Page 127 of Secret Mission

When I pull the lever, the shelf slides to the side. “Okay, that’s pretty slick. Most of them push inward.”

“I don’t care what it does.” Allison strides into the eight by ten room.

The air is dense like a bunker. There are boxes along one wall on metal shelves. A desk with some files sitting on top of it. And a hand truck with some small crates strapped to the platform. The fluorescent lights are so bright, I blink from the glare.

After walking around the room, I stop by the desk. “This stuff looks pretty old.”

Allison flips the cardboard lids off, moving along the wall, quickly looking inside each one.

“This is all his propulsion research.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Anything that’s not that.”

I open a couple of boxes, careful to replace the tops once I’m done. “Like I said, these files are really old. Wouldn’t they be using digital files now? This is pretty archaic.”

She casts a look my way. “He backs everything up on paper. The man is paranoid.”

“The man who has a room behind his bookshelf? Not very paranoid. Anyway, it doesn’t look like he’s done anything here since…” I pull out a file. “Twenty years ago.”

Allison bites her lip, scanning the room. “Where are his new files?”

“Probably on some hard drives.”

She paces around the room, stopping at the desk. “Okay, maybe he has those too, but I can’t see him stopping the obsession with paper. People never change. These are out, so maybe they’re what he’s working on.”

I use an ink pen to lift the corner of a file. “This one’s about—” Looking harder, I zero in on the word, Vandemora. “Shit, we might be onto something here.”

Allison leans in next to me. “That’s about… wait, what is it?”

“I don’t know what these codes are.” Fishing in my pocket, I grab my covert document camera and snap images of every page. “As soon as the images are taken it will ‘beam’ them back to headquarters.”

“Really?”

“You’re cute when you’re curious.”

“Well, I’m curious right now. But we need to keep moving.”

The rest of the files are about new rocket propulsion systems developed in the last twelve months. No other documents refer to Vandemora.

Growling, Allison looks up at me. “Crap, we’re running out of time. I haven’t heard any gunfire in the last few minutes.”

“Leave that to our teammate. Justice is good at his job.”

Allison walks along the wall of file boxes again. “I didn’t see this note before.”

She passes me a blue post-it.

“Load on boat,” I read it aloud. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, my god.” She turns in a slow circle. “There are lots of empty shelves. I think I know why. Come on. Help me put everything back.”

We hustle to make the room look untouched, and she leads the way out of the office.

Allison’s correct, no gunfire outside. But no sign of guards in the house yet either. I’m sure we’d hear them.

“Now to get that DNA.” She produces a small zip-top plastic bag from her pocket. “I came prepared.”