Page 128 of The Donor’s Dilemma

Rushing out of the cupboard, she ran around the desk and rummaged through the drawers. The phone on the desk started to ring. She let it ring through to the answering machine while she found a small key that looked about the right size for the cabinet.

She was still kneeling in front of the drawers, key in hand and listening to Harris’s voicemail greeting, when another voice cut in.

“Verity, what the fuck are you doing?”

She froze, staring at the answering machine.

It was Sienna.

“Hello?” she asked. How had Sienna find her? The question barely formed in her mind before Sienna answered it.

“There’s a camera. Listen, someone’s coming. Hide. Now.”

Judging by the urgency in Sienna’s tone, Verity wouldn't make it to the storage cupboard in time, so dove under the desk, pulling the chair in after her.

“Quiet,” Sienna whispered, as if she needed telling. If a vampire was about to walk through the door, there would be no point in her being “quiet”. They would hear her breathing, her racing heart, but Verity took a deep shaking breath anyway, willing her body to still.

A key rattled in the lock, turning but not unlocking, because Verity had left it unlocked. Patting her pockets, she realised the key was still in the storage cupboard door. The door creaked open and Verity knew she could do nothing about that now.

Feet strode across the carpet. Sure, confident steps. They crossed to the desk. Standing barely a foot from her hiding place. A drawer opened. Then another. Then the rustle of papers.

The shoes were mere inches from her own. Not security boots. Not cleaner’s shoes. Jeans. Who worked at the town hall and wore jeans?

She turned her head enough to catch a reflection in the blacked-out window, a figure’s back. Tall, relatively young. He turned his face for a second and she caught it: a nose ring, freckles, a bun high on his head.

It was one of Vivienne’s donors. The one they sat with at SubRosa. He was putting something into Harris’s drawer.

She held her breath, counting seconds, until he slammed the drawer shut and walked out, locking the door behind him.

The air left her body in a gasp. How had he not seen her? Not noticed the key she’d left in the door?

“Verity? You okay?” Sienna’s voice again.

She crawled from under the table and picked up the phone. “What the fuck was that?”

“I don’t know. That guy, was that one of Viv’s?”

“Yeah,” Verity breathed, looking around for the camera again. “He left something. Are you recording? Did you get that?”

“Yeah, we got it,” Sienna said. Another voice spoke in the background now, a hushed conversation.

Verity turned to the drawer he’d been in and pulled it open. Folders lay inside, ones that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

Pulling the files out she stood, careful to make sure the camera would see what she did before opening the first one. The city’s silver registry with owners' names and addresses and notes in the margin, unable to locate, secured. The next page: payment records to a Kane Goodwin. The next: an inventory of boards, paint, clothing and a megaphone. A list that read an awful lot like funding for protests and vandalism.

She flicked to the next page and nearly choked.

A list of names.

Names Verity recognised.

“What is it?” Sienna asked.

“Missing donors,” she said into the phone, voice shaking.

“All of them?” Sienna asked.

Third from the bottom of the list was Georgie. To Verity’s horror, she wasn’t the last name.