“Whoa,” Ramirez said as Ash and the others came in. “This one’s different.”
They had come across other offices that had all been functional and well equipped but nothing special. This office, however, was magnificent — hardwood floors; built-in bookcases and cabinets; a sitting area; a bar; a large, sleek desk; and a gorgeous view of the city.
Director Johnson’s office, Ash thought. It had to be.
“Check those,” he said, pointing at the three other doors leading out of the room.
Ramirez, Sealy, and Yates took one each.
“Closet,” Yates reported.
“I’ve got a bathroom here,” Sealy said.
Ramirez had disappeared through his doorway.
“Ramirez?” Ash called to him.
“Captain, can you come in here?” Ramirez asked.
Ash jogged over and found Ramirez standing in the living room of an apartment that was as high end and stylish as the office.
He directed Ramirez to check the hall at the other end.
When the man returned, he said, “Bedroom and bathroom.”
“No sign of anyone?”
“None.”
“All right. Let’s keep going.”
The safe room was smaller than the walk-in closet in Celeste’s apartment. It had been built for one of the members of the original directorate, and kept small because no one had really believed it would ever be used.
The room was equipped with a chair, a tabletop that folded out from the wall, a small sink, and a mini-refrigerator. Unfortunately, the latter required the director to restock it, something Celeste had never done.
Celeste’s hands were shaking so much that she had to try twice to enter the code into the storage-room computer that would slide open the false wall at the back.
The second it opened, she rushed inside and slapped the CLOSE button by the sink. It wasn’t until the wall started to move back into place that she realized she’d left her bag on the floor by the maintenance desk. There was no way she could retrieve it and get back inside before the wall closed. And she certainly didn’t want to be caught on the other side because once the room was sealed, it couldn’t be opened again for two hours. And even then only from the inside.
So all she could do as she watched the wall shut her in was tell herself that no one would notice the bag.
By the time Ash and his team finished the floor, they had found thirty-six people. With those Chloe had discovered in the control center, the total came to fifty-nine. None matched the picture of Director Johnson they had found in the base computer.
“Either she jumped off the building or we missed her somewhere,” Ash said to Chloe. They were standing at the back of the control center.
“I don’t think she jumped. We’re not that lucky.”
“I don’t think she did, either,” he said. “We need to tear this place apart until we find her. How many can help us?”
“We need to leave four on the rooms we’ve got the captives in,” she said. “And, of course, there’s Bobby and Curtis in here. The rest are free.”
While she gathered them together, Ash went over to check in with Bobby and Wicks. With the help of Caleb and his team back at Ward Mountain, they’d been assigned the task of figuring out the control center. “What have we got?”
Bobby looked up from the computer he’d been using, and smiled. “A lot.”
“Meaning…?”
“Give us a little time and we can give you a better answer. Twenty minutes should be enough.”
“Twenty minutes. Then we talk.”
Ash had been sure they’d find the director hiding somewhere either in her office or her apartment, but their search turned up nothing. They continued through the floor, but room after room provided no more answers than the woman’s apartment had.
“What’s that doing there?” Chloe asked.
She and Ash had just entered a storage room on the west side of the building.
“That bag?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” She walked over to it and picked it up. “Was it here when you checked this room before?”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was.”
“Kind of an odd place to leave a Versace bag, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t even know it was Versace. Expensive?”
“Uh, yeah.” She set it on the desk and looked inside. “I can tell you one thing — I don’t think the person who owns this works in maintenance.” She pulled out an elegant box covered in dark red leather and opened it. “See?”
Inside was a diamond-earrings-and-necklace set that would have set someone in the old world back tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Chloe pulled out a couple more boxes of expensive jewelry and some clothes and then said, “What do we have here?”
She reached in and pulled out three computer drives and a framed photograph.
In the picture were three of the men Ash and Chloe had seen at Bluebird when Olivia Silva had activated the release of the virus. All three men had been members of the Project Eden directorate and had died when the base was destroyed. There was a fourth person in the picture who hadn’t been at Bluebird. The only woman.
Director Johnson.
“She’s here somewhere,” he whispered.
Both he and Chloe scanned the room. Shelves lined the walls to the left and right, but while the desk took up half of the back wall, the rest of the back wall was clear of any obstruction.
Ash pointed at it and looked at Chloe.
She nodded.
He placed his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear anything. If there was some sort of hiding place on the other side, it had been soundproofed.
He looked around for the switch or lock that would open the wall, but spotted nothing.
“Maybe we’re overthinking,” he whispered. “Could be just a wall.”
“One way to find out,” Chloe said.
Celeste placed her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. She was so exhausted she couldn’t even think straight anymore. She knew she should be planning what she needed to do once she got out of there, but she couldn’t concentrate. She should sleep, she thought. Just a few hours. Then she could think about—
Celeste slammed into the wall behind her and fell to the floor, her forehead whacking against her toppled chair.
Dazed, she tried to sit up, but her body screamed at her from everywhere so she stayed where she was, her eyelids half opened.
She didn’t notice the hole in the wall until someone stepped through it, but even then she couldn’t understand how it got there.
The chair silently lifted off her and passed through the hole. No, not silently. She could hear ringing. In fact, all she could hear was ringing.
Hands grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her out of the safe room. She could see now there were two of them — a man and a woman. Their lips were moving but she had no idea what they were saying.
She wanted to ask what had happened. She wanted to know why she hurt so much. She tried to speak but her mouth felt like it was full of rocks.
Her eyes closed for what she thought was a second, but when she opened them again, she was surrounded by four new men who seemed to be carrying her. It was surprisingly comfortable, almost better than lying in bed. And she was…
…so…
…tired…
Ash and Chloe returned to the control center and let Omar, Sealy, Ramirez, and Langenberg deal with Johnson.
“Tell me something good, Bobby,” Ash said as they entered the room.
Bobby looked up, surprised. “Has it been twenty minutes already?”
“A little more.”