“Katherine, tell Chip to stop fiddling with the cell phone,” he whispered urgently. “He’ll give us away.”
Seconds later, in the mirror, Chip jerked upright. He put his hands flat on the conference room table, on top of the printouts of the survivors and witnesses lists he’d brought from home. He raised an eyebrow at Jonah. Over his shoulder, Jonah gave him the thumbs-up signal.
Katherine’s giggle sounded in Jonah’s ear again.
“Remember your theory about this woman actually being Chip’s birth mother?” she whispered. “You can cross that one off your list!”
Jonah started to say, “Why?” but then he remembered that he needed to be silent too. Over the walkie-talkie, he heard a static-y version of Chip’s voice: “Oh, hello. Are you the person who reserved this conference room for three o’clock? The one who’s willing to talk?”
Frantically, Jonah angled the mirror, turning his tax code book almost sideways. There. A woman, walking into the conference room. Oh. A tall, statuesque, well-dressed black woman. Very dark-skinned—definitely not Chip’s birth mother.
“Chip Winston?” the woman was saying.
“Yes,” Chip said cautiously. “And you are—?”
The woman stopped in the conference room doorway and looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes seemed to meet Jonah’s in the mirror. She laughed.
“Before we begin, I’ll have to ask you to turn that cell phone off,” she said. “And tell your friends to turn off the walkie-talkies. I appreciate their ingenuity, but they might as well come on in and listen in person.”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chip stammered.
“You’re not a very good liar, are you?” the woman said. “I’ll have to remember that. I’m talking about the girl in the magazine section, in the purple shirt, and the boy in the tax section, reading Your Guide to the IRS upside down.”
Jonah blushed. He started to turn the book around, then realized that that made him look even more guilty. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Katherine standing up, rushing toward the conference room. He waved his arms at her, trying to send a telepathic message, No, no, go back! Pretend you’ve got nothing to do with me or Chip! Act normal! Don’t give anything away!
Katherine ignored him. She reached the door into the conference room and began shaking the woman’s hand.
“Katherine Skidmore,” she introduced herself. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for letting me join you.”
Katherine made it sound like they were going to be sitting around eating sugar cookies and drinking lemonade.
“Come on, Jonah,” Katherine said. “She’s got us figured out.”
Jonah whirled around.
“But I don’t have to go in there, do I?” he muttered through gritted teeth. “I can stay out here if I want to. So I can run for help if anything happens.”
Jonah was surprised to see that the woman’s dark eyes were sympathetic.
“You’re the one I want guarding the door, then,” she said. “Watching out for trouble. You can watch from the outside or watch from the inside. I don’t care.”
She looked around, scanning the rows of bookshelves around them. No one was in sight.
“I’m Angela DuPre,” the woman said, holding out her hand to Jonah. “You can call me Angela.”
Hesitantly, Jonah moved forward to shake her hand. He stepped in through the glass door behind Katherine and Angela, and pulled the door shut. But he didn’t sit down at the table when the others did. He stayed by the door. Angela nodded respectfully at him, as if she approved of that choice.
“A little advice,” Angela said, a hint of laughter in her voice. “The next time you do a stake-out, don’t enter the building together.” It was Jonah she looked at now. “I got here at two. I’ve been watching the three of you for the past half hour.”
Jonah’s face burned.
“I guess the walkie-talkies were a stupid idea,” he mumbled.
“Oh, it was creative,” Angela said. “I would have left you to your spy games if it weren’t for the range on those things—I didn’t want our conversation broadcast to every trucker passing by on the highway. Or…others who might want to listen.”
She no longer sounded amused. Her eyes looked haunted.
Katherine was glaring at Angela.
“Oh, that’s right,” Katherine said, almost in the same snarly cat-fight voice she used when she was mad at her friends. “You’re afraid to even talk on the phone.”
“I have my reasons,” Angela said softly, and somehow that shut Katherine up.
“But it’s safe to talk now?” Chip asked eagerly, leaning forward. “You can give us answers?”
Angela gave another cautious look around, through the glass walls into the library, then through the windows into the parking lot. Jonah realized for the first time that Angela had taken the one seat in the room that backed up to a solid brick wall. Even if Jonah weren’t guarding the door, she’d made sure that nobody could sneak up on her.
“You’re curious about your adoption, right?” Angela said. “What makes you think that I know anything about it?”
Quickly, Chip explained about the list of survivors and the list of witnesses, shoving the papers over to her so she could look for herself.
“See, Jonah’s name is on the list of survivors too,” Katherine chimed in. “Mine isn’t. I’m not adopted, but I’m the one who took the pictures.”
Oh, good for you! Braggart! Jonah thought. Angela glanced at him just then, and Jonah could swear she knew what he was thinking. She smiled at him.
“I can tell you what I witnessed thirteen years ago,” she said. “Even though I’m not supposed to discuss it with anyone. You’ll probably think I’m crazy, anyhow.”
Chip was leaning so far forward now that Jonah was afraid he might fall out of his chair.
“You know where I came from?” Chip asked. “Where we came from?”
Angela was shaking her head, frowning ruefully.
“Not where, exactly,” she said apologetically. “But I think I might have a pretty good guess about when.”
EIGHTEEN