She resolved to find out. And soon.
It could be the key to unraveling what was really happening.
*
On Monday morning, Ryan went to school, and Daniele left for work. She had invited Adeline to come to work to start her internship, but Adeline had shrugged and lied, telling her that she wanted to study the investment books.
Daniele had smiled at that. “In that case, you have a lot of work to do.”
Adeline waited until Daniele had been gone thirty minutes. Then she searched the entire house. Under every bed. In every drawer. Inside every cushion. Beneath all the rugs.
She examined every corner of the attic and the basement.
Nothing.
She found nothing.
No clue that indicated that Daniele was the killer—and no clue about anything else.
As Adeline sat in the living room, drenched in sweat and covered in dust, she had a single thought: if you searched someone’s entire home and didn’t learn a thing about them, that was probably someone who was hiding something.
It was probably someone who was very good at hiding things.
The thought of someone hiding things reminded her of Hiro. Adeline took out her phone and opened BuddyLoc. She stood up immediately when she saw the dot on the map. Hiro was in Death Valley. He was stopped somewhere just across the Nevada border.
Death Valley. The Absolom scientists had mentioned it in Daniele’s basement. They were doing experiments there. Experiments that they thought would get her father back.
At the kitchen island, Adeline wrote down the Death Valley GPS coordinates on a slip of paper and tore it off. She set her phone on the counter. She didn’t want to be tracked.
THIRTY-ONE
In the rocky clearing, rain poured down. At the tree line, the Absolom prisoner drew a bone from his pocket. The ivory object practically glowed in the pale moonlight as rainwater coated it, glistening. Two sharp dinosaur teeth were attached to the end. It was a makeshift knife. A Triassic weapon.
At the first sight of the man, Sam had thought he was killer. It was the look in his eyes. The blood on his clothes. The jawbone and attached teeth confirmed it.
The old prisoner’s grin widened, his eyes bulged, and his tongue snaked out and licked his bottom lip.
Sam’s breath came fast through his nose, and his mind churned.
The old man began to run across the rocky ground, dodging the green ginkgo plants, his double-toothed knife held at the ready, eyes never leaving Sam.
“Hey!” Sam called out, desperately hoping the sound of a human voice might bring the man back to reason, might snap him out of his murderous attack.
The man raised the knife and charged faster.
Sam crawled out of the cave. He had no choice. The crazy fool was twenty feet away.
“Stop!” Sam yelled.
The prisoner leaped. Sam shifted as the man reached him, swiping with the knife, ripping a gash in the sweater.
“Stop!” Sam pleaded, holding his hands up.
The man seemed even more incensed at the sound of Sam’s voice. He slashed with the knife, mouth open, as if he could taste the coming kill.
Sam stumbled backward, and his feet slipped on the wet rock. He landed on his back, near the extinguished fire.
The man shifted the bone knife in his hand and leaped again, bringing it down like a stake. Sam rolled, heard the knife hit the rock where he had been, and felt it come across his upper back, cutting into him. He cried out, rolled again, and caught hold of the sharpened stick he had tried to fish with.
The man charged again, and Sam reached out and caught his knife hand with his left hand, still holding his spear with his right, and they both went down, Sam on his back, the stick planted in the rocky ground. It caught in an indention in the stone and locked in place there. The spear pierced the man’s abdomen just above his belly button and didn’t stop until the whittled wooden end emerged from his back.
The man’s knife hand went slack, and the makeshift blade dropped to the rock below.
The man smiled. “Got me.”
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t mean to.”
The fool threw his head back and laughed.
“Quiet,” Sam hissed.
The man smiled, showing blood-coated teeth. “Killed two before you. Got sloppy.”
“Why?”
“Watched you, boy. Thought you… Thought you was soft.”
The man coughed blood, and Sam spun, throwing him over, trying to dodge the thick paste that he knew would bring predators.
Time was slipping away. Sam needed answers from the man.
“How did you get here?”
The prisoner stared up at the moon, and his eyes went glassy.