Page 80 of Bound By Fury

“Oh, sorry,” I apologize as I cross the room and crouch beside her. “I’m not sure my bobby pins are going to fit in that.” I eye the tiny keyhole.

“Found it!” Daisy says, a little too loudly.

Sam emerges from the shadows like a spooked ghost. “Shh! You’re going to get us caught.”

Daisy drops to the ground, crawling to us. “I found the key!” she says, only quieter this time.

“That was… quick,” I say, impressed but also kind of terrified. “Where was it?”

Daisy hands me the key, and I hold it up. It has a circular bow and a small slash of a blade.

“It was in this little box inside another box in the top drawer of his desk,” Daisy shrugs.

Missy and I look at each other.

“What?”

“It’s just… we haven’t been in here that long…,” I trail off.

“Yeah, how the hell did you know where it was gonna be?” Missy’s voice isn’t laced with curiosity like mine. Instead it holds something closer to suspicion.

Daisy stutters. “I—I didn’t know that it was going to be in there! I guessed, or, like, I don’t know, I could just, like, feel that it was going to be in there.”

Silence.

“Suuuure…,” Missy draws the word out.

“Anyway…” I turn back to the cabinet, used to the oddness of Daisy. In all the time we’ve spent together, it’s become clear that she’s got some affinity for… something. It’s just a fact about her, one she seems to lean in to freely, undisturbed by the idea that there’s so much more about the world that we don’t know. Unlike me, given that I feel like someone placed a bomb inside my chest, and any minute the clock is going to run out.

“We don’t even know that this is the right one.” I push the key into the lock, and it glides in smoothly, turning with ease.

“Told you,” Daisy mutters, but I ignore her, too busy pinching the latch and pulling the first drawer out.

“Someone take out your phone,” I say, reaching into the abyss. “I can’t see anything!”

My fingers trail along the rows of file folders.

“It looks like they only keep records for about ten years.”

They’re alphabetized, so I’m busy flicking through the B’s when the sound of keys jingling outside the door sends my heart rocketing into my throat.

“Nelson!” Missy hisses. “Hide!”

I’m scrambling to my feet when she grabs my hand and yanks me down and across the floor until we’re both shoved beneath the footwell of the large solid wood desk.

“Hey!”

“Do you want to get caught?”

I want to lift my head to see where Daisy and Sam have hidden, but the clinking of the metal keys is growing louder.

Beside me Missy’s anxious breath is sweet like fruit gum, and crammed into this small space, I realize that the rest of her smells sweet too. Like sugar and cherries.

“Did you find her folder?” she asks me. Moonlight slants into the room just enough to illuminate an angled strip across her eyes, and almost nothing else. She’s staring at me intently, and I’m struck by the rawness of her expression.

“I—”

The keys are at the door now. She jerks, slapping one hand against my mouth and using the other to dig her fingernails into my thigh. A beam of light lazes across the room, and I hold my breath, ears straining to hear Daisy and Sam, wherever they are. Preemptively wincing as though Nelson is going to slam the door open and drag us all into the town square for a lashing.