The Old Wheel (The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Book 2) by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin & Blount
Published: 2023-04-20T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 18

St. Holmes

Instead of the cottage, I asked Ariana to drop me off in front of Walker Hall.

She said goodbye and smiled. I said goodbye and smiled. When I leaned in for a kiss, she bent to check her phone, and, like a good boyfriend, I pretended not to notice. I got out of the car, and she drove off so fast the Geo sounded like a string-trimmer. Like a good boyfriend, I pretended not to notice that too.

Or maybe like a not-so-good boyfriend.

I headed to Baker House, and the first thing I noticed was that campus was empty. Saturdays were a free day, and although it was winter, you’d usually see at least a few Walker kids out and about—going to the athletic center, or the dining hall, or the library, or a study session, or to chill in someone else’s residence hall for a few hours.

Not today. Today, the campus looked abandoned. The redbrick, pseudo-Victorian buildings huddled under shawls of ice, and the walks were gritty and water-dark where Dad had salted them this morning. The only signs of life were the plumes of vapor rising into a cut-glass sky.

Lockdown, I thought. Which would make my job more difficult.

At Baker House, I went in through the basement. I grabbed a mop and bucket from the utility room and carried them up the central flight of stairs. Life hack: people don’t actually see custodians. It’s the next best thing to being invisible. Not that it mattered; the building was unnaturally quiet, and I didn’t see anyone on my way. Apparently, Headmaster Cluff had been serious about this lockdown.

My first stop was 221. I used my spare key to open the door, let myself in, and stared.

Holmes’s room had been destroyed. I’d seen something like this before—the mattress pulled off the bed and slashed, the side of the desk staved in, the closet emptied and the contents mounded on the floor. The last time someone had done this to Holmes’s room, it had been his father’s work—Blackfriar had been looking for Sarah Watson’s laptop. But it couldn’t be Blackfriar again. He’d found the laptop, and he’d done something—corrupted the data, maybe? (Jack Moreno, everyone, hacker wunderkind)—to ensure Holmes couldn’t access it. As far as I knew, there was nothing else Blackfriar wanted, aside from his lifelong efforts to break his son down and mold him into a high-functioning sociopath. Traditional family values, and all that.

So, who had done this? And what were they looking for?

It was obvious that Holmes wasn’t here, so I turned to open the door, but then something caught my eye. A piece of paper on the top of the desk. At first, it looked like one more of the papers that had been scattered around the room, but when I looked more closely, it was clear that someone had left the paper on purpose—there was enough of a suggestion of space around it, as though someone had cleared a spot, to make sure this wouldn’t be overlooked.

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