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?“What are you looking for?” Mark asked as he tried to look over my shoulder. His hot breath fell on the back of my neck, and suddenly I had goose bumps.
?“Don’t know. See here, what’s this?” I peered into the bowl of the pipe. I took the forceps, reached into the narrow bowl, and carefully extracted a small metal rectangle.
?“What is that?” Mark wondered.
?“I’m not sure,” I said, and turned it over in my gloved hand.
?“It looks familiar,” Mark pointed out.
?“It does, doesn’t it?” I looked in the bowl of the pipe and could see a small piece of clear tape inside, which I surmised held the metal in place. It was a clever way to hide something, as you couldn’t see it in the deep bowl from a cursory glance.
I straightened up and walked over to Sylvia.
?I consulted my friend. Once she agreed with my hypothesis, I went back to Mark.
?“Any luck?” he asked.
?I turned one end of the small piece of metal toward his face. “Look familiar now?”
?He shook his head and stared at the small rectangle. “Wait. Is that a USB plug?”
?I smiled. “It’s a flash drive with a USB connector. Usually, they are built into a case or holder, but this is just the inner workings.”
?Mark stared at it again. “A flash drive? What’s on it?”
?I spoke quietly. “No idea. But here is a suggestion. What if Jon Kane was looking for this when he came to your place last night?”
?Mark’s expression grew dark. “We don’t know that’s why he was there. He may have been after you.”
?“How would he know I was there?”
?“He could’ve followed you. Maybe he waited until he thought you were asleep.”
?“If he wanted to kill me, Mark, he could have done so Wednesday night by getting the spare room key from the booth. No, I am sure my deduction is correct. There is something of interest on this flash drive.” I turned to Sylvia, who at that moment was bringing a laptop over.
?Sylvia took the plug and inserted it into the computer’s USB port.
?An icon appeared on the screen with the word “INFO” under it.
?Sylvia double-clicked on the icon, which opened a file folder. When she clicked on it, a document opened up. The page was filled with gibberish—letters and numbers that made no sense.
?“What are we seeing here?” Mark wondered.
?“It’s encoded,” Sylvia decided as she closed the file.
?”Anything we can do?” I felt disappointed.
?Sylvia looked at the file folder on the screen.
?“I could run some decoding software I came up with. Let me copy the file. I don’t want to risk damaging the original.”
?She made a quick backup of the file, then removed the USB drive from the computer and returned it to me.
?“Now, what do we do with it?” Mark countered.
?“Maybe put it back in the pipe?” Sylvia suggested, and I nodded in agreement, as a laser printer began to hum a few feet away from us. Sylvia turned to watch the papers printing.
?“We could give it to DeStadler now that we’ve copied it,” Sheryl pointed out.
