SAM DIDN’T CHARGE AT me like a wild animal since two weeks ago when I walked out of the kitchen on him. He was giving me space, which I appreciated, because I needed to work out in my mind this thing called blackmail.

I had no idea what I was even looking for. Rick didn’t appear to know, either. Even if I did find something incriminating, I wasn’t so sure handing it over to someone like Rick would be easy, even with the threat of the pictures of me. I’d grown up with the Clearys, and to stab them in the back like this wasn’t something I could do without it weighing heavily on my conscience, dream library job or not.

And then there was Sam, sweet, always half-naked Sam who had seeped under my skin and sexified my whole damn world. The guy who made breakfast for me every morning, most of which was bacon-related and probably had already taken two years off my lifespan. The guy who read my Lisa Montgomery books without reducing them to book porn. I didn’t want to hurt him, and that wasn’t just the lust talking, either. He was a good person, and I enjoyed his company even when his head wasn’t buried between my thighs, fucking me senseless with the skill of that tongue.

Holy hell, that tongue.

But he’d acted distant these last two weeks, not toward me exactly but like something was bothering him and he didn’t want me to know. Every time he and Riley were in the same room together, they spoke in low voices until I came in and they both snapped their mouths closed.

Not before I heard the name Rose, though. The Cleary kid sister who always had a smile on her face as brilliant as her sunshine-colored pigtails, who often wanted to play yellow bird tag, and who was mysteriously absent from all conversations with me. Curious, yes, but hardly political career ending.

On Friday afternoon when I had just about completed my second full week of my internship, I checked my phone in the staff break room to discover a text from Sam. It was a picture of a house on tall stilts in the middle of the ocean with the words Zombie Apocalypse Genius across the top. He’d likely sent it to all his contacts, not just me, but a fuzzy ball of warmth still swelled inside my chest.

Because I had a real, honest-to-goodness question to ask him, I texted him back.

Geniuses unite! Do you have cowboy boots?

I dropped my phone in my purse, but a soft, muffled ding indicated another text. According to the clock on the wall, I still had four minutes until I had to continue digitizing and translating a beautiful old Spanish photo album, so I checked my phone again.

Are these two thoughts related? his text read.

A ridiculous grin blossomed across my face. HA! No. Going to a cowboy bar tonight with some interns.

Does size matter?

I frowned. Are we still talking about cowboy boots?

Yes. And a second later: Pervert.

I burst into laughter.

“My, my,” Charlotte said, shutting her locker. One side of her head had been freshly buzzed while the other, longer side of her hair spiraled over one shoulder, the purple tips flirting with her sleeved-tattoo. She arched her eyebrows quizzically. “Someone’s making you blush more than Nicole does, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Hey, I resemble that remark.” Nicole was darkening the numbered ink on the backs of her hands with a Spongebob pen wrapped around her neck with a cord. The red tint to her cheeks hadn’t faded any since an unfortunate conservation incident a few days ago involving too much bleach and a nineteenth century cartoon.

I shrugged, trying, and probably failing, to be nonchalant about my own facial color. “His name is Sam, and he’s...” I had no idea how to finish that thought, so I shook my head down at his next text.

I don’t have any cowboy boots.

Me: Then why did you ask about size?

Charlotte slammed her locker. “Sam, huh? Why don’t you invite him along tonight?”

“Uh...” I didn’t really have a good reason not to. “Maybe I will.”

“Well, come on.” She nodded toward the door. “We don’t want Janice to give us her evil eye for being late, now do we?”

I quickly stashed my phone in my locker, but glanced at Sam’s last text.

You asked about boots so I thought we were getting personal. ;)

Getting personal with Sam. A rush of heat zipped to my center, and I bit my lip on a breathy chuckle. I was pretty sure we had ventured far past getting personal already.

* * *

SAM DIDN’T GO WITH us. He wasn’t home when I got there, so I texted him an invitation. His reply back disappointed me even though it had no reason to.

Not my scene. Have fun.

So I was home with Riley, contemplating what to do with myself during the hour I had before I was to meet Nicole and Charlotte at the cowboy bar.

Riley knocked back the rest of his beer in the kitchen while he tapped out a text on his phone then laid it on the island. “You sure you don’t want to come hang out with me on U Street?”

If I didn’t have other plans, I might have considered it, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hang out with him again after the way he’d acted at the restaurant. I was seriously beginning to wonder if too many years in D.C. rotted people from the inside out. Riley, like Rick, wasn’t who I thought he was. I wanted to give him a chance to prove me wrong, but not tonight.

“No offense, but you’re the wrong chromosome,” I said from my perch on the stool at the island. “My fellow interns have insisted since we couldn’t do this last weekend.” Nicole had had some emergency with her turtle, Jimmy, and I was too afraid to ask about details.

“Well...” He came closer, his beer breath leading the way, and patted my hip on his way past. “You know my number if you change your mind, sweetheart.”

I stared at his back, my jaw in my lap, while an uneasy shiver raced across my shoulders. Sweetheart? Really? As far as I was concerned, that made me sound like more of a stranger to him than he was to me. Did he not remember the field trip to the National Air and Space Museum in sixth grade when the creeper who kept following us called me that, and I flipped out? Apparently not.

As his footsteps tromped upstairs, I traced the marbled pattern on the granite while I cut my gaze from it to his phone and back again. He hadn’t locked it, and the screen still glowed. Curiosity flashed my hand out. I hated what I was doing, what I was about to do, because I didn’t want to be one of those people. But I guessed I was. Hide your phones, everyone.

I zipped through his contacts until I found one for Rose, and it listed an address in Pasadena, Maryland. Not far away at all. I could Google the address, maybe find something incriminating, not for Rick but for myself, and then lie to him if I actually found some worthy information. Which I probably wouldn’t since it was just an address.

Or I could’ve sat there and continued to examine the granite countertop. My inquisitiveness was part of what led me toward a career in libraries. Of course, it was also part of what led to a pregnancy at sixteen. I shouldn’t want to know what I might find, and yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to just let all of this go without knowing something. Maybe I could help the Clearys if they needed it. And maybe there was a special place in hell for snoopers.

I pushed to my feet and headed to the front door where I’d left my purse. A quick run-through on the internet probably wouldn’t yield much. Might as well begin with that and suffer eternal damnation later.

My fingers flew over the keypad, and soon several listings for a drug rehabilitation center scrolled down the page. Oh my God. Was that where Rose was? Free-spirited, sweet Rose? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine her needing help for an addiction. But I supposed it would be difficult for anyone to come to terms with something like that, especially family. Poor Riley. Poor Sam.

My mind whirring, I wandered back into the kitchen, and because the shower sounded upstairs—and because hell could make a nice vacation if I brought some flame-proof books—I searched through the rest of Riley’s phone. There were about three thousand photos of him posing with beautiful women and almost as many texts. Most of the texts listed specific sender names, but a few read Unknown or Blocked. Interest piqued, I opened a random one.

Abandoned warehouse

4 miles E of city

2 pm sharp

Bring shovel.

Shiny, happy, legitimate things usually didn’t go down at abandoned warehouses. I didn’t need a Lisa Montgomery book to clue me in to that. So what had Riley been doing at one? Whatever it was, it felt shady to a dark degree.

* * *

LATER, NICOLE, CHARLOTTE, and I sat at a table near the wooden dance floor while twangy country music blasted through the speakers. The more white wine I tipped back, the faster the cowboy hats blurred and do-si-doed past. At first, the sawdust smell in the club had energized me, but the more people danced, the more the smell soured with body odor.

The three of us didn’t wear cowboy boots. In fact, we looked far removed from the red, paisley bandanas hanging off chins, tight jeans, and belt buckles as big as my head. Charlotte wore silvery, futuristic makeup with a silver and black pin-striped dress she had poured herself into. The unshaved portion of her hair was arranged into tiny pinned coils all over the side of her head, giving her a sophisticated dominatrix-type look. Nicole wore the same gray skirt suit she had on at the library, complete with her giant tie-dyed parachute bag. Her Spongebob pen peeked one giant eye between the buttons on her chest, as if reading the newly inked numbers all over her hands.

I wore what I would wear to bed, shorts and my Reading is Sexy T-shirt, with my hair pulled up in a ponytail and my black hipster glasses perched on my nose. Now all I needed was a book, someone to turn down the music, and maybe one of those old-fashioned lanterns dangling from the high-beamed ceiling so I could party like it was 1899.

If Sam had come with us, I would’ve made more of an effort. Probably. It really bothered me that he hadn’t come, but it wasn’t like I owned him or anything. He had his own life, and major spoilers ahead, but I wasn’t always a part of it.

I numbed this feeling and all the rest with another glass of white wine.

“Hey, whoa. Save some for the rest of us, Paige,” Charlotte shouted over the music and winked. “Okay, drinking game time. If you can’t answer in less than three seconds, you have to take a drink. What or who were you just thinking about?” She pointed both index fingers across the table at Nicole. “Go.”

“Uh, curtains,” she said with a wistful smile.

Charlotte held her double fingers on Nicole with a confused tilt to her mouth, then aimed them at me. “Sam,” she said at the same time I did.

“Damn it, you’re good,” I said and slammed back more wine even though I’d answered in plenty of time. “What about you? What were you thinking about?”

The first trace of worry I’d ever seen in Charlotte’s dark eyes sobered me enough to sit up and take notice. “The most efficient way to chop off a leg.”

“What?” I asked over a sudden outburst of yee-haws on the dance floor.

She sloshed the remaining whiskey around in her glass. “My leg hurts, is all.”

Nicole leaned toward her, her Spongebob necklace knocking into the fancy umbrella in her strawberry daiquiri. “Don’t research what it could be on the internet because it will tell you that you’ll be dead by morning.”

Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then patted Nicole’s hand with a grin. “Thanks for that. Next question. If your life was a book, what would it be? Nicole.”

“The Hunger Games?”

I turned to stare at her. “Really? How?”

Nicole shrugged her hair into her face and took a huge gulp of her drink.

“Next.” Charlotte’s double guns landed on me.

Crap. I knew the true answer easily, but saying it out loud would surely earn me some strange looks.

Charlotte swirled her hands through the air. “One, two...”

“Lolita,” I blurted.

“Holy shit.” Charlotte sat back in her chair, her gaze steady. “You two went all in with two of the most banned books of all time. Nice lady balls, you two. Is it weird that I like you both even more now?”

“Yes.” I nodded slowly, her words, the twangy music, all the alcohol flowing through me like syrup. “It’s a little weird, lady balls and all.”

She lifted her glass to me. “I’m perfectly okay with that.”

Nicole linked her arm through mine, either a show of support or to get ready for another trip to the bathroom, I had no idea. But there wasn’t any judgement coming from either of them, no slut-shaming, no tough questions. It made me feel more than a little euphoric, though it did make me wonder about Nicole. How could her life be anything like The Hunger Games?

She licked the end of the umbrella in her drink and pointed it at Charlotte. “Your turn. What’s your life’s book?”

“Me? Without the lesbianism, I’m a Batgirl comic book, baby.”

We laughed while my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text from an unknown number, but I viewed it anyway. A picture of my face stared back, my dark hair splayed out over a pillow, my naked flesh captured from a lifetime ago. And behind the photo, a mahogany desk with the nameplate Janice McClure.

I buried the phone’s screen against my thigh as a shiver of disgust raced down my back. Had she seen the pictures yet? Because if she had, my dreams of working at the Library of Congress were through.

“You okay, Paige?” Nicole asked. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”

My phone buzzed again, and I jerked my head in a nod. Angling the screen away from her, I peered at the new text.

You’ve had plenty of time.

She comes in on Saturdays.

Give me something useful and this pic will vanish.