There was so much grime on the thick glass that it was impossible to see what was on the other side.
Cautiously, Slater set down his flashlight and used his palm to wipe off a layer of dust and debris.
Fascinated, Catalina aimed her flashlight through the window. Inside was an array of old-fashioned control panels covered with dials, gauges and switches. There was a metal desk in one corner. Logbooks and drawings were scattered everywhere.
A vintage pinup calendar hung on the wall. Miss July was a long-legged, well-endowed redhead. Her makeup, hairstyle, skimpy negligee and sexy pose were clearly from the middle of the previous century. Someone had drawn a circle on a very familiar date.
“July twenty-fourth,” Slater said.
“That’s it,” Catalina whispered. “The date of the Incident. The annual Fogg Lake Days celebration is held every year on July twenty-fourth.”
“The explosion that took place here triggered the release of the paranormal gases that blanketed the town and the surrounding area,” Slater said. “Congratulations, Catalina. Fifteen years ago you and Olivia LeClair found one of the lost labs. Whatever is inside that control room and the rooms beyond it is all still a highly classified secret and worth a fortune on the black market.”
“Whoever grabbed Olivia must think she can lead them to this place.”
“Looks like she hasn’t done so yet,” Slater said.
“We have to find her.”
“We’ve got a lot more information to work with now—”
He broke off and tilted his head a little, as if trying to hear something that was being said in the distance. He flattened his palm against the thick green glass and went very still.
Catalina watched him, not speaking. She felt the energy heighten in the atmosphere and knew he was going into his zone: hearing voices.
“Fear,” he said. “Panic. Something has gone wrong. Disaster. ‘Can’t shut it down. Out of control. Get out. Get out.’”
Now Catalina could hear a sound, too. She flinched in reaction to the strident, insistent noise.
Not voices.
The retro telephone in Slater’s pack was ringing.
CHAPTER 25
What the hell?” Slater said.
He yanked his hand off the glass and slipped the pack off his shoulders. He set the bag on the floor and quickly unfastened the straps.
The phone rang again, a demanding, discordant summons that was impossible to ignore.
Catalina watched him take the phone out of the bag.
“Please don’t tell me we’re dealing with a ghost calling from the Other Side,” she said.
He studied the phone. “No such thing as ghosts, remember? I think the energy in this chamber activated this device.”
“Right. Well? Are you going to answer the phone?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Excitement crackled across his senses. Even if he had become one of the monsters, he still lived for moments like this, moments when the past sent shock waves into the present and made it dazzlingly clear that it could not be ignored.
He closed his hand around the receiver, lifted it out of the cradle and cautiously held it to his ear.
He heard a series of high-pitched pings.
“Voices?” Catalina asked.
“No,” he said. “Sounds like it’s sending out a signal of some kind.”
A muffled grinding noise rumbled in the section of mirrored wall adjacent to the control room.
Catalina swung around to stare at the source of the rumbling.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Gears,” Slater said. “Old and rusty but still functional.”
Ponderously, the section of paneling slid aside, revealing a portion of the control room.
The pings stopped. Slater crouched to set the receiver back into the cradle. He put the device into his pack and slung the strap over one shoulder. He walked closer to the doorway and aimed the flashlight into the room.
“The phone sends the signal that opens the door of the control room,” he said. “It probably closes it, too.”
“Why did whoever created it make it look like a standard telephone?”
“I think it’s safe to say the engineers who designed it wanted to camouflage the fact that it’s a functioning paranormal machine meant to provide access to this chamber.”
“In case the thing fell into the wrong hands?”
“Exactly,” Slater said.
Catalina moved to stand beside him. She played her light over the space.
“Whoever was in here on the night of the explosion sure left in a hurry,” she said.
The evidence of a frantic, chaotic departure was everywhere. In addition to the litter of papers and schematics, chairs were overturned. Coffee mugs lay in pieces on the floor. One of the drawers in the desk stood open. Slater crossed the space to take a look inside.
“Empty,” he said. “When they evacuated this place someone grabbed whatever was in this drawer.”
At the rear of the control room a door stood ajar. Catalina moved toward it and aimed her flashlight into the inky darkness beyond.
“A hallway,” she said. “Offices on either side. Maybe some labs. The doors are all wide open. There are drawings and papers everywhere. They were running for their lives. I wonder if they all made it out safely or if there will be skeletons at the end of that corridor.”
Slater moved to stand behind her. He added the beam of his flashlight to hers.
“If there are bodies, there’s no rush to find them,” he said. “This is the most significant discovery the Foundation has ever made. We need to get a team in here to secure the artifacts and any data that was left behind.”
“Good luck with that.”
He glanced at her and saw that her eyes were narrowed and her jaw was rigid.
“You think the good citizens of Fogg Lake will have a problem with the idea of the Foundation sending a team to this site?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Look on the bright side. It will give Uncle Victor a chance to sharpen his people skills.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We’ll let him figure it out later. Right now we have to secure this place.”
“And find Olivia. Time is running out for her, Slater.”
“Now that we know why they grabbed her, we’ve got what we need to set a trap.”
Catalina turned to look at him. “How do we do that?”
“We go back to the beginning of this thing and figure out who in Fogg Lake helped Morrissey’s killer get in and out of town unseen.”
“What makes you think the person is still in town?”
“I don’t know if he or she is still around but I am sure that the individual was here fifteen years ago. This is a small community. It won’t be hard to narrow down the list of suspects, and then we can start eliminating them.”
“You said earlier that the accomplice might be someone who knew the area but wasn’t living here at the time,” Catalina reminded him.
“That’s still a possibility, but after seeing this place I think it’s far more likely that the accomplice was a resident when Morrissey and the killer arrived. What’s more, I think that individual was still around the next morning when you and Olivia came out of the caves.”