Parchment & Pearls

12. You're Really Starting To Sound Like A Mom

Chapter 12

You’re Really Starting To Sound Like A Mom

 

 

“This is…brilliant and yet slightly disturbing at the same time,” I commented.

“Great combination, Hattie,” Drake grinned as he pulled me into the room.  “And it’s not like you’ve never seen something like this before.”

“Sure, but in movies and those crime dramas my sister used to watch when she was younger.  This…this is something else.”

What was I trying to make sense of exactly?  The room behind the closed door by the kitchen. 

After everything I’d heard that morning, I was expecting some super-secret, spy-like control room with monitors covering one wall, holographic projections in the center of the room, that sort of thing.  What I got was a white-walled room, blackout curtains, and one lonely laptop sitting on a desk along one wall.  There were other things that made the room seem darker…and not in the lamp or overhead light kind of way.  A world map hung above the desk with red and blue dots marked everywhere and a collage of black-and-white photos of people I didn’t know were taped onto the wall between the two windows. 

After I made a slow turn to take in everything, I came to a stop at what looked like a timeline, complete with photos and written questions and comments on sticky-notes, covering the only wall that didn’t have something on it or in front of it. 

And Vince Peters’ face was right in the middle.  Three darts were stuck into various places – one in his eye, another on his throat, and the last right in the middle of his forehead.

“Seriously?” I asked, looking back at Drake and Cruz while pointing at the photo in question. 

Drake held up his hands.  “Hey, don’t look at me.  He’s got major daddy issues.”

“You’d be surprised at what a great stress reliever it can be,” Cruz shrugged.  “Now, if I could really do it…and with bullets instead of darts…”

“O-kay,” I dragged out.  “What is all of this exactly?  I can tell you’ve been tracking Vince and the Order, but what does all of it mean?”

Both guys walked over to where I was standing in front of the timeline. 

“This is every interaction we’ve had and every event that had something to do with the Order in the last five years,” Cruz said, looking over it.  “I started it before Drake came along, but we got a lot more done together than I would have doing it myself.”

“And when it’s been us encountering, we come back here and put everything that happened down on paper,” Drake continued.  “The sticky-notes are just short explanations, but we’ve got the real paperwork saved on the computer and three other hard drives for backup.  One of which we plan on giving John and Emmy whenever we make arrangements to go over to England and meet with them.”

“So you’re serious about telling John and Emmy about all of this, huh?” I asked, raising an eyebrow in his direction.  “I would have thought you’d want to keep it a secret even longer.  I don’t get why you wouldn’t have told them before you told me either.”

“I’ve already told you that.  I want your help with this.”

“With what the last three pages of the long lost book lead to?  Drake, you do realize that we don’t know how long it’s going to take.  I’ve got a life back home in Georgia.  I can pick up and go anywhere during the summer, sure, but you know it’s going to take a lot longer than three months.”