“Is everything okay?” the security guard called out.
The driver, some guy wearing a red bandana, responded with a wave. Another gruff-looking guy with a tattoo on his cheek—I couldn’t really make out the design—was talking on a cell phone, but his voice was too muffled to hear.
“Keep low,” Hal whispered, pulling Callie down. Blood dripped from under the scarf onto the ground.
Still, I kept focused on the Jeep. There was an older man, probably in his seventies, sitting in the passenger seat. He looked much different than the other two men—less confident, more scared. Definitely out of his element.
The security guard hopped into his golf cart. I held my breath, waiting for all of them to leave, wondering what the holdup was and if they’d seen us.
Finally, the Jeep drove away with a screech, out the hangar door opening. The security guard’s back to me, I inched my head out a little farther, noticing that the Jeep wasn’t heading for the main gate—probably toward the tanker truck.
“We don’t belong here,” Callie whispered.
“Well, we’re not leaving now,” I said, checking for the security guard. A walkie-talkie strapped to his belt, he did a full lap around the interior of the hangar before finally heading outside.
Our cue to scope things out.
CHAPTER 22
We hurried across the airline hangar in search of anything that would give us a clue as to Amanda’s whereabouts. There had to be a connection. While Callie rifled through the folders on the security guard’s desk, perhaps looking for the folder I’d attempted to take from the travel agency, Hal tried to pry the lid off one of the storage crates. Meanwhile, I checked a luggage carrier to see if something might have been left behind.
“Any luck?” I called to Hal. He’d gotten the lid off, and was picking through what appeared to be cans of soup and vegetables.
He shook his head and went for another crate.
I wasn’t having much luck either. The luggage carrier was mostly empty except for a duffel bag filled with packing material.
“Nothing here,” Callie said, when I joined her at the desk.
The folders were full of receipts of various sorts—for things like maintenance equipment, oil deliveries, and plane repairs. I pulled a dark blue folder from the bottom of a stack, wondering if its color had any significance (the rest of the folders were plain manila). I closed my eyes and concentrated hard, running my fingers over the cover, but no images popped into my head.
I opened the folder. Inside was a map of Orion. Various points around town had been circled.
“What’s that?” Callie asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, noting that the building on Rantoul Street—the pharmacy I’d visited with Amanda—was one of the circled points, as was the travel agency. “Check this out,” I said to her, assuming that the other circled places were those once owned by the college.
A moment later, a loud banging sound cut through my core, stealing my breath. I turned to look. Hal had accidentally dropped one of the crate lids. I glanced toward the open hangar door, knowing that the security guard might have heard the noise.
Hal gestured to a large metal cabinet a few yards behind the guard’s desk. We all ran to it and huddled in front of the doors as Hal fumbled with the combination lock.
At the same moment, it felt as if an electrical current had shot through my veins. I stumbled back, feeling off-balance.
“What was that?” Callie whispered, making me wonder if she’d felt it, too. Smushed between the two of them, I touched the door hinge, suddenly able to picture a metal ladder and an underground room.
“The security guard’s on his way back,” Hal said. “He’s only a minute away.”
“How do you know?” I asked him.
Hal shook his head, seemingly at a loss for words. Meanwhile, Callie pushed her way in front of the lock. She squatted down and placed her ear up against it as she turned the dial, listening for the clicks to get the right combination.
I held my breath, suddenly noticing a bright red tag on the cabinet door. It read PROPERTY OF ORION COLLEGE OF PHARMACEUTICALS.
“He’s about ten yards from the hangar,” Hal said, referring to the guard.
Callie pulled at the lock, but it didn’t open.
“What do we do?” I asked, huddling in even closer, praying that the guard wouldn’t see us.
Callie took a deep breath and, in one quick motion, broke the lock apart, forcing it open by yanking at the dial. She tumbled back, landing on the concrete. Hal and I helped her up, each taking a hand. That same electrical current sensation moved down my spine.
“What’s going on?” Hal asked.
We shook our heads, because none of us knew. The only thing for certain was that we didn’t have time. “He’s just about to round the corner,” Hal said.
We yanked opened the cabinet, rushed inside, and shut the door behind us, only to discover that it wasn’t a cabinet after all.
It was a door to an underground room. A wobbly metal ladder, just like the one I’d pictured moments ago, led us down twenty steps; I counted them to remain calm.
“What are you doing here?” a voice snapped before I’d even reached the bottom rung of the ladder.
I turned around, stunned by who we’d found.
CHAPTER 23
Vice Principal Roger Thornhill was lying in a hospital bed staring back at us. There were monitors all around him, though it seemed like he was perfectly alert. Wearing a hospital gown, he looked weak, much thinner than I’d remembered him, even though it’d only been a couple of weeks.
“Mr. Thornhill, are you okay?” I took a step closer, noticing the bandage over his forehead.
“How did you find me?” he asked brusquely, ignoring the question. “Does anyone else know you’re here?”
It was almost too loud to hear him. A clanging motor was running somewhere; the noise was coming from some overhead ductwork that ran along the ceiling.
I blinked a couple times, barely able to believe what I saw—he was harnessed to the bed: thick straps were across his legs, middle, and chest; and his hands and feet were shackled.
Hal moved to see if he could help free him—but Thornhill shook his head, making an effort to wrap his fingers around one of the straps, as if to pull it away from Hal.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?” Hal asked, focused on Thornhill.
“I do,” he said, “but it’s best if they think they’re in control.”
“Best for whom?” I asked.
“For Amanda,” he said, meeting my gaze. His eyes were red, sprinkled with broken blood vessels. “Dr. Joy and the Official need to believe that they’re the ones in charge here.”
“Aren’t they?” Hal asked, nodding toward the straps.
I peered around the underground room. This was definitely a secret place. There were crude rock walls and a dirt floor. The smell of mildew was thick in the air. Unlike what we’d been told following Thornhill’s absence, this was clearly not part of any sort of rehabilitation. This was incarceration. Why didn’t he seem more relieved that we’d found him?
“We can get you out of here.” I looked toward Callie, hoping she’d be able to help him, since she’d recently become our own personal locksmith. She stepped toward his bindings.
“Callista, no! Get yourselves out,” he said. “It’s better this way.”
“Are you hurt?” Callie asked him.
“Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourselves. You need to be careful with Dr. Joy and the Official. Staying out of their clutches is our only hope—our only chance for finding Amanda.”
“But who exactly is this Dr. Joy?” I asked, wondering how Thornhill expected to help Amanda while being chained to a hospital bed. “What does he want?”
“Well, Amanda, of course,” he said.
“Yes, but why?” I asked, desperate to know the truth.
“Because she was born; that’s why. Don’t you understand?”
he asked, annoyance creeping into his voice, even as he struggled to be patient. “All of this stems from her birth—from the very fact that she was born. But listen to me. I can’t explain now. Just get out of here.”
I shook my head, still unclear. “Why?” I asked again.
“And—wait, who’s the Official?” Hal interrupted.
A surprised look flashed across his pale, gaunt face. “Why don’t you know any of this? I thought this was what you’d all be working on . . .” He trailed off, alarm in his voice.
I looked at Callie and Hal. Did he think Amanda had told us? Did she know any of these people?
“Joy’s in some trouble, too,” he continued. “It’s the Official we really need to be afraid of.”
“Who is the Official?” Callie asked.
He shook his head and gestured to what appeared to be a heart monitor, perhaps concerned that it was bugged.
I approached the monitor, noticing the bright red tag right away. Like the cabinet we’d entered to get down here, the tag read PROPERTY OF ORION COLLEGE OF PHARMACEUTICALS, making me think back to my conversation with Amanda, when she’d hinted that the college was corrupt—or those who were once affiliated with it were—even though it was no longer open.
“We need some answers,” Hal insisted, focusing on Thornhill. “We’ve been chasing clues since you got hurt, not knowing who to trust or what to believe. People tell us not to be together, but then those same people disappear. Amanda seems to be around every corner, but never in plain sight.”
“Can’t you give us any insight?” Callie pleaded.
“I can’t get into anything now,” Thornhill said, struggling to raise his voice above the sound of the motor. But then he looked uneasily back at the heart monitor, seemingly concerned his captors might hear him. “I’m sure you have a lot of what you already need. The four of you were able to find me, after all.”
I exchanged confused looks with both Hal and Callie. “The four of us?”
“Sir,” said Hal, “there’s just us three.”
Had his blow to the head been more severe than we originally thought? Four of us? An Official?
We looked back at him for some sort of explanation, but he was gazing past us toward the ladder.
First we saw boots—black, worn, military-style, laced. Then ripped tights. A denim skirt and plaid shirt. Straight, shiny black hair. Zoe Costas? What was she doing here?
I felt my mouth drop open.
“Huh?!” Hal asked at the sight of her.
“Are you lost?” Callie asked.
I’d barely ever talked to Zoe Costas before. The extent of our interaction was limited to one time in French class when she’d asked to borrow a pen. Not that I think she talked to many other people more than that. Still, she seemed to slip effortlessly into any group—one day hanging out with the band geeks, the next day lunching with the most popular kids at school. Everyone knew who she was, but at the same time, nobody seemed to know her at all.
Zoe stared at us, her hazel eyes wide and impenetrable, but still she did not speak. She was shaking her head slightly, but I didn’t know why. Was she disappointed? Was she surprised to learn that the situation was this dire?
“What is going on?” I demanded.
Still Zoe remained silent, eyes locked with Thornhill’s.
Then I turned back to Thornhill, far less interested in Zoe Costas—for now, anyway—than I was about finding Amanda. “Tell us what we need to know,” I demanded. “How can we find Amanda?”
“You need to learn everything you can about a program called C-33,” he said urgently. “It’s the key to cracking this thing. Find out about Dr. Joy’s original intent, then consider what would happen if that plan got hijacked.”
“What?” I asked, trying to commit these details to memory.
“You’ll find more answers in Washington, D.C.,” he muttered, looking back at the heart monitor again. “Go there. And find Robin, Ariel’s sister.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, feeling my heart clench. The name Ariel was suddenly like a giant neon sign, flashing behind my eyes.
“He means Amanda.” Zoe finally spoke. A small smile crossed her lips. “Ariel’s her birth name.”
“How do you know?” Hal asked, whipping his head toward her.
“I actually know more about Amanda than any of you.” She pulled at a strand of her glossy dark hair, the underside of which was dyed cobalt blue.
I shook my head, completely at a loss. I mean, was it possible that Cryptic Zoe Costas could provide the missing piece in our whole jigsaw puzzle of an investi-gation?
“Care to elaborate?” Callie asked her. “Are you a part of this? Were you here all along, or did you follow us?”
I could see the inevitable shock of another Amanda betrayal in Hal’s and Callie’s eyes. I was not above feeling it myself, but being able to compartmentalize emotions comes in handy. “Wait,” I said. “Mr. Thornhill, we’ve looked for you . . .”
“There isn’t time,” Thornhill snapped again. “I’m sorry. You really must go. They’ll be back any minute.”
“It’s true—they will be back,” Hal said.
Thornhill muttered something else about going upstairs and finding a key, but I could no longer even hear him now; his voice was barely audible over the motor.
“What?” I asked, taking a couple steps closer to hear him better.
And that’s when I saw it.
Hanging around his neck.
An oval-shaped charm.
I immediately flashed back to Amanda’s all-important box, thinking about the black-and-white photos we’d found—the one that had the heads cut out, possibly to fit inside a locket. It’d been a photo of a pregnant woman sitting beside a man (possibly the father), with a younger girl crouched in front.
I was just about to ask him if I could see the charm when a door slammed somewhere overhead. No time to ask him now.
“Go!” Thornhill insisted. Chained to a bed or not, the man was still intimidating.
“We can’t just leave you here,” Callie cried. She grabbed at the shackles around his middle.
“Get out of here. Now. I’m ordering you,” he insisted. His eyes were full of anger. “Or else you’ll end up here.”
CHAPTER 24
Callie and Hal hurried up the ladder, while Zoe hesitated a bit, glancing back at Thornhill, as if she wanted to ask him something more. Was it something we didn’t know? Something to explain what she was doing here? Or how she knew more about Amanda than we did?
I followed close behind on the ladder. We crammed ourselves back inside the closet-turned-doorway, and the lightning-bolt sensation soared through me again.
Hal edged the door open, as Zoe let out a tiny gasp.
The security guard had returned to his desk. His back to us, he pulled a bag of crackers from his drawer.
“Keep low,” Hal whispered, signaling us to follow him. We crouched down, making our way slowly and carefully behind some storage crates. Once there, Callie covered her face with my scarf, all but stuffing it into her mouth to keep from crying out in sheer anxiety.
“We can’t stay here,” I mouthed to Hal.
The security guard leaned back in his seat, watching something on a portable TV as he sipped a can of soda.
I moved in the direction of the hangar door, knowing that in only a few feet I’d be in the guard’s peripheral view.
Hal grabbed the back of my shirt to hold me in place. “Wait up,” he whispered, reaching into my bag. He rifled around for a few seconds before taking out my vintage oyster-shell compact.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
The next thing I knew, Hal was sitting up. His head above the crate, just beyond the guard’s scope, he chucked the compact as hard as he could, clear across the hangar. It made a clink sound in a faraway corner by some storage boxes.
The guard shot up, grabbed his club, and went to check things out. Meanwhile, we hur
ried toward the exit. In doing so, my shoe made a skidding sound against the floor. Luckily the guard didn’t seem to hear it.
Finally outside, I peered behind me, noticing that Callie had dropped the scarf.
“Just leave it,” Hal said.
I looked back toward the scarf, in plain view, knowing that it would give us away immediately. And we needed all the time we could get to escape.
Keeping low, I scurried back inside the hangar. The guard had his back to me, still searching for the source of the noise. I grabbed the scarf and ducked behind the set of stairs.
“Come on!” Hal whispered, waving me out.
I started to move toward him when the guard pivoted around.
And looked in my direction.
“Hello?” he called out, his hand clenched firmly over his billy club. It appeared he hadn’t found my compact. “Is someone there?”
I remained crouched behind the stairs, relieved that he hadn’t seen me. Sweat dripped from my brow. I wiped it on my sleeve and waited for his next move.
I scooted down even farther and held my breath.
A moment later, a side door opened toward the back of the hangar. A woman emerged. Wearing a fitted navy-blue suit with glossy blond hair slicked back in a high ponytail, she did not look familiar at first. But then she turned and I was able to see her face.
Her perfect doll’s face.
It was Waverly Valentino.
“I found it, Barnaby,” she shouted to the guard, holding up a folder. “Be sure to give this to him today.” They exchanged a few words, their backs to me.
The perfect opportunity to scurry out.
I joined the others, noticing right away how the Jeep was parked by the tanker truck. “They’re probably fueling up,” I said, ducking behind an oil drum.
“They should be done about now,” Hal said.
Without another word, we raced toward the fence, back through the gate; it was still open. Zoe tried to make things look intact to buy us time, threading the chain back through a link in the fence, and knotting the broken pieces together without having the lock slip off. But it was no use. The lock had obviously been tampered with—and they’d notice that right away.
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