I pick up the photo and show it to him.
It’s a picture of Emilio standing next to Tim, the boy with progeria. They’re in front of the Bellagio fountains, and Emilio apparently took the photo himself by holding the camera out in front of him.
Tim has a grip on Emilio’s other hand.
A nameplate on the desk tells us that it’s Project Director Dr. Turnisen’s work space. It’s the only photo on the desk.
So, he knew Emilio.
Is he the one who got him the files?
The RixoTray drive came from Dr. Schatzing. The files on it came from Dr. Turnisen? Is that it? Is that—
When Xavier speaks, it’s almost like he’s reading my mind. “He must be the one who provided Emilio with the access codes to this building.”
“But why?”
He shakes my head. “I don’t know. But I think we might have found what we were looking for. We need to go.”
“Hang on.” I flip out my phone and take a picture of the photograph. A thought comes to me. “Xavier, get some footage of the room.”
“We need to get moving, bro.”
“I know.” There are no bars on my phone, but that’s no surprise considering how far underground we probably are. “Just, quick. Get what you can. Maybe Fionna can analyze some of this stuff if we have images for her to search online with.”
He fishes out his phone, and the two of us set to work getting as much footage as we can in the next minute or two.
I whip open the drawers in Turnisen’s desk and find a number of USB drives with the RixoTray emblem on them and a small notepad that contains sets of alphanumeric sequences corresponding to dates. It only takes me a moment to realize all the dates are Sunday nights.
Manila folders can’t be hacked.
And neither can handwritten notes.
The digits and letters under all the dates are in pencil, but tonight’s had been erased before being rewritten in pen. It’s the only entry written in pen.
I photograph the pages, return the notebook to its place, and when I look up to see where Xavier is, I notice movement on the security camera monitor pointed at the front of the building.
Two vehicles have pulled up, and three men and a woman dressed in military fatigues are on their way to the front door.
Tarmac
“Xav!” I exclaim. “We gotta go. Now.” On the screen I see another vehicle trundling up the road toward the building.
We hurry to the elevator.
Hop inside.
As the doors close, I realize something. “The lights in the room were movement activated. Those people are going to find the lights on. They’ll know someone was down here.”
“Maybe no one will notice.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” But that’s a wish, not a prediction.
We reach the ground level. The elevator doors sweep open, and I hear voices and footsteps coming from the hallway that leads to the front lobby.
“Come on,” I whisper urgently. “We need to hide.”
We make it only five or six steps into the hangar before the lights blink on.
We dive down behind the nearest drone and hold our breath.
Across the hangar, the four Air Force personnel emerge from the hallway. They’re laughing and talking about one of their friends and how drunk he was last night.
Heart pounding, I wait for them to pass. From where we’re crouched beside the drone, I can see their legs as they cross the hangar toward the elevator.
As they come our way, we slide incrementally to the side to stay hidden.
They gather around the elevator no more than twenty feet from where Xavier and I are hiding.
There’s no reason for them to think someone might be in here. No reason for them to investigate the hangar.
Still, it’s possible.
All they have to do is look in our direction and—
The elevator doors open, they disappear inside, and then the doors close again.
“Let’s go.” I’m already on my feet. “Out the back, toward the tarmac.”
Xavier and I emerge into the night and sprint across the tarmac toward the maintenance building that hides our truck.
Charlene set the magic effects aside for the time being and focused on Emilio’s notebooks.
As she lifted one of them, a security pass card with an insignia for Groom Lake on it slipped out. The name on the card: Dr. J. Turnisen.
How did he get that?
Well, regardless, it definitely connected Emilio to the base.
She flipped open the notebook that it’d come from.
Emilio’s artistic bent came through in the sketches, doodles, graphs, and notes he’d left behind.
What caught her attention was the last entry, which Emilio had jotted down on the day before leaving for the Philippines. “8:46 Sunday night. The Schatzing grant?”
She stared at the words.
Cryptic, but they tied things back to Dr. Schatzing again.
That’s what he discovered.
Is that why he was killed?
Earlier this morning when Ratchford had met with her and Jevin, he’d asked if they knew anything about a timeline.
So.
She had to do this now. Tonight. Find out whatever she could from Dr. Schatzing.
Jevin wouldn’t want you to do this.
No, but she didn’t have to tell him. She could just head over, get the information she needed, and come back before he returned from Groom Lake.
For the show, she had plenty of alluring outfits here at the Arête that she could choose from. Some were obviously designed only for stage work, but some would work perfectly for passing as a high-end escort.
She could get an audience with Dr. Schatzing tonight, and she could ask him in person what he knew about Emilio and the promise he’d made to Tim at the hospital when he gave the boy his word that he was going to help him not grow old so fast.
Schatzing expected his escorts to arrive at eight, which meant she needed to get there early if she was going to talk with him before the real escort arrived.
Using her phone, she looked up his address online. If she hurried, there should be just enough time to get changed and drive over to Summerlin to his subdivision.
Laying the notebook aside, Charlene went to her wardrobe to find just the right clothes.
“Where were you two?” Fred gasps as we round the corner.
“Long story,” I tell him. The desert is cooler than when we’d entered the building. A scattering of distant stars glance down at us detachedly through the night.
He checks the time. “I need to go. Did you find what you were looking—”
His radio blares to life, asking for all security units near Gate 11 to take their stations. “Possible Roswell.”
“Roswell?” Xavier says.
“It means intruder, someone who’s not supposed to be here.”
“The lights,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Motion sensors in the — never mind.”
“You guys gotta go. Now.”
Xavier and I jump into my truck.
Fred hands Xavier his walkie-talkie. “Take this in case you need it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be alright. Keep an ear on what’s going on. Take it slow, stay on the main roads, keep heading east. Call me when you get home.”
“Can we leave before the shift change?”
“If anyone asks you for a clearance code, tell them you’re in a forty-twenty-two. It means there’s a family emergency and you need to leave. Now, go on, get moving before someone sees us back here.”
He gets into his truck and peels off south. I head east. While I do, Xavier checks his phone and notifies me that there’s a message from Fionna that the USB drive Fred handed over to the blackmailer was accessed and has now subsequently been erased.