Coop said. “I might have misjudged him.”

“You were right about him holding things back.”

“But he filled in the gaps.”

“Not entirely.”

I took out the satellite phone, the six bullets, the box with the flash drive, and my digital recorder.

“Backpack?”

“Yeah, except for the recorder.”

“I assume there’s a pistol for those bullets.”

“I left it in the pack. He’s out of ammo.”

“And he had a cell phone all along?”

“It’s not a cell phone. It works off satellite signals. Doesn’t need a cell tower. He also had an industrial-grade laptop with a built-in DVD drive.”

“So he made us buy the DVD thing so we wouldn’t know about his computer.”

“That’s what I figure. The laptop is huge. That’s why his pack is so heavy.”

“So we didn’t have to come to the library.”

“No. Although there’s a possibility he thinks the Pod has somehow hacked into his computer and he’s afraid to use it. But that doesn’t explain making a special stop to get a DVD player when he had one in his pack. You don’t need to turn on the Internet to play a DVD. Your computer can’t be hacked unless it’s connected to a network.”

“How’d you learn this stuff?”

“You’re the only person on earth who doesn’t know this stuff, Coop.”

He smiled, picked up the little aluminum box, and opened it.

“What kind of flash drive is this? Looks fancy.”

“I don’t know. The question is, what kind of information does Alex have on it? It was in a pocket all by itself in that box.”

Coop looked at the computer. “Could we —”

“Maybe,” I said. “That depends on how long Alex will be gone.”

Coop went to the door and looked out. “I don’t see him. Library’s empty. I’ll let you know when he’s coming.”

He tossed the flash drive to me. I almost stuck it into the USB port of the computer Alex had been using, but thought better of it. All we needed was for him to walk in and see his data splashed all over the screen. I chose the third computer down instead. I looked over at the door. Coop gave me a thumbs-up sign.

“Let me know as soon as you see him. I’ll need time to yank the drive and blank the screen.”

“Will do.”

I put the flash drive into the slot. The screen went immediately dark. I waited for something to happen. Nothing. I was staring at a black hole.

“Well?” Coop asked.

“Hang on. Keep looking for Alex.”

I checked the power cord, thinking maybe I had kicked it loose when I sat down. It was plugged in and the surge protector light was on. I hit the restart button on the computer. Nothing happened. I unplugged the computer, plugged it into another socket, and hit the restart button again. Nothing.

I looked over at Coop.

“Coast is clear. They’re starting to turn lights off. I think the library is about to close.”

“Keep watching,” I said.

I pulled out the flash drive and repeated every combination. Nothing worked. The computer was as dead as a doornail.

“They’re definitely closing up, Pat. No sign of Alex. He’s been gone a long time.”

I went over to the other computer and put the flash drive into the slot.

The computer went dead.

“A security guy is coming this way,” Coop said. “But I don’t see Alex. I wonder what’s keeping him.”

I pulled out the flash drive, scooped up the bullets, grabbed the phone, the recorder, and jammed everything into my pockets.

“Hey, guys,” the guard said. “We closed up ten minutes ago. The doors are locked. I’ll have to let you out.”

“Sorry,” Coop said. “Guess we lost track of time.”

The guard gave him an eager, forgiving smile. “No problem. It happens.”

“We’re with our grandfather. He said he had to find a restroom.”

“Dressed in gray?”

“That’s the guy.”

“He left twenty minutes ago. Seemed to be in a hurry.”

“He gets forgetful sometimes.” Coop smiled like this was no big deal. But of course it was a huge deal. Alex had apparently ditched us.

The guard unlocked the front door and we stepped outside.

Coop stopped on the top of the steps. “What did that flash thing do?”

“I don’t think it’s a flash drive. Forget it! What about Alex?”

“Tell me about the —” Coop persisted.

“It killed the computers.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that as soon as I inserted it, the computers went blank. Gone. Poof! Dead.”

“Why?”

“How do I know? I’m not a computer expert.”

“But Alex is. At least that’s what he studied in school before he became a librarian. He’s probably going to want that flash thing back.”

“Yeah, and his ammo. We need to catch up with him.”

I hurried down the stairs, thinking Coop was right behind me. I should have known better. I turned to check and saw he was in the exact same spot, looking out onto the campus as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

He can be so irritating. I wanted to scream.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “He’s long gone.”

“You don’t know that!” I shouted.

But I knew he was probably right. Alex had had his own agenda the whole time, and we had been scratched off it.

Coop walked down the stairs, tap, tap, tap, ignoring my outburst.

“Let’s go, Lil Bro.”

We walked across the campus toward the parking lot. Students were still wandering around. Night classes, I guessed. We came to a large group of students setting up equipment in the campus events field.

“I need to check this out,” Coop said.

Of course he needed to check it out. At this rate, we’d be getting to the parking lot around sunrise. I followed him into the center of the field and saw they were setting up tripods, cameras, and telescopes.

“What’s going on?” Coop asked.

Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and smiled at him. It looked like some of the girls might faint. I revised the parking lot ETA to tomorrow afternoon.

“Astronomy class,” one of the girls said, then they all started talking at once.

“Some of us made our own telescopes.”

“We even ground the glass for the lenses.”

“Hope they work.”

“Newspaper is coming to do an article.”

“We’re lucky it cleared up.”

“Would have had to scrap the entire show.”

“What show?” Coop asked.

Everyone stopped talking and stared at him.

“The lunar eclipse,” a boy answered.

Coop’s eyes went as wide as the moon.

Mine too, I suppose.

Coop was born twenty years ago on Christmas Eve during a lunar eclipse in a traffic jam on the 495 Beltway in Virginia. Kate’s parents were murdered during that same lunar eclipse in New York City and thrown into a Dumpster.

“We have to go,” Coop said.

“If you get a chance, come on back.”

“The eclipse won’t start for a few hours.”

“We’re going to have food.”

“What’s your name?”

“Where are you …”

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap …

I almost had to jog to keep up with Coop. He didn’t slow down until we were around a corner.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe it’s everything. I don’t know. But it kind of freaked me out.”

“I can see that.”

By the time we left the campus, he looked less freaked-out. We crossed the street to the parking lot.

The camper was gone, but Alex had left us the boat.

“It’s going to be interesting for whoever runs the lot to find a boat without a truck tomorrow morning,” Coop said.

We walked over to it.

I hoped Alex had thought to throw our packs into the boat before he took off. He hadn’t, but he had left my sleeping bag. It was rolled out between the benches. It was covering something. Something the size of a human being.

We stared down at it.

“Is that your sleeping bag?” Coop asked.

“Yeah,” I said, my mouth suddenly very dry. “It was rolled up behind the front seat.”

Coop turned on a flashlight and slowly reached his other hand over the gunwale. He took ahold of the top of the bag and quickly flipped it back.

I was sure it was going to be Alex. That someone killed him and had taken the camper.

It was a woman. Her gray hair was shaven within a quarter inch of her scalp. She looked to be in her fifties, maybe her early sixties. Her brown eyes were opened in surprise. Blood from the back of her head was still leaking onto the bottom of the boat.

“It just happened,” I said.

Coop felt the artery in her neck.

“No pulse, but she’s still warm.”

I’d never seen a dead person. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. My stomach lurched, but I continued to stare. I had no idea who she was, but there was something familiar about her. Something …

“I think she’s a Pod member,” I said. “I recognize her from the newspaper sketches. Her hair was longer, but she’s one of them. I’m sure of it.”

“Her name is LaNae Fay,” Coop said. “I saw her on the video from the gas station. But how did she end up dead in our boat?”

“Alex?”

“Probably.” Coop covered her face.

“I guess we should call the police,” I said. I took the phone out of my pocket.

“That would be the logical thing to do, but not necessarily the right thing to do. If we call the police, and stick around, they’re going to haul us in. When we tell them our story, they’re not going to believe it … at first. We’ll have to get them to call Agent Ryan. She’s going to tell the police to hold us. I doubt that Arcata has an FBI office. There are only seventeen thousand people here. This means that agents would have to fly or drive in from somewhere else. By the time they get here and get organized, it will be too late. The Pod will have already done whatever they’re going to do.”

“We could call Agent Ryan, quickly tell her what’s going on, then get out of here.”

Coop thought about it for a moment. “Okay.”

He gave me the number. I punched it in and was about to hit the talk button when he stopped me.

“What?”

“Wait a second.”

I looked up at the full moon, giving him a chance to think about it.

“None of this has to do with the lunar eclipse,” Coop said. “The eclipse is something personal to me because I was born during an eclipse, and may be personal to Kate because her parents were murdered during the same eclipse.”

“I was looking up at the moon because I don’t want to look down at the dead woman in our boat,” I said.

I hadn’t thought about the lunar eclipse, or anything else, since we found her.

“Oh,” Coop said.

“But the lunar eclipse thing is interesting, and pretty weird.”

“I doubt the Pod even knows there’s a lunar eclipse tonight. I guess I should have sent the postcard to Agent Ryan a couple of days earlier.”

“All I have to do is hit Talk.”

Coop shook his head. “Same results. We wouldn’t make it out of town. Every cop within a hundred miles would be looking for us.”

“We’re leaving town?”

“We need to get to the park, or at least I do.”

“If you mention us splitting up one more time, I’m going to split your lip.”

Coop grinned. “Sorry.”

“I mean it.”

Coop looked back into the boat. “We need a head start. Maybe we can leave a note with Agent Ryan’s phone number and a rough outline of what we’re doing. By the time someone discovers the body, we’ll be long gone.”

“Hitchhike?”

Coop nodded.

I reached into my pocket and realized my writing stuff was in my pack, but I did find my digital recorder. I held it out for Coop.

He shook his head. “Go ahead. You’re better at it than I am. But make it quick.”

When I finished I hit Play.

“That sums it up pretty well,” Coop said. “But maybe you should add something about what we’re going to do.”

“Okay.”

I hit the record button.

“We’re going to hitchhike to the state park. Maybe catch up with Alex Dane. Maybe find Kate. Maybe figure out where the Pod is going. Someone has to stick with the Pod and find out where they’re going and what their plan is.

“I guess that someone is Coop and me.

“There isn’t anyone else.”