Bolting forward, he shoves the door aside with a gulping gasp for air, blurting, “Dad?”
Neal and I hurry after him, but I’m only a few steps inside before I come to an abrupt halt. Something’s wrong.
The cell is covered with books and papers. Complex calculations are taped up along the walls, along with diagrams and sketches, and long pages of text. Some of the walls have even been written on directly, black magic marker in a slanted scrawl that reminds me eerily of Jules’s handwriting.
But though it looks more like the hideout of a conspiracy theorist madman than the prison cell of a brilliant scholar, that’s not what stops me.
What stops me is that the cell is empty.
Addison’s not here.
“WHAT?” NEAL’S VOICE IS PRETTY MUCH A PANICKED SHRIEK.“WHEREis he?”
“Dex and Atlanta?” Mia’s spinning in a quick circle, as if we might’ve missed my dad on first glance. “They got here before us and …” She trails off, not looking at me.
“No.” I barely recognize my own voice, hoarse and harsh, the words choking out as my throat tightens. “No, no, they can’t …”
I drop to a crouch as my legs seem to give out, planting one hand against the floor to support myself. I can feel my father here, his presence as strong as if he were beside me. This is his place—with all the work he’s pinned up to the walls, the equations, the signs of a creative frenzy.
I might almost be back at Oxford, standing in his study, and with an overwhelming wave of homesickness, I desperately wish I were. Surrounded by his things, I could be in a tent on an archaeological dig, or a wide-eyed visitor to any one of the shabby apartments he’s used as makeshift offices around the world. In thisinstant, I’m a thousand versions of me, all staring up at the boards of evidence, artifacts, and equations he’s built over the years.
But he’s not here. Maybe he’s not anywhere anymore. A roaring rises in my ears.
Then Mia’s crouching in front of me, fingers under my chin, lifting my gaze to meet hers. “Hey,” she says quietly. “Jules, I know. Iknow. I’m so sorry, and I wish I could tell you he’s okay, and I wish we had time to stop and think about this, but we don’t. And I’msosorry for that.”
I try for a slower breath, keeping my gaze locked on hers, willing the rest of the world away as I let her anchor me.
“We have to keep going,” she says quietly. “I need you to look around. He’s covered every centimeter of this place, but maybe he’s left a sign, some way for us to know which part of it’s important.”
Then there’s a big hand squeezing my shoulder, and Neal’s crouching beside me, his own voice shaky when he speaks. “Jules, mate, I don’t want to sound morbid, but there’s no reason Atlanta and Dex would escort Uncle Elliott out of here and kill him somewhere else. Someone would notice them moving him. They’d kill him and leave his body in this room, and it’s not here. So maybe …”
They’re both right. Maybe the Undying got to him ahead of us, and maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s not. Either way, we have to keep going. So, legs shaking, I push to my feet and make myself look at the walls. Pretend I’m just in the study back at home, and there’s a lesson here for me somewhere.
In my mind, I can hear my own, younger voice asking,What does it all mean, Dad?
In response, I hear his gentle answer.Well, what do you see, Jules?
And then … Isee.
My birthday jumps out at me from among a series of frequency notations tacked up on the wall. It’s a call to me, of that I’m sure.
My heart speeds up to hummingbird levels.
It’s not over yet. My fatherdidleave something for me. I just have to find it.
My eyes fly around the room, searching for the message I know will be there. It only takes a few moments to find one word, written in capital letters and underlined twice, scrawled up on the wall above the door frame.
VEGAS, it says. Nobody else would know what that means.
Over the years, my father and I have been away on plenty of digs my mother never would have approved of, chasing half-baked clues her scientific mind told her weren’t viable. So whenever we needed to talk about one of those trips, we’d joke about going to Las Vegas. It was silly, because it was one place neither my father nor I could ever imagine ourselves. Itisan archaeological site these days, the ruins of gold and neon lying abandoned in the middle of a desert where the water finally ran out, but it’s not the sort of place we focus on, even if it was fun to kid about finding a lost jackpot that would fund our next expedition.
Now, I know that one word is code forthis is a plan I can’t speak out loud.
Whatever he wants me to know, it will be here, but it will be encoded. I might not know where he is, or if he’s okay, but I’m absolutely certain he’s left me what I need.
“Here,” I say, staring up at the strings of figures above the door. “This is the bit that matters.”
Neal parks himself beside me, softly whispering to himself as he searches for meaning in the equations. “Are you sure?” he says, after half a minute. “These don’t make sense, and they don’t follow any of the codes he used with me on our phone calls.”
