“Sorry we left you like that. It wasn’t our call.”
“I figured,” I say.
“And Franky’s not exactly the life of the party.”
“Franky? That’s what you call Francisco?”
“He’s an okay guy once he warms up to you.”
“How long does that take?”
“I’m still waiting,” Lee says, and I laugh. “Anyway, he’s head of my father’s security detail now, so I’d rather he do his job than be a friend.”
I note his use of the word now. Maybe Francisco got promoted recently?
“Follow me,” Lee says. He starts walking through the darkness, turning his flashlight beam back toward the ground so I can see where to step. “It’s easy to lose your bearings out here.”
He’s right. Without the flashlight, I wouldn’t even see my feet hit the ground.
“By the way, I’m kind of worried that I didn’t get through to my dad yet.”
“Your phone won’t work up here.”
“Because of the mountains?”
“We have a central jamming unit. It makes the one at the community center look like a toy.”
In my briefing Mother told me the compound was cut off from all communication.
“Why do you have to jam if you’re way up here?” I say.
“Nothing in or out,” Lee says, suddenly serious. “It’s for our own protection.”
“Protection from who?”
“Enemies,” he says, pointing the flashlight in a sweeping gesture toward the mountains. The way he says the word, it sounds ominous.
“So there’s no way I can call my dad?”
“We can get a message through to him if that would help.”
I shake my head.
“I guess it can wait until tomorrow,” I say. “I sent him a text earlier, and it’s not like I’m going to be here forever.”
“Who knows?” Lee says. “You may want to stay after you see what we’re up to.”
“It must be awesome,” I say.
“You’ll have to decide that for yourself,” he says. “Follow me.”
Lee guides me forward with the flashlight. He knows the place by heart, his footing sure despite the lack of illumination in the camp.
“So here’s the plan,” he says. “I’m going to show you where you’ll bunk for the night, and we’ll give you the tour in the morning.”
I hear something in the distance, a rhythmic pounding like a hammer hitting metal accompanied by the faint echo of industrial sounds. Clanging steel, machinery, engine noise.
“That’s a lot of noise for a deserted mountain,” I say.
“That’s the workshop,” Lee says. “It operates twenty-four-seven.”
“What do you make there?”
“It’s one of the ways we earn money. Outsourcing electrical components.”
“But I thought you only had kids here, right?”
“Mostly.”
“What about child labor laws?”
“Ask my father that question,” Lee says. “He’d love to discuss the subject with you.”
“Is that a sore point between you two?”
“Don’t get me started.”
We walk deeper into the camp. There’s no sign of any people, only the strange metallic pounding that continues to echo through the valley.
“How many kids are here at a time?” I ask.
“We generally take no more than two dozen for each camp session. But there are no session kids right now. Only permanents.”
“Permanents?”
“Kids who live here full time.”
I think about the English teacher with wild hair shouting about Moore taking her daughter. Is this what she meant?
“Kids can live here without their parents?” I say.
“Don’t be so surprised. It’s like military school. Or any other kind of boarding school. You know what that’s like from Exeter, Daniel.”
He says my name and for a second, it doesn’t register that he’s talking to me. I’m trained to take on identities one after the other, but adjusting to a new name still has a lag time associated with it. Your name is your identity, and you’ve heard it since birth. Without knowing it, you associate everything about yourself with your name on a very deep and unconscious level.
Changing names is not as easy as people might believe.
I am Daniel, I remind myself. That is my identity now. Daniel Martin.
My own name, my real name, is buried in my consciousness. I neither use it nor access it.
“You okay?” Lee says.
“Thinking about something,” I say. “It’s not important.”
As we walk through the dark, I can just make out the outlines of vehicles parked away from the buildings and facing toward the road. Another security precaution. Keep vehicles and their gasoline tanks away from wooden structures, turned outward, keys in the ignitions, ready to start at a moment’s notice. There is no time for U-turns in a battle.
Is it possible this camp is being prepared for attack? The idea seems ridiculous, but the evidence is mounting. I’ll know a lot more tomorrow when I examine it in the light.
Lee says, “My dad wanted to welcome you himself, but he’s in meetings now.”
“It’s late for meetings, no?”
His tone turns serious.
“We have to discuss what happened earlier. And other things…” he says, his voice trailing off.
He looks like he wants to say more, but he stops himself.
He turns right at a small building and continues on a path that takes us farther away from what seems to be the central area.
“Just so you know, this kind of thing—the attempt tonight—doesn’t happen to us on a regular basis.”
“But it’s happened before?”
“There have been threats,” he says. “Nobody has gotten that close. Especially not someone—”
“Someone what?”
“Someone we know.”
I imagine the scenario last night. The English teacher has a daughter at camp, so they pass her through security without a thorough search, not expecting she has a gun in her purse.
“I can’t stop thinking about that moment,” Lee says. “How did you know she had the gun? You were on her practically before she got it out of her bag.”
“Like you said before, I’ve got a real talent for this security stuff. Maybe I should join the Secret Service.”
“Seriously.”
“Okay, truthfully? My dad has a carry permit, so I’ve seen him take a pistol in and out of his work bag, like, a thousand times. It’s hard to miss the gesture when you’re used to it. My eye caught it.”
He nods, processing the information.
“As for jumping her,” I say, “that was pretty stupid. And pretty lucky.”
“It should have been me,” he says.
He pauses, staring into the dark.
“I saw the gun, too,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Most people wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I’m not most people. I’m Eugene Moore’s son. He expects more from me.”
The statement tells me everything I need to know about Lee. A powerful father, and a son who’s not living up to his potential, at least in his father’s eyes.
I was reading Lee wrong. The questions he was asking had nothing to do with me. They were about him and his feelings of guilt.
He’s opened up with me, so I want to be gentle now.
“I was just acting on instinct,” I say, trying to make him feel better. “Who knows what I would do if it happened again?”
“Maybe you’d do the same thing.”
“Yeah. Or maybe I’d poop my pants.”
He laughs. “That would clear the room, huh?”
“Whatever gets the job done,” I say.
“All kidding aside, maybe my father could use you on his security brigade. He needs another body up there.”