Faraday nodded. “Okay. But keep thinking on it over the next couple of days for me, will you? Someone may come to mind.”
Faraday was still dangling the notebook, swinging it back and forth between his two fingers when he said, “You ready to go to lunch? Wallace was supposed to join us, but I think he’s out running an errand or something….”
At that moment, the notebook slipped out of Faraday’s fingers, and it knocked over a stack of files, which slid into the picture frames he had arranged at the edge of his desk. We both reached out to grab them before they hit the floor, and I managed to catch one that tipped toward me.
As I caught it, my eye happened to fall on the image. It was a photo of Faraday and Wallace, their arms slung across each other’s shoulders as they shared a beer together at what looked like a barbeque.
The photo caught me completely off guard, and for a long moment all I could do was stare at it, openmouthed. “Maddie?” Faraday said. “What is it?”
I showed him the picture and pointed to Wallace. “He…his…his numbers are all wrong!” Across Wallace’s forehead were the numbers 12-6-2014.
Faraday’s brow furrowed. “What numbers?”
But I was so shocked I could barely talk. I reached out and grabbed the deathdate notebook. Turning to one of the last pages, I scrolled down to the line marked Agent Wallace 8-7-2051, the date I remembered seeing from the first time we met. Pivoting the page around I showed him the line, and then I pointed to the photo. Again, I couldn’t contain a gasp. Before my eyes, Wallace’s deathdate went from 12-6-2014 back to 8-7-2051…and then back again. “It keeps flipping!”
Faraday leaned forward and looked back and forth between the photo and the name in the notebook. “Maddie,” he said firmly, “I don’t understand. Please take a breath and try to tell me what you’re seeing.”
I stared hard at Wallace’s image. The two deathdates kept flicking back and forth between 2014 and 2051, and I couldn’t make sense of it. It had never happened before. “I…I don’t know how to explain it!”
“Please try,” Faraday said. I could hear the worry start to creep into his voice.
I stood up and went around his desk, still holding onto the photo. “Agent Wallace’s deathdate should be August seventh, twenty fifty-one. But right now it’s changed. It’s showing something different!”
“What’s it showing?” Faraday asked, peering at the photo in my hands like he was trying to see what only I could.
“It’s flipping back and forth between that date and today, Agent Faraday. Today!”
Faraday’s face drained of color. “Son of a bitch!” Seizing his phone he dialed quickly. He waited several seconds before he said, “Kevin, it’s me. Call me the second you get this message.”
He then hung up and dialed again, waiting before hanging up and trying a third and a forth time. “Damn it! He might not answer my first call if he was in the middle of something, but he’d never let a second or a third call go by.”
I continued to monitor the picture. Wallace’s deathdates kept switching back and forth, and I had a terrible feeling that, at that very moment, Agent Wallace was either hovering near death, or he was in terrible danger.
Faraday jumped to his feet and scooted around me. Hurrying out into the hallway, he motioned for me to follow him. I brought the picture along, and we went into the open area where all the cubicles were. Faraday silenced the room with one loud piercing whistle. “I need to hear if any of you knows where Agent Wallace is right now!”
Every person in the room simply stared at him with wide eyes. No one volunteered anything. But then one woman, sitting at the far end of the room, raised her hand. “I passed him on the way in,” she said. “I asked him if he was headed home for the day, and he said that he was going to check on a lead.”
“What lead?” Faraday demanded.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir. He didn’t tell me.”
Faraday turned and pointed to a man wearing glasses in the opposite corner. “Steve! I need you!”
He put a hand on my upper arm to bring me with him. I walked along beside him, continuing to look at the photo. “What’s it say?” Faraday asked, as we headed back toward his office.
“It’s the same! It keeps flickering back and forth.”
Faraday took us past his office down the hall to another door, which was locked. He stopped and pulled me to the side and said to the man following us, “Open it, Steve. Now.”
Steve fidgeted nervously, but Faraday stared him down until he produced a key card and slid it through a slot right above the handle. There was a green light, and then Faraday was turning the handle and moving into the office. After switching on the lights he looked around Wallace’s desk—which was as cluttered as his. He moved behind the desk and jiggled the mouse and it asked for a password. “I need in,” Faraday said to Steve.
Steve’s face flushed. “Sir, I don’t have proper authorization for—”
“Screw proper authorization!” Faraday roared. “I need to see what lead Kevin was working on before he left!”
But Steve wasn’t budging. “S-s-s-sir,” he stammered. “I need the director to authorize that.”
“Then go call the director!”
At that moment, another agent poked his head into the office. “I heard you’re looking for Wallace?”
We all snapped our heads toward him. “You know where he is?” Faraday asked.
“Maybe. He said he was talking to a couple of people in Poplar Hollow who said they’d noticed a delivery truck parked down the street from the Murphy house the day before the kid was abducted. Wallace said it matched a similar statement taken by someone in the Wyly kid’s neighborhood, so he was gonna look into what deliveries were made to anyone in the area on those days.”
“Did he mention the name of the delivery company? Was it UPS or FedEx?” Faraday asked, his voice straining to remain calm.
The man scratched his head. “Neither. I think it was a furniture store.”