Secret Santa by Andrew Shaffer

Author:Andrew Shaffer [Shaffer, Andrew]
Format: epub

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

By the time she looked up from Fabien’s manuscript, it was five thirty. She took a break to hit the restroom. His book was good—better than good. It was great. Transylvanian Dirt was, as he’d told her, the best thing he’d ever written. A page-turner that transported her far away from all the office drama for a few hours. She was only a hundred sixty pages in, but already she could smell a best seller. Even the clichéd World War II prologue worked. Had the book she’d been looking for been right under her nose? She’d have to finish it first, but she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.

On the way back to her office, she peered over the railing into the lobby. Gail had already gone home for the day. Down the hall, the light was still on under the art department door. She would wait for Stanley to head home, then slip into his office to take back the Percht. If the door was unlocked, that was. She had no experience picking locks.

When she got within earshot of her own office, she heard the phone ringing. She rushed to answer it. “Lussi Meyer, Broken—sorry, Blackwood-Patterson,” she said.

“Want me to hang up and call again so you can do that over?”

Lussi sighed. It wasn’t an agent with a hot manuscript. It was only her sister, returning her call from last week. “Why don’t you hang up and I’ll call you back—free long distance,” Lussi said. “Perks of having an office job again.”

“I’m talking to you on Friends and Family, don’t worry,” her sister said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to get a home phone, but anyway, congrats on the job. It sounds like a great company to work for—we have scads of Blackwood books in the high school library.”

But does anyone check them out? Lussi wanted to ask. She stretched the phone cord to the window.

Kiera taught sixth-grade home economics, and filled Lussi in on some drama with the teacher’s union and gossip from their hometown. Lussi only half followed what she was saying. She was busy looking out the window to see if Stanley had left the building yet. As the last of the sunlight faded, the trash cans in the park burned brighter. Among the brambles, deeper into the park, she saw the silhouette of a man in a fedora. Peter Faber. Was he watching her? She could no longer tell friend from foe. Before moving to the city, she’d been warned that the parks were no place for a young woman. No matter how inviting they looked during the day, they transformed at night like werewolves under a full moon.

The same could be said for some buildings.

“…I should get going,” her sister was saying. “Syd’s been quiet too long. She’s probably gotten into something. She’s at that age…”

Lussi was about to ask about her niece, but the sight of the empty gift box next to the wastebasket reminded her there was another reason she needed to talk to her sister.

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