Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities #8) - Shannon Messenger Page 0,167

“Or one of them, at least. He brought me there a few days ago and showed me how it gives him access to thousands and thousands of camera feeds—and that’s exactly what we need. So now Mr. Forkle’s going to take Dex there, and let Dex do his Technopath thing. And if our guy is anywhere on this planet—we’ll find him.”

TWENTY-NINE

IF I AGREE TO WHAT you’re asking,” Mr. Forkle said, glancing slowly between Sophie and Keefe, “and let’s be clear that what I mean by that is, if I allow Mr. Dizznee to do his ‘Technopath thing,’ as you put it, to the cameras feeding into my private office, I expect to be fully kept in the loop on this project’s progress from this point forward—and I don’t mean simply with this particular memory. I mean with all of the memories you decide to investigate in the future.”

He held Keefe’s stare as he slowly flipped to the next page of the silver notebook, as if he was testing to see if Keefe would try to stop him.

“Flip all you want—I have nothing to hide,” Keefe said, leaning back in his chair. “But I should warn you, that also means there’s nothing else interesting in there. Mommy Dearest did a good job of making sure I wouldn’t recover these memories. Why do you think Foster’s pushing you so hard for this one?”

“What about the memories in those?” Mr. Forkle asked, pointing to the green and brown notebooks still sitting on Sophie’s desk.

Keefe scooped them up and held them out. “I mean… if you’re looking for a particularly inspired visual re-creation of the Great Gulon Incident, then you’re about to be super excited. Otherwise, not so much. Oh, and if you flip the pages at just the right speed, you can watch the moment the gas erupts.”

Mr. Forkle’s lips twitched with a smile as he took the notebooks. “And here I thought you had nothing to do with that event.”

Keefe smirked. “Not saying I did.”

Sophie didn’t bother asking. She’d been trying to get someone to tell her what happened during the Great Gulon Incident for years and had never gotten a straight answer.

And now definitely wasn’t the time to sidetrack the conversation.

Especially when Mr. Forkle pointed to Keefe’s chest and asked, “What about the notebook tucked away in your cape pocket? Are you going to show me the memories in there, or do you have something to hide after all?”

Keefe straightened up, placing his hand over the pocket, like he was afraid Mr. Forkle was going to try to snatch the gold notebook away. “How did you know?”

“I have very sharp eyes. Far sharper than you and your friends realize.” He handed Keefe back the silver, brown, and green notebooks without paging through them. “Truthfully, Mr. Sencen, I neither want nor need to see your full recorded life history. I just need to trust that you’ll come to me when and if you recover something pertinent. Given what happened with the Council and the meeting with King Enki, I’m realizing it’s time for all of us to aim for a higher level of transparency.”

“Said the guy who still won’t tell me who my biological parents are,” Sophie felt the need to point out.

“Ohhhhhh, she has you there!” Livvy added.

“She does indeed,” Mr. Forkle said through a very long sigh. “But it sadly doesn’t change where we stand on that particular issue. Sometimes a mystery must remain unsolved.” His eyes locked with Sophie’s. “And someday you’ll understand why I had to protect this secret. In the meantime, I’m willing to grant your request. I’ll bring Mr. Dizznee to Watchward Heath at his earliest convenience and let him program the cameras to search for the man in Mr. Sencen’s drawing.”

“And you promise you’ll let us know the second you find him?” Sophie countered. “No holding back information while you conduct your own investigations?”

“Well, I suspect that Mr. Dizznee will program the feeds to notify him of any matches long before anything alerts me, so this is likely a moot point. But you have my word that if the cameras locate this mystery man and I’m the first to acquire that information, I’ll pass it along to you and Mr. Sencen immediately—but note my use of the word ‘if,’ Miss Foster. I fear you’re feeling a bit too confident in this plan’s success and forgetting that there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to find this man. Watchward Heath is an unprecedented monitoring system—but it’s