least she is willing to interact with Cyndia, watches old movies with her. She is rewarded, of course, with her favorite kettle corn and a movie of her choice, usually one of those absurd horror films. I pray she will be able to move forward as Cyndia expects, but I have strong doubts. She responds well to the medications, they keep her settled and calm, and I hope they don’t mask her abilities, if indeed she has any. Whether Subject K understands what Cyndia expects of her is another question entirely.
July 27: Subject M continues to be mutinous, won’t cooperate, refuses to make eye contact, and continues to stare straight and ignore us, even Cyndia. She doesn’t seem to care about any pain and the drugs knock her out, so there’s no benefit at all. A poor choice, despite rumors of her odd abilities. She tried to escape yet again. Must decide what more we can do with her. I am not certain—
Sherlock said, “These aren’t minutes, they’re personal notes on experiments. They call the file Project C. I wonder what that means? Dillon, wait. What’s happening? Look, the text is disappearing. What’s going on?”
Savich cursed, began typing furiously. Bodine had installed a wipe program that kicked in if the file was opened without following a special series of passcodes. Even if Quint Bodine wouldn’t ever realize someone had copied and decrypted his files, he had yet another failsafe. Who had installed it for him? It was sophisticated. Savich tried everything he could to stop it, but still, line by line the file disappeared. He watched as Subject K simply faded from the screen. There was nothing left, nothing at all. Only a blank screen, and no way to retrieve the deleted file.
Savich slowly closed MAX down. He sat back, rubbed his eyes. “Well, that stunt was worthy of Nicholas Drummond. Where did Bodine find an expert to install that wipe program? Even if we get a warrant for his computer, he’ll make certain that file is blank before we can access it.”
“There was no way for you to know the file was booby-trapped?”
He sighed, dashed his hand through his hair. “It didn’t even occur to me. If I’d known, maybe I could have figured out how to deal with it. I don’t know, Sherlock.”
“Subject K and Subject M—they’re two of the missing girls. They must be the first two. Remember, Latisha was only taken in late July. And Rafer Bodine thought ‘Amy died hard’? Maybe she’s Subject M, maybe she tried to escape again and they killed her. What was the date he wrote about her?”
“July twenty-seventh.”
“The others could still be alive. All of them are subjects in some kind of experiment? Cyndia wants them to behave in some way and they’re using drugs on them—to do what? Control them, certainly, but what else? Drugs Bodine hopes won’t mask their abilities? What abilities? But the way he writes, I don’t think he believes they have any.”
Savich reached for his cell on its charger, punched in Griffin’s number.
“Griffin here. What’s up, Savich? You get Bodine’s computer files decoded?”
“Yes. I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Carson’s with me. Let me put you on speaker as well.”
When Savich finished telling them what he and Sherlock had read, he paused a moment, then added, “The way Bodine wrote his notes, it didn’t seem to us he believed what he and Cyndia were doing to the girls would gain them anything. And it was about what Cyndia hoped and wanted, not Quint.”
Griffin whistled. “And even with the wipe program installed on top of the encryption, Quint didn’t use their actual names. Talk about paranoid.”
Carson said, “And K and M aren’t the initial letters of any of the girls’ names. I’ll bet Subject K is Heather Forrester, from Gaffer’s Ridge. Dillon, why didn’t the program wipe when MAX was decoding it?”
“Different process,” Savich said. “It didn’t trigger the program.”
Griffin said, “Okay, back up a minute. All the girls are sixteen. Wasn’t their daughter, Camilla, sixteen when she disappeared? And the file name, Project C. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with their long-missing daughter.”
Sherlock cocked her head, said, “That’s brilliant, Griffin. And I had a thought. The Bodines’ missing daughter, Camilla—do you happen to have photos of the missing girls?”
60
* * *
Savich divided MAX’s screen into four quadrants, a photo of a kidnapped girl in each quadrant.
Griffin said after a moment, “The four girls do seem to resemble each other a bit, their general build,