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"So why call a special ...?" He stopped walking.
"Mina Lee," I said. "They're meeting to discuss her death. Guess we have a stop to make."
TWENTY-NINE
THE TOWN COUNCIL MET at the school. That meant we knew exactly how to sneak in. There was a window in the guys' locker room that never closed right. Well, it didn't after grade eight, when Corey and Brendan broke in to set up a video camera in the girls' locker room. No videos were ever taken. Daniel had caught them and said if the camera wasn't gone by Monday morning, he'd give us photos from the last time they went skinny-dipping, when the lake had been really cold and ... well, the photos wouldn't have been flattering.
Corey had busted the window frame trying to get in to set up the camera. Daniel had fixed it, but only good enough so the damage wasn't obvious from the outside. Now we all had an after-hours entrance.
The hardest part about getting in was waiting for a break in the traffic flowing into the parking lot. A seven o'clock town council meeting in Salmon Creek means "come by when you're done with dinner," so at seven-thirty, cars were still driving into the lot--right beside the broken window.
As we watched from the bushes, a minivan pulled in, headlights illuminating the far side of the lot, where one lone vehicle sat apart from the rest. My dad's Jeep. Seeing that made my heart give an extra thump. Even if I thought the town was involved in Mina's death--which I didn't--I knew my dad had nothing to do with it. But why was he here? If the meeting was about dealing with the cougar problem, they didn't need the whole council for that.
Finally, Daniel boosted me through, then vaulted in himself. We stepped out of the locker room into the pitch-black hall.
"Lead the way," Daniel said.
After taking a moment for my eyes to adjust, I led him to the classrooms at the end.
"Hear anything?" he whispered.
I nodded. "Do you?"
He shook his head. He didn't question why I could and he couldn't. That's the way it has always been, like me being able to see better in the dark. Serena used to say it was because I lived in the "middle of freaking nowhere," so I was used to the silence and the dark. Only now I knew that wasn't the reason at all.
Improved night vision. Improved sense of smell and hearing. Improved agility. Improved stealth. Signs that something more than human blood flowed in my veins. Signs that I was--
I shivered and Daniel rubbed my shoulder. "We can turn back if you're not sure about this."
"I'm fine. We'll need to get closer. I'm just hearing voices, not any words."
I crept along the hall. When Daniel's shoe squeaked behind me, I winced. No one came racing from the meeting room, though. They were deep in a heated discussion.
I led Daniel into the intermediary grades classroom. It was beside the meeting room and there was a vent joining the two. When we'd been in that class, Serena and I had figured out that if I took a seat at the back, I could hear who was getting in trouble. That's a lot less useful than it sounds--at our school, there was never anything interesting going on or anyone getting in trouble who we didn't already know was in trouble.
Daniel moved a desk under the vent. He motioned me up, but I whispered that I could hear fine where I was.
We'd only needed to listen for a minute before realizing there was another reason why the town would call an emergency meeting tonight, one that had nothing to do with Mina Lee, but that explained why my dad had to be there.
"Okay," Dad was saying. "So far, the fires are all to the west and the wind is blowing in the same direction, meaning we aren'
t in its path."
"Yet," Chief Carling said.
"Exactly. At this point, the fires are under control, but we all know that can change. So can the wind direction. We've been lucky enough to have wet autumns for the last five years. That means, though, that our evacuation plan is designed to deal with children, and, as we all know, teenagers are a bit tougher to manage."
"Like herding cats," Mayor Tillson said. "Annabelle's thinking we might need to slip a GPS in Sam's running shoes, just so we can find her if we need to evacuate."
"And we now have Rafael and his sister," Dr. Hajek said. "We may want to consider offering them a place in town until the threat passes. At the very least, we need to get them cell phones."
The others agreed and so the conversation went--plans for a potential evacuation. All very important. And very dull. I motioned to Daniel that we should leave, but he shook his head.
After a half hour more of evacuation strategy, Mayor Tillson said, "And now, as long as we're all here, I've asked Dr. Inglis and Chief Carling for an update on our recent tragedy."
Daniel nodded in satisfaction.
Chief Carling spoke first. "The young woman's name, as most of you know, was Mina Lee. Or that's the name on her ID, which appears to be fake, as we discovered when we tried to notify next of kin. That would seem to confirm our suspicion that she was a corporate spy. I have her description out to my contacts, and with any luck, we'll find out her real name so we can notify her family. Her death hasn't been ruled a homicide, so my main priority is identifying the victim. But I have, of course, started a case file, should the situation change."
