Adam started rifling through the desk, and Liz opened the top drawer of the file cabinet, marked Abyss-Humidity. She pulled out the first file and scanned it.
"Abyss" turned out to be a bunch of articles about a hole in Colorado that led to the center of the earth, where an alien race had built a civilization. This was according to some questionable sources that DuPris had interviewed. It sounded insane to Liz, but then the Astral Projector's stock-in-trade wasn't exactly reality. DuPris had just used the newspaper as a cover for his investigation of Michael, Isabel, and Max and his search for the Stone of Midnight. Liz was amazed that he'd kept records at all.
Diligently Liz skimmed every article in the drawer, even though there were hundreds of them. She didn't want to miss anything that might help Alex. By the time she reached the file titled Humidity, she was struggling to contain her giggles over the ridiculousness of it all. "Humidity" was an article about how aliens from some planet called Neutron-6 needed to keep their skin moist at all times or they'd shrivel up like worms on the sidewalk after it rained.
"The scary thing is that people believe this stuff," Liz muttered to herself as she replaced the file. She had just closed the top drawer of the filing cabinet when she heard footsteps in the hallway outside the office.
The hair on Liz's arms rose as the doorknob started to turn. She glanced at Adam, and his eyes were wide with fear.
"Quick!" Liz hissed. "Under the desk!"
A second later the two of them were smashed together in the small space in front of DuPris's desk chair. "The light," Adam whispered as the door creaked open.
Liz squeezed her eyes shut. There was nothing to do about it now.
Liz strained her back until it hurt and peered under the metal edge of the desk. She stretched and managed to glimpse a pair of sensible shoes and a set of wheels on a cart. An odor of disinfectant wafted through the room.
It was the cleaning service. Liz's heart calmed in her chest. Although it still wouldn't be good to be discovered, she'd take the maid over DuPris any day.
"Always leaving the light on," the cleaning woman mumbled to herself.
As the cleaning lady emptied a garbage can near the door, Liz started to become very aware of Adam's arm lying across her stomach and his cheek pressed up against her shoulder. She could feel his heart beating… and it was thumping pretty rapidly, too.
She glanced at his face, and in the moment before he looked away, she saw that he was staring at her with wide, amazed eyes. Liz tried to shift away, but the space under the desk wasn't exactly roomy.
Adam's obvious crush on her had always seemed kind of sweet… from a distance. But up close, it was making her nervous and tense. Liz held her body taut, trying to prevent any skin contact whatsoever, trying to send out an anti-attraction vibe. She listened to Adam's ragged breathing and felt her face flush.
Liz stole a peek at Adam again. It wasn't that he wasn't cute-quite the contrary. He was muscular and sleek. But Adam wasn't Max, and that was that.
The cleaning woman finally left, shutting off the light and closing the door behind her. Liz scrambled out from under the desk as fast as she could and brushed herself off. The darkness in the office seemed far too intimate, so Liz hurried to turn the overhead light back on.
Adam didn't emerge for another minute, lingering as if he'd hoped their uncomfortable situation didn't have to end. He smiled awkwardly at her as he climbed to his feet.
Liz needed to take control before Adam said or, even worse, did something they'd all regret later. "Okay," she said. "Back to work."
"I'm done with the desk," Adam said. He sounded almost remorseful, as if he'd done something wrong. As maybe he had… in his imagination. Liz cut that thought off before her own imagination started supplying details.
"Then check out DuPris's bookshelf," Liz ordered. "Look inside the books, too, in case he's hidden something inside one of them."
Liz returned to the file cabinet, and by the time she was halfway through the third drawer, she had a monster crick in her neck. As she reached deep into the drawer to pull the files and condense them so they opened more easily, her finger grazed something along the side of the drawer. Liz yanked her hand away. "Ow," she muttered. She stuck her index finger into her mouth, tasting the coppery flavor of her own blood. Paper cut.
But what had she cut her finger on?
With her other hand Liz reached into the space between the hanging files and the side of the drawer. And found a manila folder that had been inserted into that space sideways.
She pulled it out, her hand shaking with excitement. It could be a folder that had been dropped there accidentally, or it could be something DuPris hadn't wanted to be easily found…
Liz opened the folder. It contained a single photo.
A photo of a middle-aged guy in a military uniform shaking hands with Sheriff Valenti. Both men were smiling at the camera.
With a jolt Liz realized that she recognized the man in the uniform.
It was Mr. Manes.
Alex's father.
Liz's stomach lurched.
This doesn't have to mean anything, she told herself as she stared at the picture. Alex's dad is retired air force, and Valenti was the town sheriff. There could be hundreds of reasons why they were hanging out. It could be some kind of macho-guy barbecue.
But the scene in the picture didn't look like it was taking place at a barbecue. It looked like an office. Valenti's office at the Clean Slate compound, to be exact.
Liz's heart dropped to the floor. It can't be, she thought. But what other explanation is there?
If Alex's father was at the secret compound, he had to be a member of Project Clean Slate, too.
FIVE
Maria tried to open the front door to her house as quietly as humanly possible, but she wasn't doing a great job. The keys seemed to be making an incredibly loud jangling racket as she unlocked the door. It was late-very, very late. She'd still been on the road back from the ranch house with Michael at nine, and that was hours ago.
Not that it really mattered. Her mom was probably out somewhere wearing clothes that were way too tight for someone her age.
Maria stepped into the house and saw her ten-year-old brother, Kevin, standing on the stairs in his pajamas.
"You are in so much trouble," he whispered, his mouth exaggerating the shape of his words.
"Why?" Maria whispered back. "Is Mom-"
"Maria, is that you?" her mother called from the living room.
As Maria groaned, Kevin zipped back up the stairs. Little weasel, Maria thought without any real malice. Her little brother was an expert at getting out of the line of fire, a skill she wished she possessed.
Maria turned to see her mother swooping toward her across the foyer, a worried look on her face. She was wearing regular mom clothes-sweatshirt and jeans. Not a good sign.
And right beside her was Sheriff Kasey Dodson. A very bad sign.
For a second Maria thought her heart, trailing her entire circulatory system, was going to leap out of the top of her skull. Sure, she was late, but so late that her mom called the police on her?
Or what if Sheriff Dodson was Clean Slate, like Liz and Max suspected? What if she knew who Marias friends were and had come there to interrogate her?
"Where have you been?" Marias mother demanded. "It's after eleven, and I got no call, no note. Not acceptable."
"I was just over at Liz's," Maria lied quickly.
She couldn't say she'd gone on a road trip with a guy-even Michael. Her mother would freak, and mentioning him in front of the sheriff seemed like a bad idea-just in case she did know who Michael, Max, Isabel, and Adam really were.
"We got sucked into a late movie and lost track of the time. It was some old horror flick about giant ants." Maria knew that she ranked high on the list of the world's worst liars, but she could fool her mother if it was really necessary. Sheriff Dodson was another story. Maria glanced at the new sheriff to see how she was taking Maria's alibi.