by Sarah Biglow
“I hope you’ve found what—” the clerk stopped and surveyed our disarray of files. “What in heaven’s name are you doing back here?”
“Trying to find information for a project. We uh, haven’t figured out the filing system. Could you help us, Gladys?” I pulled her name from the surface of her thoughts. I put a little effort in, hoping I could sway her into making our search more fruitful.
Her bored demeanor brightened as the downturn of her lips twitched into the beginning of a smile. “What are you looking for?”
“Well, we wanted to find out about the library. Like, how long it’s been there and maybe what was there before.”
Declan glowered at the useless files strewn around us. Gladys gave him another look before she gestured for me to follow her to the back of the room. She eased open the middle drawer on a cabinet with no label.
“Your friend doesn’t talk much, does he?” she observed.
“I think he’s anxious to get this done what with graduation around the corner.”
“Maybe he should put in a little effort himself,” she said loudly enough for her voice to carry. “Not right letting you do all the work,” she muttered.
I hate you right now.
I flipped Declan off behind Gladys’s back. “So, have you worked here long?”
“Since ’74,” she answered proudly. She pulled out a thick file. “Here is everything we have on the plot where the library currently sits. This has all the deeds, architectural blueprints, and purchase and sale agreements. Is this what you were looking for?”
“Yes. Thank you!”
She tapped the oversized watch on her wrist. “Remember boys, we close at five o’clock.”
I followed her out to the doorway, so Declan couldn’t hear us. “I actually had one other thing I was really hoping you could help me find.”
“What is it? I’ll see what I can do,” she said, nice and compliant.
“Do you know if birth records are kept here?”
“They’re two floors up. Are you looking for someone in particular?”
I pulled a scrap of paper from my bag and scribbled Tina’s name on it. “I would really appreciate it if you could help me find her birth certificate.” I leaned in closer. “It’s kind of a graduation present for another friend.”
Gladys took the paper and marched off. I waited until she’d left the room before taking out my phone and pulling up the camera app. I thrust the file at Declan. “Help me.”
Together, we hastily snapped photos of every piece of paper in the folder. We could worry about sorting through it when we met back up with Tina and Marisol. I set the folder back in the cabinet at the back of the room and we strolled out of the office as my phone’s clock ticked over to five o’clock. Gladys was already gone, the shade pulled on the window at the front desk but there was an envelope with the slip of paper I’d given her sticking out on the counter. I slipped it into my bag while Declan wasn’t looking.
“That was weird, right?” Declan said as we started toward the library.
“I can’t imagine why they’d keep it in an unmarked cabinet in the back. There is definitely something going on. I hope the girls have some luck with Henry and Mrs. Boudreau.”
Chapter Twelve
Marisol
Being alone with Tina wasn’t my idea of a fun or successful afternoon. No matter what Spencer said, it was clear she saw me as a threat. I wanted to show her she didn’t have to worry but was at a loss for how to do so. We sat in the computer lab for a good ten minutes after the boys left staring at each other.
“Should we go?” I prompted. The sooner we got it over with, the sooner we could move forward. Plus, I had a scheduled shift at the library, and I wasn’t going to be late and risk getting fired on day three because Tina couldn’t make up her mind.
“I like Spencer, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” she muttered in response. Still, she gathered her bag and we headed out.
“Why are you so sure your mother doesn’t have anything to do with this?”
“Like I said, she doesn’t have an interesting bone in her body. She can’t be involved in all of this.”
I hadn’t meant to invade her emotions but the overwhelming fear and hurt hit me, almost like a physical force, and I staggered sideways. “You’re scared it’s true and you don’t understand why she would keep it a secret. Or why or how she could do this to her own child,” I blurted before considering whether my words would stoke her ill temper.
She stopped and rounded on me. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell Spencer. Stay out of my head.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t control it. And, your feelings aren’t wrong. I’d be scared in your position. But you aren’t going into this alone. We don’t know each other, but I think we can both agree this affects us all.”
Tina ran her fingers through the darker strands of hair around her face. “I see it now. Why you and Spencer fit. You’re like a female version of him.”
I didn’t have to be able to sense her emotions to hear the dig at our budding relationship. My brain registered it for the snarky comment it was meant to be, but I could still see the hurt on her face. “I get it now, too. Why you and Declan were hoping things would work, and why you were so intent on butting in on his life. You were clinging to the hope there were people out there for the two of you, too.”
“We’re different. I haven’t found proof yet, but I know it deep inside that whatever makes us this way isn’t something superficial.”
I didn’t doubt her statement. I could also hear the edge of frustration in her words. Spencer had mentioned Tina was still hunting down their—our—origin. If I had been searching for four years and come up with nothing, I would be frustrated, too.
Silence fell between us as we walked through the heart of town. We passed the Sorano’s restaurant and I smiled. I spotted Spencer’s mother—he looked so much like her with his complexion and eye color—through the front windows, chatting with the late lunch crowd, no sign of notepad or pen for orders. It must be nice to know her customers so well she didn’t need to write down what they wanted.
“I’m not sure she’s going to be there,” Tina’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“It’s worth a try.” Her bad mood and doubts were rubbing off on me.
I stopped outside the front of the library and took slow, steady breaths. Moment by moment Tina’s worries and irritation at me intruding on her carefully curated sphere of super-powered friends melted away and I was left with my own feelings of excitement. I’d found a way to belong here and I shared a connection with a boy in a way I never thought possible. There was still one thought that tried to put a damper on all of this: Were we literally made for each other?
I tried to push those doubts away as we headed inside. To my surprise no one manned the circulation desk. Tina appeared uninclined to complete our task as she settled in behind the circulation desk.
“You coming?” she asked when I stood immobile.
“I’m pretty sure she’s not hiding back there,” I quipped.
“No, which is why we should be.”
“I get you aren’t interested in answers but avoiding the confrontation won’t make it any better.”
She rolled her eyes at me again. “I need an internet connection to hack her schedule. Duh.”
“Oh.”
I joined Tina behind the counter and kept an eye on the patrons milling about. Thankfully, they were sparse, and none needed our services, so I could huddle beside her tablet as she clicked through browser windows until she came up with her mother’s schedule.
Which was booked solid all week with back-to-back meetings.
“I didn’t realize running a library was so time-consuming,” I said.
“It isn’t,” Tina answered and navigated away from the calendar to a list of town meetings on the Town Hall website. “See, half of these boards and committees aren’t even meeting until next month.”
“Why would she have all of these on her calendar then?”
Tina clicked on one of the meetings. “She didn’t put them in. See, H. St. Pierre.”
“Maybe he got the dates wrong?” I suggested.
“Or he’s covering for her.”
It made sense if she in fact was trying to hide something. “Maybe she has a second calendar somewhere?”
She licked her lips and closed out of the programs and opened a black prompt window. Her fingers flew over the keys as she input lines of code I couldn’t begin to understand. I briefly wondered if Spencer understood it by reading her thoughts or if it came off as techno babble.
“You two shouldn’t be back here,” Henry said from behind us, making Tina and I both jump out of our seats.
Tina swiveled in her chair to block the computer monitor. “We work here, too, genius.”
He tapped a clipboard and gave us a smile that came off as condescending. “And I make the schedule, Tina. Neither of you are on it for right now.”
“I thought maybe I could pick up a few extra hours and Tina was just trying to help,” I fibbed.
“You should have talked to me about that.”
“Whatever, control freak. Anyway, I was trying to see if my mother would actually be home for dinner. You know, that thing parents do with their children?” Tina interrupted.
He shook his head. “I can check her calendar for you.”
“Why do you run her calendar?” Tina pressed.
“Because she asked me to.” He logged on to the desktop computer and pulled up the schedule we had already found. “Sorry, Tina. It looks like she’s got meetings ‘til late tonight.”
“Typical,” Tina muttered and scooped up her tablet and dragged me by the arm away from the desk and back to a study room.
“Do you get the feeling he’s not telling us something,” I asked.
“Henry is a suck up, but he’s not some evil psychopath.”
We sat down at the table and Tina looked at her screen. “Well, damn,” she breathed.
I craned my neck to see over her shoulder. There was a calendar under the name H. Kirkpatrick with tiny flagged events associated with lab rooms, including some sort of meeting in Room 804 until five-fifteen.
“How did you find this?” I whispered.
“Because I’m an excellent hacker. And my skills know no bounds.”
I wanted to point out her inflated sense of ego, but kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t in her good graces as it was and getting there was more important than deflating her bigheadedness.
“So, what do we do now?”
She spun to face me. “We wait.”
Her intense gaze made my skin crawl and I pushed my chair away from her so there was distance between us. She propped one elbow on the desk and continued to watch me.
“What?” I finally asked.
“I’m trying to figure you out, Ms. Feels-a-Lot.”
“There’s not much to figure out. Like you guys, I didn’t ask for this. But, if I’ve got it, I want to use it for good. I’m not sure how but we’ll figure it out.”
“Fine, whatever, you want to be useful. What I don’t understand is why is someone out there targeting you?”
“I’m just lucky, I guess.”
“What did this ex of yours really do to you?”
I squirmed under her gaze. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“He’s coming after you which means he could be coming after all of us.”
“I sent him to jail, okay. He robbed someone, and I was in the car. I went to the police about it and I got probation. He got six months in lock up. He should still be there. I don’t know how he got out or how he found me. Happy now?”
“I never pictured you as the life of crime type.”
“I’m not. To be honest, I was never that into Jason, but he was into me. Looking back at it, I think maybe I was feeling his emotions and giving in to them.” Like I had with Spencer the other night?
“It’s put Spencer in white knight mode.”
“You may not want to admit it, but you do care about him a lot. Earlier, it felt like you were jealous.”
“No, I’m not.”
Tina seemed the type of person who could cover up her true feelings easily. Like she’d been building up a protective layer around herself all her life. The emotions I’d gotten from her were strong and took little effort to read. But now, when I tried to focus on it and do it intentionally, I met resistance.
Electricity crackled in the air, making the hairs on my arms to stand on end. “I told you to stay out of my head.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so closed off, you’d be happier,” I muttered.
“Don’t judge me. You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“You’re right. I don’t and therein lies the problem. We’re in this,” —I spread my hands and gestured at the space between us— “whatever this is, together and we should know enough about each other to trust one another.”
“I’m not the sleepover, braid each other’s hair type. Sorry.”
“You don’t spend a lot of time with your mother, do you?” I prodded. The way she’d reacted to the full schedule spoke volumes.
“I figured that was obvious.”
“What about your father?”
“Never met the man. I guess he took off before I was born. Feels nice to be wanted, huh?”
“I’m sorry.” I resisted the urge to put a reassuring hand on her arm. “I lost my mother when I was young. It’s been me and Papi for as long as I can remember.”
“We’re nothing alike.”
Before I could respond, Tina’s phone buzzed with an incoming text message. She didn’t bother to tell me who it was from as she tapped out a rapid-fire response. Two minutes later, Spencer and Declan appeared in the doorway empty-handed. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“Please tell me you found something,” Tina said.
Chapter Thirteen
Spencer
The four of us crammed into the study room, crowding around Tina’s tablet. I fished a spare phone cable from the depths of my backpack and plugged it in, transferring the photos of the library files. I caught Marisol’s eye and heard her thoughts as if she had whispered them in my ear.
“She doesn’t trust me. I want to help. Can you make her understand?”
If only I could. The tablet let out a soft ‘ping’ letting us know the files had transferred over. “So, what did you two find out from Mrs. Boudreau?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Tina answered, pulling the tablet to her, and flicking through photos.
“What made you think of the architectural blueprints and deeds?” Marisol asked, leaning on the back of one of the wooden chairs.
“This town isn’t huge. Most of what’s been around, has been the same for decades. Long before some of our families were here. But the library is the biggest place in town. What if it used to be something else?” I explained.
“It might still be something else,” Tina announced.
The three of us crowded in around her as she enlarged a blueprint of the building dated from the late 1970s. It wasn’t labeled as a public library at all. In fact, it appeared to be a subterranean facility.
“Who owned the building,” I said, pressing my finger to the touch screen, and scrolling backward. I thought I remembered seeing the deed before the schematics.
“Hands off the tech,” Tina snapped.
I backed off and let her work, preferring to keep full use of all ten fingers. The images passed too quickly for me to make sense of the information but somehow Tina could. She’d never explained how but her powers sometimes gave her the ability to absorb information faster than most people.
“According to the deed, it belonged to a company called Kirkpatrick Industries, Incorporated.”
“Kirkpatrick, like the calendar you found,” Marisol said.
“Who is Kirkpatrick?” Declan interjected.
I didn�
�t mean to overhear Tina’s thoughts, but they screamed for my attention. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen that name.”
“Tina, what aren’t you telling us?” I prodded.
She spun in the chair and glared at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit. You’ve heard the name Kirkpatrick before. Where?”
Her cheeks burned red and for the first time, she looked embarrassed. “On one of the discs. The first one I tried wiped itself when I tried to unlock the encryption. But I found bits and pieces. Kirkpatrick Industries, Incorporated was mentioned a few times.”
“Did you know all of that when you told me you couldn’t unlock them?” I pressed.
Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, okay? Besides, I think I may have been the reason the disc wiped.”
“What do you mean,” Marisol asked.
“I got a little excited and I think I demagnetized it. I screwed up.”
“No one’s perfect,” Declan said from Tina’s other side. He laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently.
She wiped at her eyes. “I’m supposed to be the computer whiz. This isn’t supposed to happen to me.”
“We’re not mad at you, Tina. Now, where else did you two see the name Kirkpatrick?” I pressed.
“Tina found a hidden calendar in her mother’s account under the name H. Kirkpatrick,” Marisol answered.
“It said she’s in a meeting in someplace called Room 804. Right there,” Tina said, pointing to one of the blocked off rooms on the schematic.
For all my geography skills, I had no concept of where the room was in relation to where we were or if it still existed beneath the current library layout. “Any idea how we’re supposed to find it?”
“Overlay a current floorplan with this one,” Declan suggested. He was occasionally full of useful ideas.
“Great in theory but we don’t have the actual blueprints and the paper we have here isn’t big enough to get an accurate representation. Plus, Town Hall is closed for the day,” I pointed out.