“Ifthat’shis real name,” Cole said.
“Oh, come on, he didn’t have a reason to use an aliasback then. Though, I mean, we don’t know his reason for using one now, even.”
“Right. He didn’t use an alias until somethinghappened. Time to find out what that was. I’m just going to go back to my cubbyhole and search on his name.”
Now that she’d found her father, she could potentially find her mother too, and the unidentified woman in the picture with her. She held on to so much hope, but what if she came up empty?
No, this was happening. Pop was a mechanical engineer who had worked for a rocket booster company. A rocket engineer. Wow. She could hardly fathom that. Then again, she could look back on their previous conversations and it made sense.
But what happened? “Why isn’t Pop still a rocket engineer? Why didn’t he stay working with Resonant Solutions?”
“Well, one thing, it was absorbed by Advanced Technologies,” Cole whispered over her shoulder. She hadn’t known he’d come back. “So that also connects him to Jim Jordan, the COO of Advanced Technologies, with whom he had lunch.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking in.”
“Look at this article. This is everything. Pop worked with Mason Hyde for a decade in structural mechanics.” Her throat closed off completely.
“Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project.” Cole scrolled to the bottom of the article. “Look. TheLibertyorbiter is in this picture.”
“Resonant was one of the many NASA contractors,” she said. “TheLiberty, just one of several orbiters, includingEnterprise,Columbia,Challenger,Discovery,Atlantis, andEndeavour.”
“Where did I see theLibertybefore?”
“In the museum. We literally just read about theLibertydisaster that happened in 1995, almost ten years after theChallengerin 1986, and eight years before theColumbiatragedy.”
Oh ... she pressed her hand over her mouth. He worked on the NASA contract. She couldn’t breathe. “Thirty years. This is it, then. If we’re looking for an incident, something that happenedbefore, theLibertydisaster could be the incident we’re looking for.” Pop was there with the company, and then bam, theLibertymalfunctioned, exploded, killing six astronauts. He started a new life in Forestview. Less than a year after the incident, Jo was born in Michigan.
“Go. Go find my mother. Search through this event.”
The thought that she was finally onto something, finally going to get answers, overwhelmed her. Tears streaming, frantic, she searched for her mother through the employees listed on the project. In total, tens of thousands of employees across multiple contractors worked on the space shuttles. But Jo kept her search close to her father’s department, or she’d be at a loss, unless some of the records were digitized and she had a name she could search.
There. Mom’s face smiled back at her. “Cole!” she practically shouted.
He was at her side again. “Shh. We’re not the only ones here.” He glanced over his shoulder. “We are now. It’s almost closing time. We need to wrap this up. We can come back if we need to.”
“Sanders is keeping guard, remember?”
“Exactly. He’s too far away to help.”
“But you’re here. Look.” She pointed.
She couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her cheeks. “She’s here, hugging the unidentified woman in the photograph. Mom’s name is Myrna Carter, not MiraCattrel. I still don’t have the woman’s name.” She pointed along the screen as she read. “We’re getting somewhere. I can’t believe this. We need to get copies of this. Find the librarian. Oh...” Her heart palpitated. “They both worked on the—”
“Liberty.”
“I’m just so proud of them. Why would either of them hide and leave behind their lives? Live separate lives?” Painful emotion clogged her throat. “They worked with NASA, for crying out loud.”
“The reason remains to be seen.” Cole sounded distant.
Through blurred vision, Jo continued reading about the shuttle’s explosion killing all astronauts on board. Inquiries and investigations occurred for weeks and months afterward. And yet here they were, searching the microfiche archives to find information about Pop.
“I’ve got him. Looks like the gang—your mother, father, and Mason—worked under Troy Martin. I found his picture.” Cole pulled up the man’s picture on the screen for Jo.
She sucked in a breath. “Everyone in that picture is accounted for, except for Troy and this woman.”
“We know the company and the situation, so I want Allison to track the employees down. See where they are now. That’s asking a lot because Resonant employed almost an entire town in Nevada. Probably still does but under the new name of Gemini.”
