Page 88 of Never Tear Us Apart

“You never have to thank me, Ellery. I got your back, always.”

The way he says it, I almost believe him.

After we exit the Jeep, we make our way around to the back of City Hall. When we reach a set of stairs to a subterranean entrance, he looks around. “Keep an eye open would you?”

“For?”

“People, dogs, assholes named Royce.”

He reaches into his wallet, grabs a card out of it, then grabs the door handle. After running the card up and down a couple of times, it opens.

“How did you do that?” I shake my head in wonder.

“Story for another day.” He pulls it open and waves for me to enter. “Hurry up now, Miss Butler. No dawdling.“

I slip inside and he follows, closing it quietly behind us. “Why isn’t there a security system?” I whisper.

“Small towns,” he shrugs. “They think security is beneaththem. What they don’t know is that more crime happens in small towns than it does in the city.”

“Is that a fact?” I ask with a smirk.

“Something tells me in this town, yes.”

We make our way down a dark corridor and when I reach out for his arm, he slides his hand in mine, holding it tight. “I got you.”

We weave down one hall and then another like rats in a maze, and when we reach a set of stairs, we climb slowly. When we reach the top we are on the main floor of City Hall, just before the rotunda.

“The DA’s office is that way.” I point to a set of doors on the left.

He looks both ways, then cranes his neck up to look to the second floor. Seeing the coast is clear, he leads me toward the double doors.

When we reach them, he tugs one, and when it doesn’t budget, he peers through the glass in the door. I’m about to ask if he has a hair pin or some other doodad when he nods to a side entrance.

Grabbing the doorknob he pulls and surprisingly, it opens. “Janitor,” he whispers. “I saw a mop and bucket on the other side, which means they’re in there cleaning so we have to be quiet. Do you know how to do that?” he asks suggestively.

I smack his arm and he grabs my hand, sticking up his finger to be quiet. Tiptoeing down the sea of cubicles, we make our way to the large, singular office in the back. Cruz grabs the door, pulls it open gently so as to not make any noise, and I slip in, and he follows.

“Okay,” I whisper, relieved we dodged the janitor, “time to get to work.”

I make my way down the row of filing cabinets as Cruz looks out the door and when I get to the row marked B, I pull it open.Flipping through the files, I don’t see my father’s case, so close it and move to the desk.

It takes a moment, but when I pull open the bottom drawer, I find it. It’s thicker than a bushel and takes two hands to lift.

Placing it on the desk I wave Cruz over and open it. “What’s this?” I point to a symbol on the lower bottom page of the first page—a witness testimony, with the name redacted.

“Not sure,” he shrugs. “Keep looking.”

“I’m going to copy the file,” I whisper. “There’s too much here and we need time to go through it.”

“Good idea,” he nods.

Thankfully, there is a copy machine in this office. I make my way over, hoping it’s one of the newer ones, and not one of those archaic systems that sounds like a dump truck.

It takes more than a few minutes to copy the contents, but the machine is in fact one of the newer ones, thank God, meaning it’s both quiet, and faster than I imagined.

When I’m done copying every page, I give Cruz the stack and replace it in the drawer.

“What are you doing?” he whispers when he sees me rummaging around.

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