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By Root 922 0

her way toward the administration building. The Academy was laid out like a campus, with multistory earth-toned structures connected by nearly identical windowed corridors, or tubes. If you weren’t careful, you could find yourself wandering down one of the hallways without the slightest hint of where you were. Directory maps, mounted on the walls and lettered in white against a milk chocolate background, provided three-dimensional renditions of the campus. Labeled plaques above each map used oversized arrows to point you in the proper direction. The directories were especially helpful to senior law enforcement supervisors who attended the eleven-week National Academy certification program to improve their management, administrative, and investigative abilities. Without the maps, or a personal guide to take them through the labyrinthine hallways, the attendees might never find their way to class.

Vail walked into the administration building, signed in at the receptionist desk, and passed the x-ray machine en route to the glass doors. With the darkness outside and the windowed corridors well lit, she felt like a rodent on display in a maze.

She walked into the library’s rotunda and looked up at the second and third stories, marveling at the beauty of the large room. The architects who created the Academy were not typical government designers. This complex was functional, but like a high-end home it had a majestic flair, a feeling of grandeur and self-importance.

She sat down at one of the computers and logged onto the system. Huddling over the keyboard, she organized the information in her mind. Emma’s maiden name was Irwin, and she had been born in Brooklyn. While Vail didn’t know anything about Nellie Irwin, she made the initial assumption she had also been born in New York. If her searches came up empty, she could then widen the parameters.

She curled some hair behind her right ear, then attacked the keyboard. Like a fisherman, she would first troll the waters where information would be most likely to yield results: birth and death records, then real estate holdings, criminal databases, and so on until she got a tug at her line . . . something that would make her stop the boat and weigh anchor.

The next three hours passed without thought of food. People came and went, the overcast darkness had dissipated into a rural star-lit sky, and her stomach finally let her know it was beyond late. She made her way into the closed dining hall, picked out a ready-made turkey sandwich, and devoured it in a matter of minutes. She had been checking her cell throughout the evening, hoping it would bring news of Jonathan’s improvement.

But like a criminal facing a murder charge, the BlackBerry remained silent.

Vail returned to the library and reviewed her notes. She had located Nellie Irwin’s place and date of birth: Rutland Road in Brooklyn, February 16, 1947. She did not have a criminal record, but had worked two jobs, from 1964 through 1967. She worked one week into 1968.

Vail had been searching by social security number, so even if she had gotten married, she still would have been able to trace her. But there was nothing . . . not even a tax return had been filed. She widened her search to the entire United States, then waited as the computer sifted through records.

As she reached for her cell phone to dial in to the hospital, the vibration of a text message startled her. Jonathan—

She pulled the device from her belt and looked at the display. Not the hospital. A number in DC. Headquarters. Tim Meadows.

AT 9:45 P.M., the drive from Quantico to the Hoover Building took forty-five minutes. She was checked against a clipboarded list of expected guests and given clearance by the FBI Police sentry standing at the mouth to the underground garage. She parked and continued up the elevator to the lab, where all was quiet except for the plucking of Andreas Vollenweider’s New Age electracoustic harp. She followed the music to a back room lit with subdued fluorescents, where Tim Meadows sat at a twenty-four-inch flat panel screen,