“Glad to hear that.”
From down the street came the rumble of a powerful engine. Pax turned toward the noise and saw it belonged to a dark-colored Mustang. As it neared the buses, the vehicle slowed to a crawl.
The window rolled down.
“I thought you might need a ride.”
Pax smiled and rushed over to the car, giving Chloe a hug through the opening.
“I do, indeed,” he said. As he stood back up, he looked over at Robert. “I’d like to introduce you to Chloe White. She’s, uh, one of our frontline people.”
Robert walked over and held out his hand.
“Chloe, this is Robert Adams.”
Her eyebrow shot up as she grabbed his palm. “The savior of Isabella Island. Nice to meet you.”
“Uh, I’m not…no…there was a lot of…”
Chloe laughed. “Hold on to that modesty. It’s attractive.”
Robert’s mouth opened a couple of times, but nothing came out.
Pax slapped him on the back. “I gotta go. But I’ll see you again soon. I promise.”
“Okay,” Robert managed. “Be safe.”
Ash had intentionally fallen asleep on top of his covers, fully clothed.
He had argued a bit with Chloe about who should pick up Pax, but in the end she won. Thankfully.
He’d stretched out after dinner, thinking he’d sleep for only an hour or two, but when he looked over at his clock again, it was nearly two a.m.
A jolt of adrenaline shot him out of bed and into the public corridor outside his family’s rooms. He made a beeline for the comm center, where he found three women he didn’t know by name manning the stations.
“Does anyone know if Chloe or Pax is back?” he asked.
The closest comm tech turned toward the door, her eyes widening when she saw who he was. “Captain Ash,” she said. “Um, no. They’re on their way. Should be here any minute.”
“Thanks,” he said.
He hurried to the main entrance, grabbed a coat off one of the pegs, and stepped outside.
The moon was low on the western horizon, the stars packing the rest of the sky, leaving only small pockets of black unfilled. At first there didn’t appear to be anyone on the road leading to the highway, then twin beams of light popped up from a dip about two miles out.
Ash stomped around, trying to keep warm. He knew he should go back inside but he was too keyed up. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency about figuring out the meaning of Matt’s message. Add to that the potential of striking another blow at the Project Eden directorate and it was a wonder he wasn’t running down the road to meet the car halfway.
Finally, the dark Mustang pulled under the camouflage netting that covered the base’s parking area, and stopped. As Ash jogged over, the doors opened and Chloe and Pax climbed out.
This was the first time the two men had seen each other since the hunt to find Bluebird to stop the Project from releasing the virus, so they threw their arms around each other in a bear hug.
“So good to see you, Captain,” Pax said.
“Likewise,” Ash told him.
As soon as they parted, they started walking toward the base entrance.
“Chloe filled me in on what’s going on in Mumbai,” Pax said. “She also said Rachel’s basically removed herself from things.”
“Only temporarily, I’m sure,” Ash said. “You might be able to bring her out of it better than any of us.”
“I don’t know about that, but I’ll give it a try when I get a moment.” Pax glanced at Chloe then back at Ash. “So the one thing Chloe and I didn’t discuss is this issue you asked me about on the phone.”
“DS,” Ash said.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think the letters mean?”
Pax grimaced. “There’s no easy answer.”
“So we’ve gathered.”
Pax rubbed the arms of his coat. “Do you mind if we get inside first? I’ve been down in the tropics for a few days. Think my blood’s gone thin.”
They entered the base and went straight to Chloe’s room. It had been crowded when it contained only Ash and Chloe. With Pax there, they barely had enough room to breathe. Ash let the other two have the bed, and he took the chair by the door.
Pax spoke first. “Augustine dream sky. You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“One hundred percent,” Ash said.
Pax frowned, thinking for a moment before shaking his head. “Like I told you on the phone, I’d never heard that phrase until you said it to me.”
“But DS means something to you,” Chloe said.
“It does.”
When he didn’t go on, Ash said, “Are you going to make us drag it out of you?”
“Sorry. Was just…remembering,” Pax said. “The truth is, I don’t know what the letters specifically stand for, and as far as I know, Matt didn’t, either. What I do know is that Matt was obsessed with those two letters for several years, and was sure they referred to a secret Project Eden program.”
“What kind of program?” Chloe asked.
“I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know. There were times when it seemed Matt thought finding out about DS was almost as important as figuring out how to stop Implementation Day. He told me once if the Project was able to release the virus, DS might be the key to their ultimate success.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ash asked.
Pax shrugged. “He kept this one pretty tight. I think Billy and I might have been the only ones he ever talked to about it. I knew he grew frustrated when his contacts couldn’t come up with anything more solid. After a while, he seemed to give it up, or maybe he just stopped talking about it, I don’t know. Felt to me like he was chasing a ghost.”
“Do you think DS stands for Dream Sky?”
Pax grunted a humorless laugh. “Who knows? Seems kind of a stretch to me. But it was the last thing he said, so I guess you have to give that theory some weight.”
“Maybe even more than you think,” Ash said. “Right before he said those words, he’d been with one of his inside contacts. That’s how he got into the Las Cruces base.”
Pax’s eyebrows furrowed. “I didn’t know that. Do you know which one?”
“C8.”
“C8? Are you sure?”
“That’s what he told us,” Ash said.
Pax blew out a breath.
“Why?” Chloe asked. “What’s the significance?”
“C8 was one of Matt’s oldest contacts, one of his deepest. He was someone Matt had been close to when he was still in the Project.” He paused and looked at Ash and Chloe. “And he was the one Matt got the original info from about DS.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“That’s a pretty strong connection,” Chloe said.
“Still might be nothing,” Pax cautioned.
More silence.
“What about Augustine?” Ash asked.
“Doesn’t mean anything specific to me,” Pax said.
“There was an Emperor Augustine, wasn’t there?”
“Augustus,” Chloe corrected.
“Right. Augustus,” Ash said. “Another form of the same name, though. Let me see, there was a St. Augustine. A city in Florida named after him. Isn’t it the oldest European-founded city in the US? Maybe that’s important.”
“There’s got to be hundreds of things the names could point to,” Chloe said. “I’d kill for Google right now.”
Pax tilted his head. “How many letters long is it? Nine?”
Ash ran the word through his mind again. “Yeah. Nine.”
“I need paper and something to write with,” Pax said in a burst of energy.
Chloe pulled a pad and a pen from inside the top drawer of her dresser, and handed them to him. He created a square three-by-three grid and wrote letters in each space — A-U-G in the top row, U-S-T in the middle, and I-N-E along the bottom. He then made several more grids, using different combinations of the letters in each. When he was through, he stared down at the paper.