The Intuitives(64)

“I hate to say it,” Mackenzie chimed in, “but I agree with Tick-Tock. We said we wouldn’t let Ammu or Christina know what we know. We never said we wouldn’t even try to figure it out.”

“Fine!” Rush relented, worried that either one of them might walk in at any moment. “Tonight. We’ll go to the workshop tonight.”

“What time?” Sam asked automatically.

“After curfew, Tick-Tock,” Rush declared. “Christina said she was going to be checking on us every night, but I haven’t seen her do it. Have you guys?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“OK. So maybe she’s not doing it, but then again, maybe she’s been listening in so she knows where we are. We’ll play it safe. Stay in the suites until 11:15, then meet up here—right here—and we’ll wait for a while. That way, if someone comes after us, we can say we wanted to play. We won’t get in a lot of trouble for that.

“If we’re in the clear, then we head for the workshop. In the meantime, nobody says another damn word about anything weird today. Everybody got it?”

“Yeah,” they all agreed.

“11:15,” Rush repeated, just for good measure. “Not before.”

? ? ?

By 11:17 p.m. they were all back down in the game center. Rush convinced them to fire up one quiet round of HRT Alpha, just in case anyone came looking for them. But no one came. When the match ended, they all signed off and gathered up in the center of the room.

“We should go out the back way,” Kaitlyn whispered. “The main doors all have alarms, but there’s an access panel between a janitor’s closet and a gardener’s shed in the back. The shed door isn’t on the main system.”

They all just stared at her.

“What?” she asked. “Didn’t you guys explore the place when you got here?”

“I thought I did,” Mackenzie said, grinning wryly. “Please. After you.”

Kaitlyn led the way out of the conference room toward a series of narrow hallways at the back of the building. Just as she had promised, a janitor’s closet offered up an access panel in the rear wall. They used a wrench from the closet to loosen the bolts and remove the panel. The resulting hole was an easy fit for Sketch and just barely large enough for Rush to squeeze through.

On the other side was a small shed that stood against the outside wall of the lodge. Gardening tools hung from metal pegs, neatly filling the top half of every wall, leaving the bottom half free for stacked bags of peat moss, weed killer, and fertilizer.

Rush went first, shoving a few bags out of the way and then standing up to make room for Kaitlyn. The shed was too small to hold more than two people comfortably, but Kaitlyn slid past him and opened the outside door without any hesitation at all—ignoring Rush, who threw one hand up in surprise and then dropped it lamely when nothing happened.

“I told you,” she said. “This door isn’t on the alarm system. I’m Gears, remember? This is my thing.”

“My mistake, your mechanicalness,” Rush apologized, throwing her an exaggerated bow. “After you.”

They all made their way outside and followed Kaitlyn down the path toward the maintenance garage.

“The garage has its own alarm system,” Kaitlyn whispered when they reached the normal-looking door at the far end of the building, “but I watched Ammu reset it when we left after our session, so I know the code. We just have to get in.”

She fished around in her pocket and pulled out an odd-looking tool set, chose a couple of small tools from it, pushed them into the lock, and started to fiddle around with them. For the second time that night, everyone just stared at her.

“Where the hell did you learn how to do that?” Sam finally asked.

“It’s really not that hard,” Gears whispered. “Little springs inside the lock push the pins down to keep it from turning. You just push the pins back up, keeping enough tension on them so they don’t fall back down again… and… voilà!”

The door opened and Kaitlyn slipped through it. She entered the security code into a beeping alarm pad, and the beeping stopped.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, popping her head back out to see why everyone was still outside.

“I think maybe your tag should be CIA,” Rush said.

“Nah,” Kaitlyn replied, giggling. “I like ‘Gears’!”

She disappeared into the garage again, and this time the others followed her.

? ? ?

The shop didn’t have any windows to give them away, so Kaitlyn turned on the overhead lights. “I officially call this meeting of the Cloak-and-Dagger Society to order!” she said grandly.

“Sure, okay,” Sam said, rolling her eyes.

“First order of business: why was Ammu acting so weird this morning?”

“Right?” Sam pounded both hands against the work table. “Like saying nothing happened yesterday.”

“And then acting relieved when it didn’t work today,” Mackenzie added.

“Maybe it’s dangerous?” Kaitlyn suggested.

“Maybe,” Mackenzie acknowledged, “but if that’s all it was, he would have been acting weird yesterday too.”

“So, what then?” Sam demanded.