“Quinn, don’t.”
He glanced at her, standing in the office doorway, light outlining her as she clasped Ty to her side. He drew his hand back but leaned closer to the floor. The growth gave off a faint odor of decay, dry but still potent in a way that a rotting vegetable smells when forgotten in the rear of a pantry. He ran his gaze across the protrusion where it met other coils that joined and became a larger mass that disappeared through broken sheetrock and disturbed ceiling tiles. Its composition nudged something in his mind, almost coming into the light before drifting away. His eyes narrowed in concentration, and all at once recognition tightened every muscle in his body.
The substance on the floors, walls, and ceilings was bone.
He rose and stepped away from it, wiping the hand he’d almost touched the osseous growth with on his pants. Alice found his eyes, questioning him as he turned and shook his head. He looked around the large office. It was made to be a comfortable space, the walls a calming beige trimmed with browns and tans. An executive leather chair sat before a sprawling desk that held a touchscreen computer console mounted within the wood at an angle comfortable to anyone sitting in the chair. There were large cardboard boxes on the floor filled with white confetti that he soon recognized as shredded papers. When he opened the desk drawers, only empty space met him, files hanging limp and thin on their rails. The same went for the file cabinet in the corner of the room. Every paper in the office had been destroyed.
“There’s nothing here,” he said, sliding the last drawer shut. He moved to the computer screen, bringing it to life with a fingertip. Username and password bars appeared, a curser blinking in the first box. Quinn stared at the screen, his fingers hovering over letters. Slowly he curled his hands into fists, arms shaking.
“Let’s check the other office,” Alice said, guiding him away from the mocking screen.
The opposite room was smaller and less elegant but yielded the same results. Shredded paper was strewn across the floor in twisted and torn strips as if the person performing the task had been in an extreme hurry, treading amongst the fallen fragments. He tried the computer console in the smaller office and attempted every combination of letters and numbers he could think of that had any significance to his father. None of them worked.
He picked up a stapler and wound his arm back, ready to throw it through the glass of a painting hanging on the wall, but Alice grasped his wrist. Gently, she brought his hand down, and he loosened his grip on the stapler.
“There’s nothing here,” he said, shoulders going slack, his strength seeping away with his anger. “They scrubbed everything.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell were they doing here?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her hand up his arm, her touch light and soothing. “Maybe it’s gone like everything else.”
They stepped back into the hall, and his gaze trailed along the shoots of bone that disappeared behind the door. The last unchecked door. One more barrier between him and what he wanted.
He moved toward it, Roman’s card already out of his pocket, the reader beside the door glowing red. His hand was on the knob, card sliding, door unlocking.