Isaac opened the back door of the town car and AJ stepped out.
“See you on the inside,” he said with a pat to Isaac’s back.
AJ lifted his cuff to straighten his coat. “I’m going in.”
“Copy,” he heard Neil’s voice.
His chest ached with the hard thump of his heart. He had to admit to liking the adrenaline swishing through his veins. Maybe he’d found something slightly more dangerous than stealing cars to make him happy. He stepped up to the man at the front door. Older gentleman, astute in his stance, gray hair and watchful eyes, exactly what Sasha had described.
In his hands he had a list of names. AJ stepped up when it was his turn.
“You must be Charlie,” AJ said.
The man’s eyes met his. “Sir?”
AJ glanced down at the list. “Hofmann.” He waited a moment, saw Charlie find his family name. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” AJ said.
“Is that so?”
“All good things.” He hesitated. “My parents should be joining me shortly if they’re not already here.”
Charlie stepped back slightly and let AJ pass.
Good thing it was cold outside or he’d be sweating. AJ rubbed his cheek, spoke in the microphone. “I’m in.”
“Copy,” Neil said. “Team One, what’s your position?”
There was some slight static in AJ’s ear. “Almost there,” he heard Sasha’s voice. She was running.
AJ walked through the main building and back outside onto the lighted path toward the auditorium. He looked around the darkened perimeter of the grounds lit only by a few decorative lamps and the glow from the windows above. Clouds had started to move in, blocking out any help from the moon. He had a general idea of where everyone on the team was. He glanced at his watch and remembered the timeline. Once inside the auditorium, he grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter and moved to a more visible part of the room.
He smiled at a few people he passed, recognizing none of them. His parents weren’t there. While English was the language most were speaking in the room, he heard bits of German and something more Slavic in nature. Dating Sasha, he really might consider learning another language. The bad words at minimum. AJ chuckled at the thought.
“Waiting on you, Team Two.”
Cooper made the last strokes on the keyboard, and all the school’s cameras fed to their monitors.
Claire and Cooper scanned them all.
Claire started recording.
Her friends behind them were muttering among themselves.
The camera above the Richter security guard watching the monitors showed two employees wearing faculty jackets and drinking coffee.
“Running a test,” Cooper told the team. “Stand by.”
“Main entrance,” Claire said.
Cooper hit a command, the camera barely flickered, and the few seconds they’d been recording played back on a loop. On their portable monitor, they saw both the live and the recorded feeds. He clicked it off, and the live feed was back online.
Richter security didn’t catch a thing.
“We’re golden here,” Cooper said.
“South dining hall,” Sasha called out.
A button here, command there, and the live feed moved to the recorded loop of zero activity.
“Clear,” Cooper said.
On his monitor, they saw Sasha move into the dining hall.
“There’s activity in the kitchen,” Claire warned.
They watched Sasha move past the doors leading into the kitchen and around to the side doors.
They followed her path, disrupting the live feeds with their recorded ones.
“Is she looking for the stairs to the sublevels?” Jax asked.
“You said they walled them in.”
“They did.”
“All the infrastructure is still there,” Claire told them. “Ventilation, dumbwaiters.”
Sasha disappeared from the camera’s sight.
“Found what I need. Back in three minutes.”
Sasha broke open the freshly painted locked cabinet to the dumbwaiter doors and looked inside. Out of her pack, she removed the cables she needed, secured them to the lift and then herself before crawling inside. She clicked on the light on her pack and closed the doors she’d just crawled through before lowering herself down.
Kicking off the walls, she rappelled down, knocking her foot along the way until it met with a hollow thud. Using as much leverage as she could, she pushed both heels into the door and broke it free.
Inside, she unhooked the cables and spun around in the dark space.
She was in the locker room of Denenberg’s gym. She moved along the wall until she found a light switch.
Fluorescent lighting flickered to life and offered a stripped room. The showers were there, but all the benches and lockers had been removed. They’d even gone through the effort of blackening the tiles and dusting the floors. For a place that was in full operation less than a week before, it appeared to have been left to rot for several decades.
“First subfloor is empty,” she reported as she made her way to the stairwell and down to the next floor.
“Mr. Hofmann?”
AJ turned with the sound of his name and found the stoic expression of the headmistress. She wore a long, formal evening gown, with a modest neckline and sleeves that went to her wrists. She looked less like the dictator of a boarding school and more like a woman in her maturity.
“Ms. Lodovica.”
“Your presence here is surprising,” she told him.
“I’m not sure it should be,” he told her. “Board members past and present, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t recall you on the board.”
“My mother asked me to join her,” he lied.
“Keep her talking,” Neil said in his ear.
AJ tilted his head to the voice. “When I came to you last month, I couldn’t help but think Richter was hiding something.”
Lodovica stood still, her practiced smile in place.
“And since I’ve become closer to my parents after Amelia’s passing, I know a few things now that I didn’t the last time I was here.”
“We really were sorry to hear of her passing,” she told him. “I assure you, I’d like to have your sister’s killer behind bars as much as you do.”
“I doubt as much, Headmistress.”
“Truly, Mr. Hofmann. The students are family to me. I care greatly for them.”
AJ bit his tongue. “Then you’ll be happy to know we’re getting closer to finding her killer and bringing them to justice.”
Instead of the curt reply or brush-off he’d gotten the first time he’d stepped into the school, Lodovica placed a hand on his arm, gaze warm. “I truly hope you do. Now if you’ll excuse me. I see someone I really must speak with.”
He watched as she walked away and toward another beautifully dressed woman half her age.
Wiping imaginary lint from his lapel, he spoke into his sleeve. “Did you guys hear that?”
“Copy,” Neil said.
“How did she sound to you, Team Two?” Sasha asked.
“Sincere,” Claire replied.
“Me too. Okay, on the second subfloor. Range is toast. No stalls, nothing.”
AJ moved around the room, listening to the team in his ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Isaac had joined him. The waiter uniform he wore matched perfectly . . . except his shoes.
Isaac nodded to his left.
Pohl.
The man stood talking with several people, drinks in hand. He looked up, saw a woman passing by, and scanned her briefly before turning his attention back to the men he was talking with.
Creepazoid.
Claire had it right. AJ lowered his gaze and listened to the chatter in his ear.
“Down on the lower level. Everyone still here?” Sasha asked.
AJ glanced over at Isaac. His voice came through. “Team Four.”
The rest of the team sounded off.
“Fingers crossed, kids.”
AJ held his breath.
“It’s all here.” Sasha’s words were music to AJ’s ears. Gathering the information in the school’s locked room was the key to moving forward with their plan.
“Why would they clear out the top floors and leave the bottom?” Cooper asked.
“Because someone wants the information found. Like maybe whoever spoke to us last night?” Claire said.
AJ wanted to comment but decided to keep his ideas to himself.
“Okay. This is going to take some time.”
Sasha opened the first filing cabinet and brought out a stack of papers. She removed a pair of clear glasses from her bag and turned them on. A digital display appeared before her eyes. “You getting this, Team Two?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, here we go.” Sasha opened the first file and flipped the pages as fast as she could before moving on to the next. None of it registered in her brain. She just kept flipping.
Claire leaned back in her chair, rested her legs up on the table, and turned to her friends. “So, any new gossip in the pipeline?”
As Sasha flipped pages, their computer recorded every document, every photo. Systematically all those images were filed and uploaded a second time to devices in Neil’s and Isaac’s tablets. If any one of them lost their packs, the others would have it.
“This is so completely badass,” Jax squealed.
“No personal chatter!” Neil grunted.
Claire rolled her eyes, covered her microphone. “My boss makes Lodovica seem like an angel.”
Jax and Stacey laughed. “You’re not going to believe this, but Lodovica moved Princess D into the staff housing.”
Claire’s mouth gaped. “You mean she came out of the closet?”
“Stop the damn chatter, kid, or I’m cutting your mic!” Neil was pissed.
Claire put a hand in the air, stopped her friends from going on. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s better.”
She smiled. As much as he tried to be such a hard-ass, there wasn’t a lot of bite in his voice.
The only noise on the line was Sasha moving papers and the chatter of room noise where AJ was pretending to party.
“Did I hear that right? Lodovica is a lesbian?”
Sasha’s question made Claire laugh with a snort.
“Jesus, this isn’t a fucking chat line.” Neil was pissed.
“Hold up. Princess D. That’s Denenberg?” Sasha asked. The pages she was flipping hesitated briefly.
Claire waited to answer, nodded her head instead.
Cooper looked at her. “The yearling is nodding,” he told the group.
“Bear with me, team. Thinking aloud here. Lodovica loses her place at Richter, a new headmistress comes in, everything is status quo. Remove Creepazoid, Lodovica has all this on the board members, she keeps her position. School removes the subfloors, loosens up the rules. Lodovica and Denenberg come out. Happily ever after and all that.”
“Motive for flushing out an operative and putting the target on Pohl,” Neil said.
“Only Pohl is still with us, isn’t that right?”
Silence.
“How much longer, Team One?”
“Almost there,” Sasha reported.