Chapter Eleven #3
She repositioned the volume and lowered the magnifier over the spine.
The longer she looked, the less accidental the damage appeared.
Decades of shelf abrasion crossed the boards, then stopped where the repaired spine interrupted it.
Someone had distressed the newer cloth to mimic age, but not quite correctly.
Corwin had known she would see it.
Not immediately.
Eventually.
“He didn't expect me to notice something hidden from the outside,” she said.
Taddeo leaned closer. “What?”
“He expected me to treat the book. That's different.” Isolde looked at the worn binding beneath her hands.
“If somebody wanted to pass me a secret and hoped I happened to find it, this would be a stupid way to do it.
But Corwin knew I'd eventually dismantle a bad repair because that's what the treatment requires.”
“He trusted you to open it.”
The words landed badly.
“He used me to open it.”
Taddeo's expression changed slightly. “Both can be true.”
Isolde looked up.
She hadn't expected that from him.
“No,” she said after a moment. “Apparently they can.”
The work took time.
Taddeo handled it better than she expected.
He took two quiet calls near the far wall, returned when she needed another pair of eyes, and otherwise kept enough distance that Isolde could settle into the physical rhythm that had defined her professional life long before any Bellandi knew her name.
She softened the modern adhesive in controlled sections, lifted only where the material released cleanly, and worked a thin tool beneath the false spine lining millimeter by millimeter.
Test.
Wait.
Lift.
Reassess.
There were few problems in the world improved by impatience.
Nearly forty minutes later, she stopped.
Taddeo looked up from his phone. “What?”
“The center is wrong.”
He came to the table.
Isolde adjusted the light. Beneath the repair cloth lay a secondary lining superficially similar to conservation tissue, but it was too thick through the middle and carried a rectangular stiffness that served no structural purpose.
Her pulse accelerated.
“There is something beneath it.”
Taddeo's attention locked onto the spine. “Can you get it out?”
“Yes, but if you hover any closer, I'm charging you conservation rates.”
“I thought this was museum work.”
“This is kidnapping-related overtime.”
His mouth almost moved.
“Back up.”
He did.
Isolde worked along the edge of the false lining until a thin pocket began separating from the original material below. Whoever had constructed it understood enough about book repair to survive ordinary handling, but they had not designed it to survive treatment.
That was the difference Corwin had counted on.
She lifted the final edge.
Something black appeared beneath it.
Taddeo moved instinctively.
Isolde raised one gloved hand without looking at him. “Don't.”
“I didn't touch it.”
“Your entire body did.”
He stopped.
Using fine tweezers, she opened the narrow pocket.
Inside lay a small black storage device wrapped in clear inert film.
For several seconds the room seemed to contract around it.
Isolde removed the device carefully and laid it on clean blotting paper.
Four numbers had been written across the wrapping.
0617
She knew the handwriting.
Corwin always angled his sevens slightly too far to the right.
“That's his.”
Taddeo looked at the number. “June seventeenth?”
“Maybe. It could be a date, code, password fragment. I don't know.”
He reached toward the blotter.
Isolde covered the device with her hand.
Taddeo stopped.
“Move your hand.”
“No.”
His expression changed, and Isolde watched authority settle over him so naturally it almost seemed physical. The man who had kissed her in the library was still there somewhere, but this was the version the rest of Crownport probably knew better.
“Taddeo, don't.”
“This isn't part of the book anymore.”
“It was concealed inside a book my brother deliberately gave me.”
“And it may contain Bellandi financial information.”
“It may contain an explanation for why my brother disappeared and why men were waiting outside my workplace.”
His jaw tightened. “Which is exactly why I need to know what's on it before you do.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The same answer with a different noun.” Isolde kept her palm over the device. “Security, Corwin, my phone, the museum. Every time something becomes dangerous, you decide that gives you more authority over the part of it that belongs to me.”
“This isn't about authority.”
“It's always partly about authority with you.”
Taddeo planted his hands against the edge of the worktable without reaching toward her. “If that drive contains names or operations that make you more valuable to someone simply because you know them, I'm considering that before I hand you the information.”
“This isn't curiosity.”
“I didn't say it was.”
“You were about to.”
“No.” His voice lowered. “I'm saying I see it first.”
Isolde stared at him.
Taddeo continued before she could respond. “We decrypt it at Northglass with Orsino and one technical person. If it concerns Corwin, the historical records, this museum, you, or why anyone has been following you, you're present when we review it.”
Her hand remained where it was.
“Present,” she repeated. “Not a summary afterward.”
“Present.”
“You don't decide halfway through that I've heard enough.”
“If it's information about why you're involved, you hear it.”
It was not equality.
It was not freedom.
But it was a concession made before she was forced to extract it, and that made it harder to reject simply because she disliked the structure surrounding it.
Isolde slowly removed her hand.
“You can take it.”
Taddeo reached for the device.
The lights flickered.
Both of them looked up.
The overhead fluorescents dimmed, recovered, then died completely.
Emergency lighting came on a second later, filling the laboratory with low amber.
Taddeo froze with his hand over the blotter.
Everything about him changed.
There was no visible panic, but the warmth left his face and his attention moved through the room with an efficiency that made Isolde's stomach tighten. He picked up the storage device, slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket, and pulled out his phone.
“Marco.”
Static answered before Marco's voice came through. “Power interruption on west service. Backup should've held clean.”
A metallic impact sounded somewhere beyond the lab.
Not loud.
Close enough.
Taddeo looked toward the corridor.
“Interior two, report,” Marco said through the phone.
No one answered.
Taddeo moved toward Isolde.
She stepped back automatically. “What happened?”
“I don't know yet.”
He caught her upper arm and guided her toward the masonry pier between the archival cabinets and the worktable. The grip was firm without becoming painful.
“Taddeo.”
“Behind the wall.”
“Someone's inside?”
“Move first.”
The tone left no room for a useful argument.
Isolde moved.
Taddeo released her as soon as she was positioned behind the heavy table and drew the gun beneath his jacket. She had seen him carry one before. Seeing it in her conservation lab was different.
Her world had no place prepared for the image.
The radio at his belt came alive.
“Movement rear stair,” a man's voice reported. “At least two unknown.”
Marco answered immediately. “Rear exterior, close loading. Luca, vehicle ready. Interior one, status.”
A burst of static followed.
Then another man's voice, strained but audible. “Contact. Collections junction.”
Isolde's heart began beating hard enough to hurt.
Taddeo moved toward the laboratory door without exposing himself to the narrow glass panel beside it. “Marco, lock conservation.”
“Electronic system dropped.”
“Manual.”
“Moving.”
Isolde crouched behind the worktable, surrounded by objects that had belonged to an entirely different category of danger ten minutes earlier. Bone folders. Blotting paper. Brushes. Humidity equipment. Her mug still sitting beside her computer. Linnea's note beneath the amber emergency light.
A gunshot cracked somewhere in the corridor.
Isolde flinched.
Taddeo did not.
His weapon came up in both hands.
The sound echoed through the old masonry and disappeared.
“Two confirmed,” Marco said through the radio. “Possibly three. Rear alarm was bypassed before the power drop.”
Taddeo's voice stayed level. “Not random.”
“No.”
“Front?”
“Clean.”
“They came through service.”
Taddeo looked toward Isolde.
The implication arrived before he said it.
“They knew the route.”
Her mouth went dry.
Only a limited number of people had known exactly when she was coming back to the museum. Taddeo had spent more than a day trying to make the visit invisible, and someone had still known where to enter.
The handle on the laboratory door moved.
Taddeo lifted the gun.
Isolde stopped breathing.
The handle turned slowly, reached the end of its travel, and returned.
A shadow crossed the narrow glass panel.
Taddeo moved backward until his body stood between Isolde and the entrance, every part of his attention fixed on the door.
The handle turned again.
Then a man's voice came through the corridor, muffled enough that Isolde couldn't place it.
“Isolde Dacre?”
Cold spread through her so quickly that for a second she forgot the storage device in Taddeo's pocket, Corwin's handwriting, and every question that had brought them here.
The man outside knew her name.
Taddeo's head shifted by a fraction.
The stranger tested the door once more before speaking again, louder this time.
“We know you're in there, Isolde.”
Taddeo did not look back at her.
He didn't need to.
Whatever Corwin had hidden inside the Harbor Pilot was no longer only an explanation waiting to be decrypted.
Someone else had come to the museum to make sure they never got the chance.