Liberty Gray

I couldn’t believe it. Agents Milo and Corey had been keeping some important information from me and Otto. Like, really? Why did they have to do that? It wasn’t like we were going to tell the whole world or something.

Oh, you don’t know what the surprising news is yet. Right. Sorry. So, apparently Henry Clark was an arms dealer (may he rest in peace), and he smuggled guns and weapons and all of that other stuff to other countries, like Russian spies. Can you believe it?

Anyway, me and Octavio were waiting for the FBI agents to show up so we could confront them about lying to us in the lounge. Otto told me that his parents were starting to worry. At least I didn’t have to worry about that. My dad is fine if I go places as long as I respond to his texts. He’d been like that ever since my mom died.

“I have a feeling that they are going to take a while to show up.” Otto said, jolting me back to reality. He sighed and took out his sketchbook.

“You know what’s surprising?” I asked.

“What?” Otto started to draw.

“That nobody from school has texted us to see that we’re okay.” I said. “I mean, wouldn’t this be on the news?”

Otto shrugged. He didn’t seem to be listening. “Maybe Chang kept it off the news to help catch the unsub.”

“Huh.” The way Otto said unsub made him sound like he was an agent too. Kind of funny, the things I think of. I leaned forward on the table. “What are you drawing?”

“Nothing.” Otto said. “Just doodling.”

“Huh.” I said again.

I saw agents Milo and Corey and that other lady I saw last night enter the lounge. Agent Byrd saw me and Otto and winked at us.

“Otto,” I said in a quiet sing-song voice. “They’re here.”

Otto kept drawing. “I don’t know if I really want to do this.” He said. “Maybe we could just pretend it never happened?”

“You know that’s not going to happen.” I said. “Let’s go and tell them. It’ll be fine.” I stood up and walked over to the three adults.

Milo Chang

“Hey.” Milo said to Liberty.

“Don’t hey me.” She said, crossing her arms.

Milo started to become nervous. What happened?

“Um, excuse me?” Corey asked.

“You guys never told us what Henry Clark did.” Liberty said.

Oh, Milo thought. “You never needed to know.”

“We helped you take crime scene photos.” She said. “We snuck into a room. We got yelled at by a private investigator. You could have at least told us something.”

“All right.” Milo said. “I’m sorry. But we need to talk about something else right now.”

Octavio walked over. “Talk about what?” He asked.

“Our technical analyst sent me the list of passengers on the cruise.”

“That’s a lot of people.” Liberty said.

Milo brought out his laptop. “Yeah, and that’s why we’re going to narrow it down.” He opened his computer and typed in the passcode. The laptop had the fingerprint option, but Milo was too paranoid to use it. What if the computer documented his print and sent it to some person?

Milo opened the list of names that the technical analyst, Sami Lopez, had sent to them.

“Lopez and the rest of the team is busy on another case right now.” Milo said. “I don’t want to bother them, so we’re going to do this manually.” He turned to Corey. “Did you get a list of Clark’s clients?”

“Uh, yeah.” Corey said. “It’s surprisingly long.”

Corey had the list on his iPad (for some reason he refused to use a laptop), and Milo looked at the names that were on the ship as well.

“So, that’s five people.” Milo said. “Taking out the person who was hung, Anders Price.” He crossed out his name with the stylus that came with the iPad. “Also taking you off.” He said to Corey.

“Wait, what?” Liberty asked.

“Uh, that’s part of my alias.” Corey said. “I’m one of them. That’s how I collect evidence.”

“Anyway,” Milo said. “That leaves three people.”

“Hold on a second.” Liberty put her hands on the table. From how she was standing, it looked like this was a lot for her to process. “First, agent Byrd is an arms dealer?! And second, why didn’t you have this list earlier?”

“Woah.” Corey said. “I said that an arms dealer was my alias.”

“I didn’t have this list yet because the technical analyst needed some time to get it.” Milo said.

“Okay.” Liberty seemed to be satisfied with Milo and Corey’s explanations. “So, which of the three is it?”

Milo pressed send for the email he had written to Sami Lopez. “I just asked our analyst to run some background checks on all three people.” He said. “It might take a while, though.”

Liberty looked at the iPad on the table. “So, Peter Knox, Amanda Hu, and Calvin Cox.” She said. “Those all seem like pretty bland names.”

“They could have been made up.” Milo said. “If so, our analyst is going to have trouble finding information on them.”

“How do we know that the unsub is even a client of Clark’s?” Dr. Rice asked. She hadn’t talked at all, and Milo just remembered that she was still there.

“We think that this unsub killed not because he wanted to but because he needed to.” Corey said. “He killed Clark because he had information about the unsub that could get him in trouble. The only option that makes sense is a client or colleague.” Milo’s computer got an email in his inbox. It was from Lopez.

Hello there,

I couldn’t find anything on Hu or Cox, but it says that Knox had a history of animal abuse, and peeking into neighbor’s windows.

Gross, Milo thought. “We got something on Peter Knox.” He said. “I think this might be our guy.”