She came to my side, looking down at the small lock. It didn’t look all that complicated, and my eyebrows shot up when Harper pulled out a bobby pin from her hair. “Let’s see if this works,” she said with a grin.
“How do you know how to do that?”
“You think we sit around watching true crime and I haven’t tried a few things? The better question is, how have you not tried to do this?”
After a few quiet moments, the lock clicked open. I carefully lifted the wooden lid, revealing a stack of documents.
“Weird place to store more documents.”
“Really weird. And with how security-crazy my dad is, I don’t think he would leave really important documents in a place like this.”
“Okay, then, what are they? What kind of documents is he locking up that you don’t think are important enough?”
I pulled out the documents and scanned them, my eyes narrowing with each line. They detailed a series of names, addresses, and shipments. The addresses were recognizable, places around our smaller town, Havenwood, but a lot of them were in the city of Valeport that we connected to, and ones in the actual boat port.
There wasn’t much information past the dates and port names, but a few had smaller amounts of money marked next to them.
“Maybe shipments he had to help keep safe?”
Harper shrugged. “It’s plausible, but weird. Does he do security for literally anything?”
“I don’t know. I guess I assumed only people and buildings.” I pulled out the next page. The transactions were a lot bigger for a few of those. “These all have weird names next to them.Starlight, Black Pearl, Silver Bullet. Those sound like nicknames or something.”
“For what? A fucking pirate ship?” Harper asked. “What does that mean?”
“It could be boat names, maybe?” I pulled out my phone, taking a quick picture before flipping to the next page. “Don’t these payments seem a little high for a security company to make from one shipment being watched?”
“I would say so, but then again, what do I know about what he would charge? Maybe they were more important items.”
I flipped to the next stack underneath these, the lab results and notes from doctors making my throat tight as tears bubbled up. I hated facing that my dad was sick. That in a few years, I could be all alone.
I was already so alone. What would I do when he was really gone?
The lab results all showed numbers next to them, each one green besides a few random ones that were in the red.
“Why would he keep those locked up?” Harper asked, looking them over with me.
“I don’t know. He’s shown me plenty of the lab results before. I think he’s even shown me these.”
“So what’s the secret? Is he worried someone is coming in here to steal lab results?”
“I mean, he hasn’t wanted many people to know he’s sick.”
“Is he getting worse and doesn’t want you to know?”
“I don’t know. Set it down. I want to take some pictures of these.”
Harper laid them out, helping me snap a photo of each one.
Something banged outside, making us both jump.
“We should put it back,” she said. “Being in here freaks me out.”
I nodded, but my mind was racing. This document raised more questions than it answered. I laid the papers back in the compartment and closed the drawer.
We quickly made sure everything was exactly as we had found it before we slipped out of the office. My heart pounded with a mix of fear and adrenaline as we made it back into the hallway.
“Okay, what are you going to do?” Harper asked.