Ashley Mullins's Arc

Chapter 3 of 2

The circled name in Hannah's photo was a smear. Ashley had stared at it for an hour. The plaque sat too far back, the print too small. She had one lead left. A clean copy of that same plaque lived in the library archive. But the archive stayed locked, and only staff carried keys. Ashley needed the name read clearly, and she had no way in. She found Hannah on the quad, hunched on the fountain's lip, turning her cracked camera over in both hands. "I tried zooming in," Hannah said. "It just blurs. I mean, maybe a better screen—no. It's gone. The name's gone." "There's a clean one," Ashley said. "In the archive. Same plaque. We just can't get to it." "Then we're stuck." Hannah pressed the camera to her chest. Erika sat down on Ashley's other side without asking. She was the one sister who always looked ironed, even now, scrolling her phone with a tight jaw. Ashley braced for a lecture. Erika didn't give one. "That van again," Erika said. She held the screen out. Her notes app showed a column of dates, times, block locations. "Same plates. Parked behind the library wing. Three mornings this week." She kept her voice flat. "I've logged every sighting. Nobody believes me." "A van," Ashley said. "Behind the library." "Rusty. Abandoned-looking. But someone uses it." Erika met her eyes. "The library's archive is in that wing. The same files everyone keeps circling." Ashley stood. "Show me." They crossed to the library's brick back lot. The van sat where Erika said, tires flat, one window cracked. Ashley tried the door. It swung open. Inside, the air smelled of mildew and old paper. Hannah pointed under the front seat. A shoe box. Ashley dragged it out and lifted the lid. Notebooks. Four of them, each labeled with a stranger's name. Chemistry notes. Research. All stolen, all hidden here. But no plaque. No archive file. Ashley's stomach dropped. She had come for a name and found someone else's crime. Then Erika lifted a folded sheet wedged against the box. A printout. The archive's own record, carried out of the locked room by whoever cached this van. The plaque photo filled the top, sharp and clean. Below it, the name. Ashley read it. Her breath caught. It was the name from every anonymous note. The name circled in Hannah's blurry photo. Now she could say it out loud and no one could call it a guess. "That's him," Hannah whispered. "That's who was in the hall." Erika stared at the notebooks, then the printout. "Whoever took these," she said slowly, "had keys to the archive. Free run of the locked wing." Her hand tightened on her phone. "And he knows this van is his secret." Ashley folded the printout and slid it into her jeans. She had the name. But she had also walked into the tormentor's hiding place. If he came back, he would know someone had opened the box.