"OKAY, NO GROWN-UPS," Gazzy said. "What now?"
"Ella," I said. "She's not a grown-up. If she's in on everything, we need to pump her for information. If she's innocent, we need to save her."
"Of course she's innocent!" Iggy said, and I remembered how he'd been cuddling up to her like a puppy dog these last couple weeks. I looked at him apologetically.
"Yeah but, I mean, just in case," I said, looking around, "we should ransack the place for clues. Spread out!"
We all scattered as if pawing through someone else's stuff was the most fun we'd had in weeks. But an hour later, we gathered in the kitchen, still no closer to an answer.
"I found this, though," Gazzy said excitedly, holding up a small green box. "Gas-X! Like, ‘X' for explosion! This is great! I'm thinking I rig this with a detonator, and—"
"Did you find that in the medicine cabinet?" Dylan asked.
"Yeah."
"It's for upset stomachs," Dylan said, trying to hide a smile. He pointed to the words on the box. "It's to reduce gas in your digestive system, not to create more gas to make explosions."
Gazzy's face fell as Iggy said, "Really? Gazzy, take it! Take the whole box!"
"I second that emotion!" said Total.
"Okay," I said sharply. "Moving on. Did anyone else find anything?"
Iggy looked sheepish. "I found this," he said, holding up a cell phone. "It's Ella's. I felt bad going through her stuff, but if it'll help us find her…"
It took Nudge about a minute and a half to hack into the phone and bypass the security codes.
"She's slipping," Gazzy said, checking his watch.
"Am not!" Nudge said crossly. "It's overlaid with extra protection. It's weird. But I think I'm in. Hang on." She got a small cord and connected the phone to our laptop.
"Okay, now we'll all be able to see everything in the phone," she said, pointing to the computer screen.
A bunch of patchwork gibberish shot across the monitor, and I was reminded of that computer guy, the one we'd just seen in the desert. His computer had done stuff like this when we'd first met him in the subway tunnels.
"Slow it down," I said, as Nudge's fingers flew across the keyboard.
The images suddenly halted, and Nudge started scrolling through them.
"Well, look at that," said Dylan.
