“It’s over h—”
“Stop!” yelled a male voice behind them. “Police!”
Jenny, Blanca, and Aurelio took off down the hallway and were soon swallowed up by darkness. Harper was tempted to follow them, but decided the odds were decent she would wind up tripping and breaking an ankle. Besides, she was a grown-ass woman.
She turned to face the music.
Two men in uniforms sported MP armbands, indicating they were military police. One was young and blond and looked as nervous as Aurelio. The older fellow had a shiny bald head and was extremely muscular, as if he spent his free time doing CrossFit. A name tag on his right shoulder indicated he was “Sgt. Emerson.”
He demanded: “What are you doing here, ma’am? This place is off-limits.”
“Sorry,” said Harper. “I was just looking around. Curiosity got the better of me.”
“Name?”
“Harper Grae.”
“Names of your friends?”
“I…” She glanced down the dark corridor. The students were long gone, so Harper decided to be discreet. “…don’t really know. We were sort of…trespassers together, I guess you could say. Although I didn’t see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs.”
Emerson sighed. “We post them, and the kids tear them down. This whole place is scheduled to be demolished soon, so it’s sort of beside the point.”
“One of them was curious about a box with some odd symbols…” Harper trailed off, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “Probably a Halloween thing.”
“Prob’ly.” His eyes passed over her outfit. “Kinda dressedup to be exploring abandoned buildings, don’t you think, ma’am? You from around here?”
“I’m a professor at Monterey College,” she said, taking a card from her messenger bag and handing it to him.
“Grown woman like you, and a professor to boot, should know better than to trespass in abandoned buildings, don’t you think?”
“I apologize. I am totally in the wrong. Won’t happen again.”
Emerson nodded. “Best see that it doesn’t. Could be dangerous. The kids are young and real nimble, bounce back quickly, if you know what I mean.” Harper got the distinct impression her body did not, in fact, appear to be nimble in any way. “But you could break your neck in here.”
“Fair point. I had that thought, myself. You mentioned the buildings are scheduled to be demolished. What comes next?”
“A housing development.”
“On this site? I thought there was an issue with contamination at Fort Ord.”
“There is. But the military base was a darned big place, and the contamination is mainly around the old infantry training areas,” Emerson said with a shrug. “Also unexploded ordnance, that sort of thing.”
“Ah yes, that would be a problem. I guess they weren’t thinking ahead to future housing developments, back in the day,” Harper said to lighten the mood.
“No, ma’am, I don’t suppose they were,” the younger MP replied in a serious tone.
“Okay, then. Well, I have learned my lesson. I’ll just be on my way.”
“And, ma’am? I don’t wanna see you back here,” Emerson warned.
“Gotcha,” Harper said.
“We’ll see you out,” Emerson said.
Flanked by the two MPs, Harper crunched her way back down the hall to where she had entered the building, skirted the brown vinyl La-Z-Boy recliner and the old camp stove, waved goodbye to her armed escort as she climbed carefully back through the hole in the cyclone fence, and headed to her office.
The trio of trespassing students caught up with her halfway back to campus.
