Behind the Veil

by Kathryn Nolan

  It was a statement, but Henry and I nodded just the same.

  Abe was quiet again.

  “I’m not sure what the issue is,” I said. “I resigned first. Accept it. You, Henry and Freya will hire another detective.”

  “Don’t do th—” Henry started.

  Abe held up his palm and Henry stopped.

  “What’s interesting,” Abe began cautiously, “is that the mutual trust and respect you have for each other—plus your complementary skill sets—is one of the reasons why you make such great partners. If this hadn’t come up, I would have paired you up again by the next case.”

  I felt an unexpected thrill at those words—to do this, I had to forcibly ignore how much I’d enjoyed working with Henry; that in the best of both worlds, we could be together and hunt down book thieves at the exact same time.

  There was another long, excruciating pause. What was he waiting for?

  “But even though that might be true, I still believe romantic entanglements are a dangerous distraction, and if the two of you are to continue working here, it is not something I take lightly.”

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. “What did you say?”

  Abe picked up our letters, stacked them together. And tore them clean in half.

  He looked down at the floor. “The fact that you were both willing to sacrifice your job for the other tells me that this relationship is very real.” He appeared painfully awkward as he scooped the pieces of our letters into the trashcan. “But you’ll be prohibited from working cases together until I can trust the two of you. Is that clear?”

  I considered Henry—whose eyes were wide behind his glasses. When the words finally, truly, sunk in, the smile that spread across his face was magnificent.

  “I also won’t hesitate to ban eye contact between the two of you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said quickly.

  “I’ll never look at her again,” Henry agreed.

  “Moving forward,” Abe said, “we need to be honest with each other. There will be no more chances.”

  Henry and I were nodding so vigorously I worried we’d fall off our chairs.

  Abe let us stew for a minute longer…and then the ends of his lips curved up in an almost-smile. “We might as well have a staff meeting if we’re all in.” He opened the door. “Freya, get in here.”

  She strode in, fixing her bun with a pen between her teeth. “I’m guessing…we’re a team of four again?”

  “Yes,” Abe said.

  Freya arched an eyebrow at me, and I actually blushed.

  “Well, good,” she grinned. “I’d hate to see Henry go. It’s nice to have another Ravenclaw on staff. And four is the perfect number to catch thieves.”

  “Speaking of,” Abe said, “I have updates on Victoria.”

  And just like that, the universe balanced, my world righted, my mind was clear, and my heart was true. Henry. Me and Henry. Not only together but also still here at Codex. The feeling was momentous enough to have me giving Henry the tiniest smile—a smile brimming over with joy and hope and all that was good on this earth.

  I leaned forward in my seat toward Abe, content to know my love for Henry was now out in the open for all to see.

  “The FBI completed their interviews with her, and our kooky heiress sang like a canary.”

  “Smart move,” I said, shaking my head. “Although I’m sure it must have hurt her ego to admit she wasn’t the highest up on whatever chain of command exists in that world.”

  Abe was flipping through his files. “And no word from Victoria on Bernard.”

  “She didn’t give up his whereabouts?” Henry asked. “She has to know where he is.”

  I felt a strange warmth in the center of my chest. Because I knew why not.

  “She’s in love with him still,” I said, recalling our conversation in the cloisters.

  “Interesting,” he said. He slid a photo our way. “Victoria gave up Alistair.”

  “The man from the auction house?” I asked.

  “Bernard’s intern.” Henry picked up the picture and rubbed his jaw. “Did Alistair give anyone up?”

  “He’s still in the process of being sentenced, but it’s not looking likely.” Abe tapped his fingers together. “This comes from my FBI contact and isn’t public knowledge, so don’t repeat it. Victoria paid Alistair a fantastical sum of money to steal it for her, relying on the access she could give him to the manuscript as the board president. The plan all along was for her to move it to her beach house in Santa Barbara, which holds a special significance to her because that’s where her mother was born.”

  “So she wasn’t going to, like, sell it to another collector? She stole it for herself?” Freya asked.

  “For her mother,” I said softly. “She stole it to feel closer to her mother.”

  Victoria Whitney was a wildly complicated philanthropist, a charming egomaniac, and a thief that believed she existed above all law. She was all those things—and probably more. Victoria was the gray area.

  And I was okay with that.

  “According to Alistair, they were supposed to move it the night before the party, but there was some massive bungling and it was delayed by twenty-four hours.”

  “Good thing or we’d never have gotten it,” I said. “What about the guards?”

  “There was trouble in paradise between the Victoria and Alistair partnership from the very beginning. I’m not sure the trust was ever really there, although money can certainly fake that. Alistair hired those guards for Victoria, I’m assuming because he recognized that her ego might get her in trouble, therefore possibly getting him in trouble.”

  “Which it did,” Freya added.

  “Victoria’s very famous lawyer is working on a plea bargain. House arrest and a fine. According to Francisco, she’s telling anyone who will listen that the Copernicus was ‘just a bit of fun’ and she didn’t realize how serious it was.”

  I shook my head in disbelief, laughing a little at Victoria’s sheer lunacy. Of course Victoria Whitney could get away with something like this—and probably come out of it smelling like a rose. “She’ll do it again,” I finally said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we bump into our kooky heiress a year from now at the auction house.”

  “A person like Victoria continues to believe she’s above the law even while in prison,” Freya said. “Whatever she takes again, we’ll get it back.”

  “Where does someone like Bernard fit into this? Or Codex?” Henry asked.

  Abe seemed thoughtful. “I still believe that what we’re starting to see is an organization, or a ladder or a pyramid or some kind of cohesive group that is orchestrating these larger, more skillful thefts of rare books and antiques,” he said. “With one person at the top, pulling all of the strings.”

  “Bernard?” Henry asked.

  “Maybe he works closely with that person. Or maybe he is that person. The majority of our casework will still be going after quick, poorly planned thefts that are more sudden opportunities than well-planned heists. But an organized attack makes our job a lot harder. They can hide the books faster and better than what we’ve been seeing.”

  “It also makes our job more exciting,” I said, feeling that old, familiar thrum in my veins. Adrenaline, the hunt, justice…all of it making me feel completely alive.

  After a minute, all three of my coworkers responded in kind.

  “Also true,” Abe smirked. “It’s never boring, that’s for sure.”

  “What happens next?” Henry asked.

  “Easy,” I said. “We wait for the next book to be stolen. And we get it back.”

  53

  Henry

  I’d barely finished ringing her doorbell before Delilah was pulling it open and leaping into my arms, legs around my waist and face pressed to mine. I dropped the bouquet of lavender I’d brought her and held her tight, mouth in her hair. Time slowed to an ethereal crawl, and then I was kissing Delilah with a dizzying freedom; let our mouths meet in
breathless wonder. It was a kiss of sweet new beginnings, of ardent passion. It felt like reading the first chapter of a book you already knew you loved.

  “You resigned for me,” she said, our lips still connected.

  “You resigned for me.”

  I slowly set her down, stepped back to fully take in my warrior. It was an unusually warm spring night, and she was dressed in a pair of ripped, worn jeans and a white tank-top—barefoot, but still adorned with red lipstick. I brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, smiling as she took in my similar outfit. We’d shed our barriers; we weren’t dressed up like undercover agents, or in office wear like private detectives. And we most certainly weren’t the Thornhills.

  We were just us.

  “Not kissing you today was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” I said.

  “I think you’ll have to get used to it,” she grinned, biting her lower lip. “But after Abe told us we could keep our jobs, I almost dragged you into my office to have my way with you.”

  “I would have liked that very much,” I admitted.

  She gave me a playful kiss in response—but we both knew how important it was to guard Abe’s trust right now. Especially since it appeared that we’d both be working at Codex for a long time. But as we’d left the office, I’d grabbed her hand, kissed her wrist, and asked her on our first date. And she’d told me to come here.

  “I set something up for you, for our date,” she said, almost shy.

  I remembered the crushed lavender and scooped it from the ground, presenting it to her with a flourish.

  Delilah inhaled the purple petals. “My favorite scent. How did you know?” she asked.

  “I notice a lot of things about you, beautiful,” I replied.

  She took my hand at that, leading me up the narrow stairs inside her row home. My first recognition was green. Delilah lived in a veritable greenhouse, with house plants and succulents springing from every surface and shelf.

  “Delilah, your house is—”

  She turned around, squeezed my hand.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “It makes me feel less homesick,” she said. We passed her kitchen, her living room, and were climbing the third story to her loft-style bedroom, which had the same abundance of plant life. “One of the first weekends I moved back here, my dads and my siblings helped me do this. Spent the weekend making my city house look more like our favorite woods.”

  I spied a framed picture on the wall— her dads, smiling on their wedding day. They wore matching suits and the kind of obvious love I recognized on the faces of my parents, my grandparents.

  Delilah.

  Next to it was Delilah and two other people, arms around each other and laughing at a lake surrounded by trees. “Elizabeth and Max,” she said, “my brother and sister. We spent every day at this lake during the summer until we were sun-drunk and exhausted and the fireflies had come out.”

  And next to that, a picture of her dads laughing as they held a smiling baby. “Is that you?”

  “That’s the day I was adopted.” Delilah touched the frame lovingly.

  There was a punching bag in the corner of her room, hot-pink boxing gloves laying over a chair, and a spiral staircase in the far corner. “Come on up to the roof.”

  I followed this woman—my partner, my fake wife, this brave and courageous woman who I would protect at any cost. Delilah was the strongest woman I’d ever met—charging down dark hallways unafraid of what lurked in the corners, only understanding the human desire to keep going.

  When we surfaced, it was onto a rooftop garden. Small, but packed with plants and flowering vines and even a tiny tree, growing from a barrel. Delilah had hung string lights from one side to the other, and a small speaker played Etta James. I cocked my head, smile widening when I took in the make-shift dance floor she’d created.

  “Delilah Barrett,” I started.

  She was standing there, barefoot and beautiful, beckoning me forward. The night air was warm and perfumed with plants, and she was very much at home against a backdrop of leaves.

  “I kept thinking about what you said, the night at the museum,” she said. I clasped her to me, cradled her hand at my chest, and our bodies began to sway naturally in time with the languid music. “About your grandparents being devoted to each other, still dancing. About the Thornhills and the romance of a slow dance in their kitchen. I know it’s not the most exciting first date, but I figured we’ve had our fair share of excitement.” She smiled ruefully. “For a few days, at least.”

  “I’d like to be the man that wants to dance with you every night,” I said, remembering her admission that none of her romantic partners had ever wanted to in the past.

  “I’d like that very, very much.” Delilah ghosted our lips together, staring up at me with wide blue eyes. We swayed like that, content in our silence, our toes brushing together on the dance floor.

  “I can’t believe you were going to resign for me,” I said. “Even after everything with—”

  But she shook her head. “It’s like you said yesterday morning—Mark can’t take anything from me any longer. And my choices and decisions are free to be mine and mine alone. I wasn’t scared at all. I didn’t know what would come next or where I would work but isn’t that what love is? Excited for whatever comes next?”

  “Love?” I whispered. I needed to make sure I heard her correctly.

  Delilah kissed me then said, “I love you, Henry Finch. If there had been a hundred guards in that mansion, I would have taken each one of them down to protect you. And if we hadn’t found the Copernicus there, I would have begged Abe to send me out again and again until I found it for you. When I woke up this morning, there was no room for doubt in my heart, only elation.”

  The book we’d spent weeks chasing down had only existed because a scientist had stared up into the heart of the big, brilliant Milky Way and wondered if all the theories he’d once held true about the sun were false. Delilah dazzled like the sun now—pulling me toward her brazen trust, her beautiful faith in who we would become. Together.

  “I love you, Delilah Barrett.” My voice was rough with emotion. “And I want to be clear about my intentions before we go on our first real date.” She kissed my fingers. “I want to court you. I want to take you on real dates, starting with tonight.” I tucked a wild, raven curl behind her ear. “I want to meet your dads and learn how to climb trees in the woods where you grew up. I want you to come to Sabrina’s Cafe for Sunday brunch with my siblings and argue with my parents about philosophy.”

  Delilah radiated a quiet joy.

  “I want to shower you with gifts and surprise you with holidays and fall asleep in the warm grass on a summer’s day with you. Because of all the things I have seen in this life—the paintings, the manuscripts, the gilded edges, the rare drawings and ancient tomes and crumbling ruins—all of it, all of it, dims before the light of you, Delilah.”

  We danced like that—beneath city stars and twinkle lights—for the rest of the night, content to hold each other, to laugh, to kiss, to make plans for our next adventure, to embrace our future as partners, in every single way.

  I understood, then, the parallel narratives of our lives becoming one story—the wings of our destiny open like a book without a written ending. The joy of that, the mystery, the sorrow, the surprise—the hundreds of thousands of words that would grow between us over the years. It could never be stolen, only recovered, cherished, adored.

  It was our love story, the rarest of books, meant to be read over and over and over.

  Epilogue

  DELILAH

  One year later

  Everybody loved a married couple.

  And tonight was no exception.

  The Walt Whitman Bridge had been cleared of cars, walled off and dressed with tables and barstools for Philadelphia’s annual Bridge To The Stars dinner. Henry and I were perched on stools facing a dazzling skyline, sipping martinis as a jazz band set the
mood.

  Thieves were everywhere. I could feel it.

  The Bridge dinner raised funds for Philadelphia’s Archaeological Society—a cause which antiquarian lovers and rare-book collectors tended to flock to. Our source had directed us here, said they’d be all too happy to cut a deal involving something tiny and gorgeous they’d recently come into. Legally, they were sure to clarify.

  Codex knew that to be highly inaccurate. It was a third edition of Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and a trio of thieves had stolen it from the Central Park Rare Manuscript Library just last week.

  Bring one hundred grand in a paper bag tonight and it’s yours were the instructions that Freya had received. Abe had smirked, sensing an easy win and a lot of cash. Because it meant the trio of thieves were more likely opportunistic college students who had seen Ocean’s Eleven one too many times.

  And after a night of dancing and drinks as the Thornhills, we’d finally snagged our guy.

  And he was, clearly, a college student in his early twenties named Carl.

  “So how often do you visit Reichenbach Falls, Carl?” I asked, sipping my drink.

  Henry was stroking his fingers in a circular pattern around my knee.

  “Oh, uh…all the fucking time,” Carl drawled. He looked briefly flustered, but then recovered. “Basically every day.”

  “Interesting,” Henry said. His thumb roamed the back of my thigh. “My wife and I don’t visit as much as you, but we’re always happy to meet fellow travelers.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you’re married,” Carl said—although he said married as one might say aliens from outer space. “Gnarly.”

  Henry chuckled into his drink, and it wasn’t feigned at all. “That’s what I said during our vows.”

  Carl narrowed his eyes, as if trying to figure out if we were making fun of him. But then he grinned, flagged down another beer. I covertly checked Henry’s watch and knew Dorran was probably waiting for us.