Free God's Eye by A.J. Scudiere Page A

like him.”
    Katharine cocked her head. “Well, I don’t think he likes you very much either.” She motioned for him to let her pass. At last he stepped back just enough to let her into the office, but there wasn’t enough room for her to walk by without smelling him, without feeling the tug of his presence. She didn’t think she could take much more of this. She felt like a ping-pong ball between the two of them, always waiting for the next hit.
    Gathering the files into her arms, she turned around. “I’m headed for the library. I may not be back today.”
    Like hell I’ll be back today,
she thought. There was enough crap in her life without dealing with these two sniffing and roaring at each other. But she didn’t say it. What she said was “I’ll see you tomorrow morning” in her sweetest voice.
    Only when she’d dumped the files on the passenger seat of her car did she finally allow herself to relax. With a deep breath in and a blow out, she tried to let go of all the tension, but only succeeded in releasing part of it. But part was better than none, so she repeated the breathing several more times; then she put the car into gear and headed out to the library.
    Once there, she didn’t even bring the paperwork in. She’d have to come back tomorrow. As she was still shaking off the bizarre showdown she’d just seen, there was no way the WeldLink research was going to happen now. Katharine didn’t think she’d ever just blown off work the way she was doing today. She’d been good all morning until Zachary had shown up. Lunch had been longer than a lunch had the right to be. Then the confrontation. There wasn’t enough time left for a proper library search, so Katharine did something new, something entirely against her better breeding.
Screw it,
she thought and went in through the wide front doors with her own agenda in mind.
    After figuring out the basic layout of the shelves, she wandered into the reference section and started looking at dictionaries.
    The
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
defined
cave
as a hollow in the earth. There was a secondary meaning: to give in. Is that what it was? A command?
Give in.
But what was she supposed to cave to? There had been no demands. It wasn’t like Katharine had ever held out against anything in her life. There was no need to demand that she do what came naturally.
    She couldn’t find anything else that made any sense whatsoever in the other dictionaries. After half an hour she sat there on the aisle floor with all the tomes in a heap around her, thinking of everything and coming up with nothing.
    As she stared at the gray, nubby carpet and tried to gather her thoughts, a pair of feet in cheap heels planted themselves next to her, and a voice more refined than the footwear floated down. “Can I help you?”
    Katharine wanted to laugh, but simply shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
    Still the woman insisted on squatting almost ungracefully, closer to Katharine’s level. “I’m a librarian here. I’m Margot.” She didn’t hold out her hand. Her face was a shade too long, the patrician nose out of place on a woman and the mouth too full under such a nose. Katharine thought Margot’s face suited her job, but her voice didn’t. In practiced, cultured tones Margot spoke again. “I probably could help. I’m a professional researcher.”
    Well, everyone needs something to be proud of,
Katharine thought ungraciously, deciding Miss Margot of the long fingers with no rings and her librarian pride couldn’t fare any worse than she herself had. “All right. I got this message in the mail. It said
cave.
That’s it, one word. I can’t figure out what it means. It can’t be a reference to an actual cave, I don’t know anything about caves.”
    Immediately, Margot dove to the secondary definition Katharine had needed a book to come up with. “Does it mean ‘surrender’?”
    Tucking her feet up under her, Katharine set aside the dictionary