Isidoro #2
I pick one up, blowing the dust off the yellowing paper. At the top is a code and a batch number. “You might be onto something.”
We spend close to an hour rifling through all the files in that room. None of them match our batch though. It’s another dead end.
“There’s gotta be something here,” Julian whines, crossing his arms as he leans his hip against the desk. “Maybe we aren’t approaching this the right way.”
I walk over to him, my fingers itching to smooth out the crease on his forehead. “Well, if this was a secret op, then—”
“Then the records wouldn’t be piled together with the legit ones!” He jumps up, grinning. “You’re right. We are looking in the wrong place.” Grabbing my wrist, he drags me out into the murky corridor. “I saw a manager’s office. If there are any clues here, that’s where they’ll be.”
The door to that office is locked, which isn’t really an issue for Julian’s muscular shoulder.
Inside, we find a mess as big as that in the rest of the facility.
The desk is cluttered with accounting documents, project and profit reports, the usual.
Certificates and old trophies litter the bookshelf, and two dead plants sit on the windowsill overlooking the inner yard.
“I’ll check the desk. You handle the bookshelf,” Julian says, pointing at the rotten wood that’s hanging on by a thread.
I nod and start from the top down while he crouches by the desk, searching for something. Five minutes of tinkering later, he takes out a hidden compartment that was attached to the lowest drawer.
“Bingo. Isidoro, I found something.”
I shove the documents off the desk, and he places the metal box on top of it.
The thing is locked, but that doesn’t stop Julian, who rolls his sleeves up, grabs two opposing ends of the box and breaks it in half with a strained grunt.
I watch mesmerized as the muscles on his forearms ripple and flex with the effort, the itch to feel them under my fingers surging through me.
“You hungry again or something?” he says, throwing me a side glance.
Hungry… Perhaps that’s not an inaccurate way to put it. I suppress a smile, holding up the small key I found between the pages of a hollow book on the shelf. “I’m sure there was an easier and less uncivilized way to do this.”
He glares at the key. “Why didn’t you say you found the key?”
I hum, thinking about it for a moment. “Your way looked more intriguing, I suppose.”
Lips pursing, he blinks at me. “You’re weird.”
Am I? I’d say it’s his fault.
“Never mind this.” I grab one half of the box, the contents spilling. “What’s inside?”
Among the couple of fake IDs, bank statements and transfers dated three years ago, we find an itemized shipping report with an encoded destination and the same batch number as the one Julian ripped off that uniform. My heart skips a beat as I hold up the document, dated the same as the rest.
“This has to be it, right?” Julian guesses, peeking over my shoulder. He has to stand on tiptoes to manage it.
The hope dripping from his voice sparks something to life inside my chest. I wish this leads us to whoever is behind this whole thing. After the encounter with the creature at the quarry, something just doesn’t sit right with me and I know I won’t be able to rest until we figure out what.
The bad feeling in my gut grows as we find a couple more reports pointing to the same destination. The batch numbers follow a similar format, differing only in the last two letters and the final digit.
“Any ideas?” I pose, having no clue what any of these codes mean.
Julian snatches the report with the matching batch number from me and frowns at it, his eyes scanning the information. “No. This uses a different logic behind the encoding.”
I fold my arms, a twinge of irritation jumping on the side of my head. “Let’s see if we’ll find anything else.”
We search the rest of the factory, but our luck doesn’t hold. There’s nothing else here. By the time we are back in New York, Julian has exhausted all his guesses as to how to crack the destination codes, a permanent line now living between his inky eyebrows.
“I’m sure Tommy can help,” I say, taking off my jacket and tossing it on the couch in the lounge, where the cloak from the coronation is still sitting. I should get that put away. “Give him a couple of days and he’ll track down where the shipments went.”
Julian plops on the armchair by the window, sighing dramatically. “I hate waiting. It makes me antsy.”
A surge of heat slides down my spine. “I know a way or two to—”
“Oh. You two are back,” Ria cuts in, pausing at the door with an empty glass in hand. “Did you find anything?”
“We did.” Julian hops up, pretty eyes flashing with hope. “Shipping info, but we’ve got no idea where to. Maybe these codes mean something to you?” He hands her the document.
Ria sits on the armchair next to the couch and skims through it. “No, sorry, this—” Her eyes go wide and the color drains from her face.
“Ria?” Julian leans in, concern scrunching his face.
I’m onto my feet before I realize it, standing next to him with a hand on his shoulder so he can’t get any closer. He whips his head back, startled by my sudden show of hyperspeed, a little confused too.
“Sorry, just…” Ria mutters, pain behind every word. “I don’t recognize the code, but…” She holds the document, her manicured finger pointing at the bottom, where someone has left a note about a change in the shipping time. “This is my father’s handwriting.”
My mind spins with possibilities. Was William Vance part of this? Could he still be?
Julian goes rigid. “Your father was involved in whatever this is? He had something to do with that creature?”
That was always a possibility, but we had no concrete proof. We still don’t, but the evidence we found certainly strongly suggests it.
Ria averts her eyes, clutching the document to her chest. “I don’t know. He mentioned nothing to me! He just… He said once the merge was complete and the wedding was scheduled, we’d talk… But then both he and Andras disappeared.”