Revealed Read Free Page A

door.
    Albeit a different one.

Chapter 2
    The lights were out in Thornhill’s office, but there was an entire wall of windows that let in enough sun for me to see just fine. Contrary to my CSI -inspired fantasies, the room looked much the way it had when we’d broken into it a little over a week ago. There was no shattered glass, no overturned chairs. The only sign of the crime that had been committed was a dark spot on the rug in front of the desk that I told myself could just as easily be spilled coffee as blood (though it was hard to explain why the police would have put a square of yellow “Crime Scene: Do Not Cross” tape around a coffee splotch).
    The need I’d had to get into the office had grown stronger as I crossed the threshold, but looking around me, I started to feel a little insane. What had I hoped to find, anyway? The police had probably been swarming the room all weekend—surely if there was any clue to be found, they’d already unearthed it.
    The desk was as pristine as it had been the day he’d called me, Callie, and Nia in to ask us about the graffiti on his car and Amanda’s disappearance—nothing on its surface but the blotter, a phone, a laptop, and a notepad with Endeavor Unified Middle and High School printed at the top. I flipped through the pages, but they were blank. Glancing over at an ancient computer on its stand, I saw an empty coffee cup and a plastic spoon in the metal garbage can beside it. Did they belong to the criminal? To Thornhill? To the police who’d searched the room looking for clues? Maybe I should take them. They were probably dripping with DNA samples.
    Oh, yes, Hal, that’s an excellent idea. You can use your DNA-removal kit to separate the genetic material from the plastic and then run the results through your crime lab’s computer.
    Not.
    Okay, okay, the DNA thing was a little ridiculous.
    A scream, the sound of something (a cell phone?) hitting linoleum. “What if the person comes back? What if we’re being targeted?!” Despite my terror, I couldn’t help smiling at Callie’s performance and loving her for it. Amanda may have gotten cast as Rosalind in As You Like It and Heidi may have taken the role when Amanda turned it down, but clearly Callie was a girl with her own hidden talents.
    Still, as good an actress as Callie was, how much longer could she hold Officer Marciano out there? Sooner or later—probably sooner—he’d calm her down or send her home. I’d been in Thornhill’s office for almost a minute and I’d discovered nothing.
    As my eyes swept the desktop for a second time, the tiny glow of the laptop’s power light caught my eye.
    Wait a minute—since when did Thornhill have a laptop? Endeavor wasn’t exactly on the cutting edge of the technological revolution—my little sister, Cornelia, who’s basically a computer genius, had recently been home sick with strep, and my mother had called to ask her history teacher if Cornelia could scan and email him the homework she’d been doing while she was absent. His response had been, and I quote, That is not what computers are for, Mrs. Bennett.
    Gotta love an institution with both feet firmly in the twentieth century.
    Casually, as if someone was watching me and I had to make it look accidental, I made my way around the desk, then flipped open Thornhill’s laptop, keeping the sleeve of my rugby shirt between my fingertips and the computer. Maybe I didn’t know how to dust for fingerprints, but surely the Orion Police Department did.
    The screen immediately hummed to life, a document opening up before my eyes. But it was just a memo to the teachers about a new system for getting classroom supplies for next year: . . . will be available as of April and can be retrieved either by filing a request with Mrs. Leong in the main office or by . . .
    What was I doing? I probably had about ten seconds before