“This second line,” Paige said. “You’re certain the first letter was capitalized?”
Travis nodded, seeing where she was going. He’d gone there himself while still holding the notepad under the light post, exhausting every possible way the sentence could mean less than it appeared to. If the first letter were lowercase, then the unseen earlier portion of the sentence might change the meaning. Might contain a negative that reversed it entirely.
But all such possibilities could be discarded.
“The S filled the line, top to bottom,” Travis said. “Every other letter without an ascender was exactly half that height. Nora’s handwriting was perfect.”
Travis saw Bethany’s shoulders twitch as a shudder climbed her neck. She read the line again and exhaled softly. “Already among us. That makes it sound like they blended in.”
Paige seemed to react to that idea. She looked up at Travis. “Remember what you asked in Ouray? Who has the motive to undo what my father did?”
Travis’s mind called up images of full-floor penthouses eighty stories above Manhattan or Hong Kong, from which a few encrypted phone calls could launch private armies or sway governments—could direct arterial flows of cash to influential interests that didn’t care where the money came from, or why. The notion that such places existed was unnerving enough, even if their occupants were human.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Paige said. “If some of them were already here before the Breach opened, why bother sending instructions through it to make a pawn of one of us? Why would they need a pawn at all? They’re millions of years more advanced than we are. Maybe billions. Anything they wanted to do here, they could’ve done it themselves like you or I would get a glass of water. They wouldn’t need to sneak around and pull strings from behind the scenes.” A silence. “So why did they?”
Travis found only about half his attention going to the question. The other half kept going back to what Ruben Ward had said in the alley—the disconnected talk about the filter, whatever it was. Something that wasn’t supposed to become an issue for years and years—from the vantage point of 1978. Travis had said nothing of the filter since waking from the memory. Though it obviously tied into what was happening now—might simply be what was happening now—it just as obviously had a connection to Travis’s own future, and whatever was waiting for him there. It.
Which he’d never spoken about in front of Bethany, as much as he trusted her. He’d never told anyone but Paige.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Paige said again.
Travis could only shake his head. He stared at the laptop screen, the two short lines surrounded by vacant space. He thought of the blade-thin margin by which he’d lost the notebook—lost all the answers and come back with only these impossible questions.
“Does the first line give us anything actionable?” Paige said. “Is there more to it than we’re seeing?”
She leaned close and studied it.
“ ‘A passageway beneath the third notch,’ ” she said. “ ‘Look for . . .’ ”
For a long time no one spoke. Then Bethany shrugged. “It tells us Ruben Ward went somewhere that had notches and a passageway. I’m sure we’d hit some kind of jackpot if we could find the passageway now. But we can’t. Not with only this to go on.”
Paige straightened and paced away from the table, hands on her head.
More footsteps sounded in the hallway. More lively—if not quite happy—speech. Like something was going on. The moment triggered a memory for Travis—one that was minutes old for Paige and Bethany but more than two days old for him.
“Who was on the phone?” he said. “You got a call right before I went under.”
Paige looked at him. “One of President Holt’s aides. Air Force One is landing here within the next fifteen minutes.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Ostensibly, he’s only coming to tour the place,” Paige said. “Every new president does that, early on.”
“You believe him?” Travis said.
“Not for a second. You?”
Travis shook his head. He looked at the microwave clock again. 8:52.
“What are you thinking?” Paige said.
“It’s three hours since the trap in Ouray failed,” Travis said. “Which is about how long it takes a 747 to fly here from D.C. The timing just about works out—Holt learns it all went to hell down there, and he hops in his plane to pay us a visit. Like some kind of Plan B.”
Paige considered it. “It’s plausible. But whatever the case, he’s not coming in here with any kind of armed presence. Not even Secret Service; that’s been policy here forever. If he doesn’t accept that, we won’t even open the elevator.”