The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past

Chapter 23 - The Hunters and the Hunted

“What?!?” Grater stopped himself from screaming in the nick of time, remembering that the children’s parents were still huddled on the other side of the door. He repeated himself, only slightly more calmly, “What did you say?”

“I don’t understand. The doors were locked from the outside. There’s no way they could have gotten out. I don’t know where they could have gone.” Barrios’ voice was strained and more than a little nervous.

Grater responded through gritted teeth, “I do.” 

§

As best as Binny could tell in the dim lighting, the Dionysus building was like a big spiral waterslide. A circular ramp led from the bottom all the way to the top of the building, with a huge empty space in the middle. It looked like it was used as some combination of art gallery and auditorium space. The skybridge deposited Binny somewhere between the second and third floors of the building, leaving her with only two real choices – up or down. It looked like there were more floors above than below, so ‘up’ seemed like the choice to make.

Binny wasn’t sure how long it would take for Penny and Zach to find what they were looking for. She would need to keep the guards busy for as long as she could without getting caught. She tried not to think about the fact that every minute it took was a minute where Cassie had to keep her composure with that awful woman. 

Binny broke into a run, circling inside the building on the ascending ramp. Periodically there would be small stretches where the floor flattened out for a bit, but in general she was going up. After three loops, Binny still hadn’t gotten to the top. She didn’t think anyone was in the building, but she hugged the outer wall to keep from being seen from below just in case.

Finally the ramp opened into a sweeping balcony that looked down over the auditorium space several floors below. What looked like fancy art hung on the walls. Wooden benches where you could sit and look at the paintings and photographs were placed here and there. Binny continued on her trajectory to the very end of the balcony, trying to collect her thoughts. She had thought she would lead the guards on a wild goose chase. In reality, she had walked right into a dead end.

§

 “NOW can you tell us what’s happening?” If Jay’s eyebrows had been raised any further they would have crawled over his scalp and onto the back of his head.

“It looks like there’s been some kind of a malfunction in the door alarms in the next building, sir.” That was the second time he’d told that lie in the span of a couple of minutes, Grater noted silently to himself.

“So this has nothing to do with my children?” Julie asked, her voice betraying the worry she felt.

“No ma’am. Dr. Trace is interviewing one of them right now.” Well, at least that was true, Grater thought to himself. “My men and I are going to go investigate. I’m sure it will only take a few minutes. Please stay here.”

Jay, Julie, and Dr. Huitre watched as the guard took off at a trot towards the stairs. He was muttering into his walkie-talkie as he went. And just like that, the three of them were alone.

§

Zach pulled the folded up papers with Cassie’s coloring from his pocket. “You see this symbol here that’s on each of the pages?”

Penny nodded.

“It’s like a bar code that represents a particular clinical study. They use scanners on their phones to find the matching symbol. We don’t have their scanner, so we’ve got to manually find the matching one on the file cabinets. We’ll do it systematically.” Zach pushed the pages into Penny’s hands.