Chapter 9

The musty stairway ended at the subbasement which then connected the building to a series of vast, underground tunnels linking all of the buildings on the old part of campus together. Steam pipes for heating, water mains and power lines all ran through the tunnel system from building to building. As one of the oldest and most central buildings on campus, Harrison Hall was the hub of the network. On his previous excursion Eric had discovered several locked doors leading away from the central portion of the Harrison Hall subbasement. Earlier that day, he'd accessed a map of the steam tunnel system and learned that the doors opened onto tunnels leading to different sections of the campus. He longed to explore the network, but unfortunately, he lacked the necessary access key. He resolved to get one on Monday. The people who wanted this computer mystery cleared up ought to be able to arrange that.

The subbasements had never been modernized. The old stonework corridor was silent and dark and a damp, musty odor hung in the chilly air. Using the narrow beam of the flashlight, Eric led the way down the dank passage to the old janitor's closet. Upon finding it empty, as expected, he pulled Lori inside, closed the door behind them and then turned on the light, reluctantly releasing her hand to do so. The single bare bulb cast a sickly yellow-white circle of light from the cobweb-covered ceiling.

Lori looked around. "You were right about one thing," she sniffled, stifling a sneeze. "Lots of dust." Wiping her nose impatiently with the back of her hand, she studied the floor intently. "The only footprints are ours," she added agreeably, pointing out the marks from his size-fourteen sneakers and her own tiny bare feet. She began to look around the cluttered and dusty space, finally letting out an excited squeal. "Eric, look over here!"

Eric turned toward a corner of the room piled with a few dirty cardboard boxes and some old tin buckets-the kind with the rollers and mop-squeezers that weigh about half a ton each.

"There's a mouse in this bucket," she whispered excitedly.

"Alive?" he asked. He didn't see why she'd be getting excited about a rodent. It was an old building, after all, but, heck, she was a zoologist.

Lori giggled. "Not that kind of mouse, silly. Your kind of mouse." She lifted an old USB computer mouse by the cable. "Looks like our hacker has been upgrading his equipment."

Eric nodded. "Everything is cordless now. This is practically an antique."

Lori cheerfully stuck the mouse into the Ziploc she'd pulled out of her pocket and then resumed her detailed examination of the room. Eric guessed that she probably read a lot of mysteries and was really getting into the idea of searching for clues. Her enthusiasm was contagious, however and he found himself enjoying the search. "Aha!" she cried.

"Now what?" He was almost afraid to ask.

"Skin," she whispered, apparently remembering sporadically that this was supposed to be a stealthy operation.

Now even Eric was excited. "Skin?"

She whipped her keys out of the front pocket of her skirt and pulled a tiny pair of tweezers from the miniature Swiss Army knife she used as a key chain. The lady was full of surprises. Carefully, she lifted a maybe one-square-inch piece of translucent white stuff and added it to the bag.

"Reptile skin, Eric," she told him seriously. "Somebody has had some kind of reptile down here and it was shedding." She was practically quivering with excitement. "There's a tiny bit of flesh attached, too, like this got snagged on something sharp."

Eric took the bag from her hands and gazed reverently through the clear plastic to the white stuff inside. Sure enough, it resembled the snake sheds he'd occasionally found as a child poking through the wooded parts of Philadelphia's Fairmont Park. Then the meaning finally sunk in and he heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Then I'm not crazy," he told Lori, grabbing her by the waist and spinning her around. "I really did see a lizard!"

She grinned. "Well, you saw something, but I'm not sure that means you're not crazy." Her dark eyes looked up at him, crinkled mischievously, gleaming almost black in the harsh light. A lump the size of a dragon's egg formed in Eric's throat. She didn't move, just kept looking up at him and he couldn't help himself. Her eyes drifted shut as he lowered his face to hers and kissed her.

It had been quite a while since Lori had been kissed. Her first thought after Eric's lips had closed on hers was that he was way better at this than she'd have expected. That was also her last conscious thought for several minutes.

He was so tall that she had to strain upwards to reach him comfortably and her arms just sort of naturally wound themselves around his neck for support. There was well-toned muscle under the thick fabric of his borrowed sweatshirt, she noticed in some distant portion of her mind and his lips were firm but gentle, showing no hesitation as they expertly coaxed hers into opening for him. Eric nibbled gently at her lower lip, pausing to suck lightly at its center. She could smell the warm, masculine scent of his skin, even above the musty odor of the storeroom and it made her insides puddle.

The kiss continued. Lori gasped softly as Eric's tongue slid slowly, exploring along her front teeth. She returned the caress, slipping her own tongue alongside his and he groaned huskily, tightening his hold around her waist. Lori squirmed against him, wanting to get even closer. As he deepened the kiss, she could feel his erection pressing hard into her stomach.