“You like answers.” I can hear the smile in Wes’s voice.
I drop my hand and look up. “Of course I like answers. Who doesn’t?”
“You’re kind of obsessive about it, though.”
I bristle at his words. “Well, I want to be a journalist. It comes with the job.”
He tilts his head, his dark eyes finding mine. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s fascinating, to watch you try to puzzle all of this out.”
I feel myself start to blush, and I look down at my lap. “Life was a lot easier when I was interviewing cheerleaders and writing exposés on cafeteria food. This is a little out of my depth.”
“Lydia.” His voice is low. “I’m so sorry that you got caught up in all this. If I hadn’t—”
“Saved my life?” I cut in. “Wes, you haven’t done anything but help me. I don’t regret what happened. I . . .” I hesitate.
He breaks the moment by sitting back quickly and picking up the clear plastic bag. “What’s in here?”
I sigh, but take the bag from his hands and open it slowly. “I think it’s the stuff Grandpa had on him when he was brought in to Bellevue.” I sift through the shoestrings and the belt, knowing that they took them from my grandfather so he wouldn’t try to hurt himself, and pull out the only other item—Franz Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis.
“I read this in tenth grade.”
Wes takes it from me and examines the cover. “What’s it about?”
“This guy wakes up and realizes he’s been turned into a giant insect. And even though he feels the same on the inside, everyone is disgusted and starts to treat him differently.”
“What happens to him?” He hands it back to me.
“He kills himself, to spare his family from having to deal with him anymore.” My fingers clench around the paperback, until I’m almost bending the spine in half. “I guess it makes sense why my grandfather had it, huh? He didn’t wake up as a cockroach, but the world can’t relate to what he became.”
“Lydia . . .”
I shake my head. “I’m okay.” I flip through the book to distract myself. My grandfather has written in the margins here and there, and I realize it’s a pattern: SO4N2H11C9OC9H11N2O4S. The same one he wrote over and over in the journal I found on Lydia 2’s desk.
Why does he keep repeating the same sequence over and over? What does it mean to him?
I find something else toward the back, tucked in between the pages. It’s a folded newspaper clipping. I pull it out and set the book aside, aware that Wes is watching me closely.
I open the crumpled paper. It is a clip about a rally that took place near Riverside Park on the Upper West Side. I scan the words, but they mean nothing to me.
In the bottom corner there’s a small, grainy photo. I hold it up higher, angling it toward the light. It’s a picture of the rally, with groups of people marching past a large building. There are wide steps leading up to an ornate front door. It looks like a hotel, but I can’t really be sure. A man stands near the entrance, wearing a fancy uniform and a small hat. I squint at his face and turn to Wes in horror. The man in the photo looks exactly like Dean Bentley.
CHAPTER 10
Why would there be a picture of Dean in a newspaper clipping from February 10, 1989? I shove the paper at Wes as my mind races through the possibilities. Is it even him? Maybe it isn’t.
“That’s Dean.” Wes’s voice sounds resigned, and I wonder if he can ever be shocked by the Project anymore.
“How is this possible? Why would a soldier from World War II end up working at some hotel in nineteen eighty-nine?”
“I don’t know.”
I gather all of the papers and stuff them back into the folder. “We have to find this place. We have to talk to him. Maybe it’s just someone who looks a lot like Dean.”
“Maybe,” he says, though he doesn’t sound like he believes it. “Seeing this might be what sent your grandfather to Bellevue.”
I stand up. “Or what made him come to New York in the first place. He left Montauk around the end of February. He was hunting his father.”
Wes stands too and faces me. “But the question is, did he find him?”
“If he did, then wouldn’t Dean have recognized him?”
“Not if he was brain-dead after his trip through the TM.”
“But why would he be working as a doorman if the TM destroyed his mind? It doesn’t make sense.”
“And it also doesn’t explain what ‘the mark of the traveler’ means.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I look down the street, at the quiet brownstones and the green, canopy-like trees. “And I don’t know if it’s connected to McGregor. I don’t want to pull you away from your mission, but . . .”
“But this is something you have to do,” he finishes. “I understand, Lydia. It’s your family.”
“I can do it alone, if you need to focus on McGregor,” I offer, but he shakes his head.
“I think all of this is connected to McGregor. It’s not like we’re chasing down some false lead.”
“True.” I tap the folder against my leg. “I wonder if McGregor knows what ‘the mark of the traveler’ means. Maybe my grandfather mentioned it to him too.”
“I think it’s time we talk to McGregor. It seems like his losing the election had to do with your grandfather in some way, which had to do with the reason he ended up in Bellevue—”
“Which had to do with us being in nineteen forty-four,” I finish. “But that’s not information you can bring to your debrief with General Walker. Not without giving us away.”
He tilts his head. I was right—his gel has officially given up and a piece of black hair falls down into his eyes. He brushes it away with a quick movement. “No, but there could
