Chapter Thirty-Six
Dead to the world was a pretty accurate description for how Theo slept. Slipping from beneath his lifeless body was far easier than Verity expected.
Jesse was out. The apartment silent. Her path clear.
Not half an hour later and she scrubbed her sweaty hands on her trousers as the towering City Hall came into view.
Every step closer was a prayer that Cora’s cousin, who worked there as a cleaner, was right about the security movements.
They should be on the other side of the building, letting her slip through unnoticed.
It looked deserted, as she’d expect it to be given the hour.
Harsh sunlight shone from the windows, reflecting off the dark glass, hiding the rooms within.
It was past midday, and Verity realised that although she’d come here every other day for weeks, she had never seen the colour of the stones in daylight.
They were brighter than she expected, a sort of sandy grey. By moonlight, everything looked paler.
As she’d been told to expect, the service entrance at the back of the building stood open.
With a couple of people milling around inside, she pretended to read messages on her phone as she walked past them at speed, as if in a hurry.
She’d learned a long time ago, poking around places she shouldn’t, that if you acted like you belonged, people tended to believe you.
And if you acted like you were in a rush, they believed you even more.
So, she rushed in as though she was already late, which, given it was ten past the hour, wasn’t hard to sell.
She walked straight through the entrance, straight to the stairs, and began to climb.
Creeping into the corridor she listened hard. It was still incredibly quiet, staff thinned with each floor she passed until she found nobody on Theo’s floor.
Muscle memory took her to the office, past Stella’s sticky-note-covered desk, to the door bearing the little brass plaque.
Lord Mayor Theodor Chapel. She pulled Theo’s keys from her pocket, found the one that looked most old fashioned, most fitting for the handle, and slid it into the lock. It fit. It turned. She was in.
Too easy, she thought. It all felt too easy.
Closing the door behind her, she started searching the office.
Immaculate, as always, everything in this place was.
Everything except the briefcase. He always left it behind the desk, tucked just out of sight.
She remembered finding it the first time she’d sat at his desk, when he’d called her Madam Mayor.
She tried not to think about that, or about the last time she’d seen this desk, bent over it, face pressed to the wood and...
There wasn’t time for that now. The only thing she could think about was the fact that the fucking briefcase wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
She searched under the desk, behind the door, by the bookcases. It wasn’t here. She’d snuck out in the middle of the day, to find a briefcase that someone had got to first. The thought rolled like a rock to her stomach. Somebody else had the briefcase, and she had nothing.
She pulled out the burner phone. No way was she giving up after sneaking out and breaking in.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Theo would find out one way or another.
She found Stella’s name and called. It went to voicemail.
She hung up and called again, phone pressed to her ear, willing her hands not to shake.
Right before it cut to voicemail a second time, a groggy voice answered. “What do you want? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Stella,” Verity said, “where’s Theo’s briefcase?”
“What on earth do you want with Theo’s briefcase? Why can’t this wait until dusk? It’s one in the afternoon.”
“I know,” Verity said, opening the office door slightly to check the corridor. “I know, but I’m in his office.”
“You’re what?” A shuffle of sheets. “What about the curfew? It’s a restricted building. What the fuck are you doing?”
“Look, Stella, just tell me where his briefcase is.”
“Why?”
“Stella!” Verity demanded, trying to keep her voice down but starting to lose her patience.
“Fuck me! Harris took it. He came by right after we heard Theo had been attacked, asking about... I don’t even know what he was asking about. He stormed into Theo’s office and came out with the briefcase. Said it was for safekeeping.”
“Thanks,” Verity muttered, and hung up. She gave Stella all of ten seconds before she was calling “BOSSMAN.”
The corridor stood silent as she crept out of the office, straining her ears to listen. Definitely alone.
Verity made her way to the Director of the Vital Exchange’s office and tried Theo’s key in the lock.
He was the Lord Mayor, after all, shouldn’t his key open everything?
It didn’t, not the first one, at least. She tried another on the ring, and another, and by some miracle the third one worked. The door opened, and she slid inside.
She checked the time. Security would be coming by in five minutes. She needed to find the briefcase and get out.
The phone in her pocket started to buzz and Verity ignored it. Stella was such a snitch. It was Theo, she just knew it and if she answered he’d tell her to leave, and she wasn’t giving up now.
The office was the smaller brother to Theo’s, the only real difference other than the size, was a door between the tall bookcases.
Still no briefcase. Not behind the door or under the desk.
Feeling desperate she tried the same key that opened the office in the other door.
It opened, letting Verity into a long storage cupboard.
She could have wept with relief when she saw a familiar briefcase sat atop a row of filing cabinets.
She grabbed it, holding it tight to her chest like a lost child found.
She should have left then - job done, package secured - but the nosy reporter in Verity eyed the filing cabinets, unable to stop herself trying one.
Locked, of course, but if Verity knew anything about filing cabinets, it was that the owners never took the keys home like they were supposed to. There was time for a quick look.
Rushing out of the cupboard, she ran around the desk and rummaged through the drawers. The phone on the desk started to ring. She let it ring through to the answering machine while she found a small key that looked about the right size for the cabinet.
She was still kneeling in front of the drawers, key in hand and listening to Harris’s voicemail greeting, when another voice cut in.
“Verity, what the fuck are you doing?”
She froze, staring at the answering machine.
It was Sienna.
“Hello?” she asked. How had Sienna find her? The question barely formed in her mind before Sienna answered it.
“There’s a camera. Listen, someone’s coming. Hide. Now.”
Judging by the urgency in Sienna’s tone, Verity wouldn't make it to the storage cupboard in time, so dove under the desk, pulling the chair in after her.
“Quiet,” Sienna whispered, as if she needed telling. If a vampire was about to walk through the door, there would be no point in her being “quiet”. They would hear her breathing, her racing heart, but Verity took a deep shaking breath anyway, willing her body to still.
A key rattled in the lock, turning but not unlocking, because Verity had left it unlocked. Patting her pockets, she realised the key was still in the storage cupboard door. The door creaked open and Verity knew she could do nothing about that now.
Feet strode across the carpet. Sure, confident steps. They crossed to the desk. Standing barely a foot from her hiding place. A drawer opened. Then another. Then the rustle of papers.
The shoes were mere inches from her own. Not security boots. Not cleaner’s shoes. Jeans. Who worked at the town hall and wore jeans?
She turned her head enough to catch a reflection in the blacked-out window, a figure’s back. Tall, relatively young. He turned his face for a second and she caught it: a nose ring, freckles, a bun high on his head.
It was one of Vivienne’s donors. The one they sat with at SubRosa. He was putting something into Harris’s drawer.
She held her breath, counting seconds, until he slammed the drawer shut and walked out, locking the door behind him.
The air left her body in a gasp. How had he not seen her? Not noticed the key she’d left in the door?
“Verity? You okay?” Sienna’s voice again.
She crawled from under the table and picked up the phone. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know. That guy, was that one of Viv’s?”
“Yeah,” Verity breathed, looking around for the camera again. “He left something. Are you recording? Did you get that?”
“Yeah, we got it,” Sienna said. Another voice spoke in the background now, a hushed conversation.
Verity turned to the drawer he’d been in and pulled it open. Folders lay inside, ones that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Pulling the files out she stood, careful to make sure the camera would see what she did before opening the first one.
The city’s silver registry with owners' names and addresses and notes in the margin, unable to locate, secured.
The next page: payment records to a Kane Goodwin.
The next: an inventory of boards, paint, clothing and a megaphone.
A list that read an awful lot like funding for protests and vandalism.
She flicked to the next page and nearly choked.
A list of names.
Names Verity recognised.
“What is it?” Sienna asked.
“Missing donors,” she said into the phone, voice shaking.
“All of them?” Sienna asked.
Third from the bottom of the list was Georgie. To Verity’s horror, she wasn’t the last name.
“He was planting evidence,” Verity said. “They’re going to frame Harris.”
“Who’s they?”
“Vivienne. It’s all Vivienne. We knew she was behind Cliffhaven, but we needed proof.” Well, someone leaving a drawer full of incriminating documents in Harris’ office is pretty fucking convenient evidence.
“If he planted it, he expected it to be found,” Sienna said. “Just not by you.”