random shit he has in there. When I don’t find it there, I open up the file drawers on the right side. I want to fist pump when I see exactly what I was searching for—the spare key to the courthouse sitting in an unsealed envelope. I pull it out and stick the key in my pocket, leaving the envelope just in case my dad looks in his drawer when he gets home. I don’t suspect he’ll need the key until I’m done with it, so I should be safe.

I close the drawers, ensuring everything is where I found it, and then stand up from his chair. Before leaving the study, something on top of the desk catches my eye. It’s a thick faux-leather bound book with gold detailing across the cover and the spine. I’m not sure why I’m so intrigued by it, but it looks much more important than the rest of the paperwork scattered across the desk. I reach for the book, open the gold-tooled pages to the middle and scan what looks to be a ledger.

My father’s handwriting is scribbled across each page in a type of ledger. My eyes zero in on some itemized sections, and I frown. Each line starts with one letter, and then on the other side of the page is the dollar amount that the item went for. Standard ledger stuff, but most concerning are a few high priced item my father has written down.

I’m talking thousands upon thousands for each item.

Flipping through the pages, I find the same pattern. Item “BH026” went for $20,000, while lower on the page, item “LG021” went for $50,000.

A sick feeling settles in my stomach. Something about what I’m seeing looks and feels all wrong, but I can’t decipher what my father’s ledger means. I flip through a few more pages, reading all I can but fully aware that my father could come home any minute. There are repeat items, all just identified with different combinations of letters and numbers. None of the letters are in any type of order or spell a secret word or anything. The earliest line items date back to before my father was elected mayor. Though the charges have seemed to become more frequent since then. All ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

My head is spinning as I finally slam the ledger book closed. Something is really not right about this, but I don’t have enough information to determine what it is. I shake my head and walk out of his office, deciding that whatever it is, it isn’t worth getting busted by my father for snooping.

My mind keeps spinning over the matter throughout the night, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. I lay in bed, flat on my back with my eyes open, trying to figure out what is bothering me about the whole thing. When morning finally comes, I’m nowhere closer to being able to say precisely what I saw in that ledger. Knowing I need to go get Parks soon, I roll out of bed, shower, and pull on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve thermal shirt. I quietly go down to the kitchen, brew two thermoses of coffee, and grab two fluffy blankets off of the basket in the living room. Making sure I have the spare key to the courthouse, I sneak out of the house and towards my truck and load it up before leaving the house.

I drive silently towards Parks’ house, still worrying over those numbers. I park the truck and send her a quick text to let her know I’m here. When I see her at her front door, I smile, all thoughts of the ledger disappearing at my happiness to see her.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I say when she opens the door to my truck and climbs into the cab. She slams the door and gives me an unimpressed look.

“Icannotbelieve you talked me into getting up this early. The sun isn’t even up yet!”

“Here,” I hand over a full mug of coffee towards her, amusement lacing my tone. “I think you need this.”

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