“What floor?”

“Second floor. Room two-fourteen.”

“Meet me in the second floor lounge. I’ll bethere in about twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”

She hung up without saying goodbye and hestood staring at the dead phone, his mind a cyclone of thoughts. Hewas about to get information about the box. Maybe together theywould figure out what it was and who gave it to him.

Chapter 2

Twenty minutes turned out to be twenty-five.Albert would be the first to agree that five minutes was hardly aneternity, but Brandy knew something about the box, something shewas not willing to disclose over the phone. Now every minute passedlike an hour as he sat in the second floor lounge of Lumey Hall,waiting to see what she knew.

There was something in my car when I leftclass today. Those words kept ringing in his ear. He rememberedhow he’d unlocked his car the previous evening and found the boxsitting in the driver’s seat. It was a frightening experience. Hedid not even see it until he opened the door. Brandy at least foundher package in broad daylight, but it still must have beenunnerving, perhaps even more so since whoever left it there wasbold enough to get into her car in the middle of a busy schoolday.

The box had Brandy’s name on it. Now Brandyhad found something too, and in exactly the same way, no less.Perhaps it was no accident after all that he found himself inpossession of the box.

At the other end of the room, two boys wereplaying table tennis. One was a skinny blond kid, his face aspattering of pimples. The other was of an average build with a redgoatee that wasn’t quite thick enough yet to completely cover hischin. Nearby, a skinny girl with raven black hair cut short enoughto stand on end sat in one of the plush chairs watching them. Shewas close enough to them in such an empty room to indicate that shewas with them, but her eyes kept drifting from the boys to the doorto her watch and back again, suggesting that she, too, was waitingfor someone.

The steady plink-plunk sound of theping-pong ball could be annoying at times, but tonight Albert foundit and the occasional outbursts of frustration and excitement fromthe boys relaxing, almost hypnotic. It was a perfect distractionfor his senses. Too much silence made him think too much and justlately that made his head hurt.

He was sitting off to one side of the room,positioned so that he could see out of the lounge and down thehallway to the main doors. Lumey was built on the slope of a hill,so on the back side of the building the first floor was the groundfloor, but on the front—the side he was facing now—the main doorsled in on the second floor. The visitor parking lot and the meterswere located on this side of the building. Therefore, he’ddetermined that this was the direction from which Brandy would mostlikely enter.

He spotted her as she was climbing thesteps. She was wearing a dark shirt and jeans, different from theshorts and tank top she’d been wearing that morning in lab. She wasclenching a black leather purse in her left hand and carried acigarette in her right.

Albert thought that there was somethingstiff about her. She looked tense. He watched her as she paused atthe ashtray outside the door. She drew one last time from thecigarette and then crushed it. As she did so, she turned and lookedaround, as though she expected someone to be watching her.

Of course there was someone watchingher, but he didn’t think that it was him she was looking aroundfor.

Perhaps he was imagining it. Maybe she heardsomething somewhere, someone yelling or a car horn blaring. Maybehe was simply looking for things that weren’t there. Puzzling overthe box for so many hours had caused his imagination to run alittle wild.

At last she opened the door and walked in.Almost immediately, her eyes found him. Albert stood up and greetedher and immediately the smell of her cigarette tickled his nose. Hewas not a smoker and did not like the smell of cigarettes, but hismother smoked and he was used to it enough that he was not reallybothered by it. He always said it would have to be a pretty fineline between yes and no to turn down a date based on whether a girlsmoked.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she satdown.

“It’s okay.”

She did not relax at first. She held herpurse in her lap and looked at him. Albert realized right away thatthere was something cold about her, as though he had done her somegrave evil of which he was not yet aware. Her eyes were a soft andgorgeous shade of blue behind the gold-rimmed lenses of her smallglasses, beautiful enough to be hypnotizing, but when she leanedforward they were focused so fiercely on him that it made him wantto shrink away. “I’m just going to say right now that if this issome kind of practical joke I’m not going to be happy. There arelaws against breaking into someone’s car, you know.”

Albert stared at her, his own dark eyes wideand shocked. Those words struck him like a hammer. He’d never evenconsidered a practical joke. That cast a whole new light on thesubject. What if someone was trying to pull something on him? Whatif someone somewhere was laughing his ass off at his sillyobsession with that nonsense box? “If it’s a practical joke,” hesaid, almost numb with the realization of that possibility, “thenwe’re two cheeks on the same butt of it.”

Brandy watched his expression as he spoke,her eyes stony and piercing. Finally, after a moment, she laughed.It was a quick sound, a huff of air, almost a sigh. In an instanther features melted back into that sweet, ladylike girlishness thathe’d seen so often in the classroom. She relaxed back into herchair, her posture slightly slouched, comfortable. She gazed at himthrough her glasses, her eyes once more soft and sweet. Her hairwas very light blonde, a little past shoulder-length, straight andsmooth with short bangs. She was wearing a simple, short-sleevedshirt, black with red patterns around the neck and sleeves. Albertcouldn’t stop himself from noticing the low neckline. She was notbig-breasted, but neither was she shapeless. She was quite pretty,blessed with a girlish figure and a soft and delicatecomplexion.

Overall, she was a sharp contrast to him.Whereas her hair and eyes were light and fair, his were dark anddeep. Her nose and chin were soft and round, while his werestraight and pronounced, almost pointed. He was rather short,although still a couple inches taller than she, and a littlestocky, and he appeared bulky compared to the soft curves of herpetite figure.

“I’m sorry,” said Brandy. “I don’t mean toaccuse you of anything. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s just kind of scary, you know. Somebodygot into my car while I was in class.”

“I understand. I mean this is some prettyweird stuff.”

“I almost threw it away. I didn’t want it,really. It kind of gave me the creeps.”

These words were like a slap in the face.She almost threw it away? “What did you get?”

She opened her purse and withdrew a smallbrown pouch. “I feel silly even bringing this to you, but I guessit sort of belongs to you.” She opened the pouch, which appeared tobe made of soft, aged leather, pulled closed with a simple piece ofcoarse twine, and then emptied it into her left hand. She turnedher eyes up to his as she held it out to him. “It’s a key.”

Albert stared at it for a moment beforetaking it from her. It was a flat piece of brass with a simple ringfor a grip and a single tooth on each side. Just looking at it, hecould understand why he was unable to pick the lock with thepocketknife. Even though the key was flat instead of round orgrooved, it still required teeth to work the tumblers inside thelock.

He reached out and took it from her warmpalm. He felt a million miles away, as though he were staring at itthrough a television set instead of holding it in his own fingers.It didn’t feel real. He turned it over, almost mesmerized, andsuddenly he was drawn back with a slap. Seven letters werescratched onto this side of the key, just like on one side of thebox. But instead of B R A N D Y R, the key read A L B E R T C.