“You clean up pretty good,” Helen had told him as he stared goofily at himself in the mirror.
Of course, she had looked stunning. For a country girl, Joe’s wife could pull off the sophisticated city look whenever she wanted to. She was wearing a sleeved black dress that sported a dramatic v-neck. A few buttons on the side of the loose skirt added a unique element of style. Her matching high-heel shoes completed the look. When he’d seen her standing in the mirror behind him he couldn’t help but gawk for a few seconds. She had even added some waves to her hair, making it cascade over her shoulders like a shimmering golden brown waterfall.
They passed several rows of cars, walking as casually as possible as they approached the entrance to the facility. A brown-haired man in gray suit pants and a white-button up shirt, probably in his mid forties, strolled out of the glass doors talking busily on his cell phone. He carried his jacket over his shoulder. The conversation was something about sales and advertising. His voice trailed off as he made his way into the parking lot.
Helen looked at Joe and prodded him to keep moving. “We have to look like we belong,” she urged.
Joe smiled awkwardly and opened the front door for her. She nodded politely and entered the building ahead of him. Inside, the facility was a web of activity. A security desk sat off to the side where a guard was busy checking off a form. Men and women in suits, lab coats, and a few business casual outfits hustled up and down the stairs, and across the floor. In the center of two spiral staircases, a circular water fountain stood in the middle, sending water spraying into the air in a constant stream. The pool of water was surrounded by a short wall crafted from mountain stone. Different kinds of plants and foliage accented the corners and pillars in the atrium. And several long, metal cylinders extended down from the ceiling, each holding a bright white light bulb in the center.
Helen had done her research before the drive down to Atlanta. She had memorized the layout of the building so they would look like they knew where they were going. The longer they stood still in a spot, the more suspicious they would appear.
“This way,” she said, making sure to keep moving.
He tried to keep up, staying close to Helen’s side, but she was walking fast, like all the other people in the building appeared to be.
“The entrance to the packing facilities should be around this corner.” Her assessment proved correct as they rounded a turn in the walkway. Straight ahead was a set of double doors with a keypad just to the left of them.
Helen went straight to the keypad and entered in the five-digit code she had enabled earlier on her computer. Joe shouldn’t have been surprised when it worked, but he was. There was a quick buzz of an electronic lock then a click just before the door swung open. She glanced sideways at him with a smirk.
“Oh, you’re good,” he praised her as they passed beyond the threshold and into a more sterile-looking hallway.
It reminded him of a hospital corridor. As fantastic as the atrium had been, the hall was the polar opposite. The walls were bare, and the tiled floor seemed antiquated compared to the modern exterior. The two hurried along at a brisk pace, but tried not to look like they were hurrying. It was a fine line.
The passage wrapped around to the back of the facility. Along the way Joe and Helen passed several doors, none of which were the ones they were searching for. Helen’s pace began to slow slightly, and she looked back a few times at some of the doors they had already passed.
“You remember which one we’re looking for, right?” he tried not to sound panicked.
“Yeah,” she didn’t sound confident. “I thought it was right here but…” They came to a sharp bend in the corridor and were greeted by a steel door at the end of the hall.
There was a keypad next to it just like the one they’d seen at the entrance to the passageway they were currently in. The only difference was the man in the security guard outfit sitting next to it.
Chapter 36
“It will have to wait until the morning,” Jabez said as he stepped away from the group huddling around the electronic glow of the tablet. “And it may be later in the morning if this snow keeps up.”
Sean turned his attention back to the image on the screen. “My concern is that even if we are able to get out on the road and into those mountains, will we be able to recognize this place?”
Adriana zoomed in on the key spot on the map then tapped a few other places on the screen. A green pin plopped onto the oddly shaped canyon.
“Now we have a digital waypoint to follow. GPS will guide us straight to it,” she explained. “I just hope the roads are safe enough. With all the snow, some of the mountain passes could be potentially dangerous.”
Sean’s face blushed slightly. “Yeah, I should have thought of that.”
The stress was getting to him. He should have slept well the previous night in Istanbul, but instead he had tossed and turned in the soft, luxurious bed. All he could think about was stopping the mad man, who called himself some kind of prophet. He thought about calling Mac to see if his friend had made any progress with the Biosure investigation, but he resisted. Joe would need at least a little time to figure out a way into the facility, and even more time to get the samples to Dr. Solomon.
“I suppose for now, we will just have to try and be patient,” Adriana cut into his thoughts.
He snapped out of it and nodded quickly. “Yep. Guess all we can do is hunker down and ride out this storm.”
“The forecast says it will clear out later tonight and that the late morning temperatures will be in the upper forties,” Jabez informed the group before wandering away to talk to some of his men.
“Hopefully it gets close to that warm up in the mountains,” Sean commented. “But the temperature drops three degrees every thousand feet you climb in elevation. So, it’s unlikely it will be that warm up there.”
Adriana’s eyebrows crinkled together and she turned to face him. “How do you know that?” She wondered. “That is a fairly random bit of knowledge.”
Sean let out a snort. “I learned it in a high school ecology class I took. Weather is something I’m fascinated by,” he explained. “I don’t know why. I’ve just always found it interesting.”
“You really do have your mind’s fingers in a lot of cookie jars, don’t you?” she asked the question with a thin smile.
“I guess,” he shrugged. “I’d like to have them in a few less jars.”
She switched off her tablet and shoved it back into her small backpack. A few seconds later, she removed the leather book Sean had noticed her reading before. He let his curiosity take over and prodded.
“What is that? I noticed you reading it earlier.”
She held it out to him. “It’s a journal I found while I was in Germany.” He took it out of her hand and examined it.
The inside was full of stuff he couldn’t translate. He recognized many of the Greek letters, mostly from his days at the University of Tennessee. But what any of it meant was a mystery. Sean knew how to speak a few languages, a few of them ancient, but Greek wasn’t one of his specialties. It was, however, one of Adriana Villa’s.
“What kind of journal?” he asked as he fingered through the pages. “Obviously, it’s very old.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is quite old. If I had to guess, I would say mid to late seventeenth century.”
He nodded. “Looks that way.” Sean had come up with the same assessment based on the materials used for the pages and the cover.