Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(16)

And I did.

Naturally, he couldn’t make bail. As he told the court-appointed lawyer, if he’d had access to money, he wouldn’t have robbed the poor schmuck in the first place.

“How does someone like you wind up robbing innocent people on the street?”

“Hard times,” he said with a shrug.

The lawyer shrugged, too. Plenty of people were out of work. The papers were full of dire headlines about former middle-class people who were now homeless, white-collar executives working in factories, even a former executive turned bank robber. A reporter-turned-thief? No big deal, in the grand scheme of things.

He’d done the crime; he’d done the time—gladly. Far preferable to the potential sentencing for extortion.

Now it’s time to pick up where he left off.

“Here we go.” The clerk is back, plunking a big plastic tub on the counter between them. It’s marked “July: Misc.” “Have at it.”

Peering in, his heart pounding in anticipation, Byron sees that it’s about half-full.

He pokes around, trying to act as casual as any dad might if his daughter lost a regular old toy.

But he doesn’t have a daughter—and this wasn’t a regular toy—and, Jesus, where is it?

“It was pink,” he tells the woman, as panic rapidly begins to set in.

How can it not be here?

“Maybe you lost it somewhere else.”

“No, I… I know it was here, and I know someone turned it into the lost and found, because… I had a friend come down and check, right after we lost it, and she saw it here.”

“Why didn’t she pick it up for you?”

“I… wanted to do it myself.” That makes no sense, of course. But he can barely think straight.

Could someone have seen what he’d done that day?

No. Absolutely no way.

He’d been careful.

“Maybe someone else took it by mistake?” the woman suggests. “That could happen.”

His head snaps up. “You just hand things out to anyone who wants them?”

“No, we don’t just hand them out,” she retorts, suddenly a lot less friendly. “We take down the contact information for every single person who comes in here—and they all have to specifically identify whatever it is that they lost.”

“I’m sorry.” He shifts gears, and it takes every ounce of self-control for him to muster a calm smile. “I don’t mean to get all worked up, but my daughter will freak out if I come home empty-handed because she thinks Mrs. Slappydoodle is here.”

Mrs. Slappydoodle? Give me a break.

But the woman is smiling, softening.

“You know how kids are,” he adds for good measure.

“I sure do.”

“Do you have yourself?”

“Four. And grandkids.”

“What! How can you possibly have grandkids at your age?”

She all but pats her hair.

“My baby girl is thinking she’s going to be tucked in tonight with Mrs. Snapdoodle.”

Snapdoodle?

Was that it?

Snappydoodle? Slappydoodle?

Slappydoodle. Right.

Oops.

“You know…” The lost and found woman looks thoughtful. “I do remember a dad who came in here one night awhile back, looking for some toy his daughter had lost in the station—just like you. He was in a real hurry, talking about his ex-wife…anyway, I could tell he had no clue what he was even looking for, other than that it was a pink stuffed toy.”

“Really.”

“Now, that doesn’t mean—”

“Did he take a pink stuffed toy with him?” he cuts in anxiously.

She nods, and her gaze flicks past his shoulder. A quick sidewise glance tells him someone else is waiting to be helped. Fine. Byron will make this quick, and be on his way…to God knows where. At this point, does it really matter? He’d travel across the world to get his hands on that file again: his ticket to financial freedom. But with any luck, he’ll just be a subway ride away from whoever snatched his file out from under him.

No unsuspecting stranger—or kid—would ever stumble across the memory stick concealed in the stuffing. No way. The file is still safe—for the time being.

“Listen, if you can just check the records and give me the contact information, I’d really appreciate it,” he tells his friend behind the counter.

“That, I can’t do.”

His heart sinks. “Please?” He offers her the charming smile that has wheedled plenty of forbidden information from reluctant sources over the years.

“Sorry,” she says firmly, “not allowed to hand out information like that.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’m dead serious.” And she looks it now.

“All I really need is his name.”

“No.”

“Come on. Please.” Gone is the pretense of nonchalance. He’s begging, and she knows it, and she couldn’t care less, shaking her head.

“Check back with us,” she advises. “If that other dad got the wrong toy, you can be sure his ex-wife and his daughter are going to let him know about it.” She gives a maddening chuckle. “He’ll be back.”