The Frame-Up (The Golden Arrow #1)(82)

When the sound doesn’t repeat, a sneaking suspicion dawns. I whisper frantically to L, “What if this is a setup by the Golden Arrow? What if he called the police to tell them we’re here? I don’t want to get caught for nothing.” It could be so much worse than the Golden Arrow planting evidence on me in the hopes of Matteo discovering it. The Golden Arrow could be out-and-out framing me for the crimes.

Lawrence has ducked and is fiddling with the nearest box. We don’t have time for fiddling. We need to get out. There’s the sound of tape ripping away from cardboard, as loud as a gunshot in the silence.

“Are you opening boxes? I thought you said we shouldn’t touch anything.”

“This box says ‘Genius Comics.’” Or I think that’s what he says, given the flashlight clutched in his teeth.

“What?” I crouch beside him and take in the pile of boxes, all neatly marked with Genius Comics packing tape and form shipping labels.

“Did you know Genius uses this warehouse?” L asks.

“No. But this can’t be a coincidence, right?”

This time I definitely hear something from within the warehouse, and we freeze again after clicking off our lights.

“Do you think someone’s here?” I hate that my voice quavers. The police? Matteo? I should have thought twice about following some stupid scribble in a notebook. I rushed in full bore, per my usual, which is probably just what the Golden Arrow wanted me to do.

“Could be a night guard,” Lawrence says, though I can tell he’s placating me. His eyes are worried too. “We probably should leave.” He looks briefly at his phone before shoving it into his pocket. “Shift probably starts at ten, and it’s nine forty-nine.”

I’ve stopped listening. I’m too busy leaning around Lawrence and peering at the box he opened. I click on the flashlight but keep my hand over the top to stop it from lighting up our area of the warehouse. “They’re Hooded Falcon comics.”

I reach in, expecting to meet the resistance of stapled spines, but they’re loose pages. “What the heck? It’s just the covers of the comics.” Old-school tear sheets—the ones bookstores send back to prove they haven’t sold the comics. Returning the whole comic is too costly, so they just send back the cover torn off for a refund. I reach down to see if the whole box is made up of the single-page covers of The Hooded Falcon or if there are full comics at the bottom. My fingers encounter a different type of paper, or not really paper at all. I press harder, and it gives ever so slightly. A brick? Why would you put a brick at the bottom of a comic book tear-sheet box?

“I thought I said we needed to go, MG.” The stack of boxes blocks us from the main aisle, but that doesn’t stop a fidgety Lawrence from peering around them repeatedly.

Each time he looks, I’m sure we’ll be discovered, but I can’t stop now. “In a second. Give me your phone.” I’m frantically pulling the tag off the box Lawrence opened.

“Use yours.”

“Mine slid down my boot, and it’s at my ankle. Give me yours.”

“MG—”

I’m positively frantic now, and I have weird tremors running through my legs. I’m panting like I’ve just run an Iron Man. “I need to take a picture. I think this is it. This is the thing we’re going to find,” I hiss at him. Finally I feel the weight of his phone in my hand. “Are we clear? No one is around?”

“Well, not that I can see, but, MG, I worked security for years. I think we need to go. Now. Before the shift for the guards starts.”

I flick up the camera icon on his screen and start madly fiddling with the functions of the camera. “Okay. I need five seconds, and then we can get out of here.”

“Five seconds to what?” he asks as I take pictures of everything around us in rapid succession, the flash on the phone blinding us in the process. “Oh shit, girl. Warn a queen before you do something like that and get us caught.”

I blink tears from my eyes as I blindly snap one more picture. We pause as a door closes somewhere. Footsteps.

I want to pee my pants the way I did when I got stage fright in my third-grade musical. I don’t deal with stressful situations well at all. “Oh my God, do you think they saw the light?”

“MG, the Martians saw the flash from that phone.” His head swings frantically side to side, gauging the boxes around us.

The squawk of a radio and heavier footsteps approach. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I am going to jail. We are going to jail. And that’s if this is a cop. If it’s the White Rabbit . . . well, it’s curtains for us.

I must have said that last part out loud because L answers, “Not if I can help it. Up.”

“Up?”

“Up.” He puts his hands under my butt and boosts me up. I scramble as quietly as possible on top of the towering stack of boxes wrapped in plastic and go still. Beside me I don’t hear anything but a grunt, and suddenly L is on top of a taller stack of boxes.

Immobility is the name of the game. I’m an icicle. I’m a statue. I’m a box. I’m Trogdor’s Halloween costume. I’m sitting on top of a stack of plastic, and if the guard below us looks up, what am I going to say? “Oh, uh . . . hi. Lovely day for warehouse tanning.” The wig on my head is stifling, and I fight every urge in my body to scratch the itch on my nose.