The Collected

CHAPTER 39

Washington DC

The ever-paranoid Peter had chosen his hiding spot for the Office’s archives well, storing them digitally in servers belonging to the Library of Congress. Each file was encrypted within an existing text, meaning that if anyone accessed the file, they would only see a book or collection of documents that had nothing to do with the world of secrets.

To actually view the Office’s information, one had to know where in the document to click. This would take the user to a command program that looked like a computer error. But if the correct twelve-character password were input, the hidden information would appear.

For extra security, there were two additional steps needed if one were trying to access the files remotely. Unfortunately, Peter had kept those steps to himself, so Misty was forced to visit the John Adams Building of the library in person.

There, she had to wait until one of the public workstations freed up. When one finally did, she located the manuscript that hid the Office’s main index and began her search. Cross-referencing and matching up the names Quinn had given her with particular assignments was slow going. If the Office had still been in business, with all its data living on its own servers, she could have finished the search in no time. The method she had to use now meant going back and forth between dozens of documents, opening the secret information, and, more times than not, closing the file again when she realized the job she was looking at was unrelated to what Quinn requested.

So far she had amassed a list of twenty-three projects that met at least part of his criteria. None, however, was a homerun. She returned to the index, found the next potential match, and opened the appropriate file.

As she read through it, she unconsciously leaned closer to the monitor, the skin on her arms beginning to tingle. The ops crew was nearly a complete match. It wasn’t until she read the second page, where the cleaner was mentioned, that she leaned back, disappointed.

Close, but not close enough.

Still, she jotted down the project number and list of participants, then read through the summary in case Quinn asked her any questions about it.

That’s when the tingle returned.

She remembered this job. How could she forget? Jobs that went well were soon distant memories, but the ones that went badly stuck in her mind for a long, long time. This was one of those jobs.

There was something else about it, she remembered. Something unusual. What was it?

She looked beyond the summary pages to the meat of the report, and found her answer on page seventeen.

After first making sure no one was watching her, she used her phone’s camera to photograph each page of the report. She then closed out of all the Office-related documents, packed away her things, and left.

There was no reason to look for anything else.

She had Quinn’s answer.