“Listen to this,” he said.

He read aloud.

“I no longer trust my research partner. Crocker Rancourt is obsessed with weaponizing dark light energy. I am convinced he will attempt to steal the prototype devices and the tuning crystals. I do not know if he is working as a spy for a foreign power. I doubt it. I think he intends to use the machines to make himself the most powerful man in the country. He is borderline delusional. Drunk on his own visions.

“Until I can persuade my superiors that he should be removed from the project I must protect the devices. I will seal the laboratory and destroy all records linked to it. I will send a crystal and the locator to my wife. I have tuned the locator to my signature. Only I or someone from my bloodline will be able to use it to open the lab.”

North looked up. “My grandmother got a crystal like the one in this machine but she never got the dowsing rod.”

“It must have been stolen at some point and wound up on the black market, where it landed in the hands of a collector,” Sierra said. “Eventually it ended up in Gwendolyn Swan’s shop, where your father found it.”

“Loring was searching for the dowsing rod,” North said. “He knew it existed, because he had Griffin Chastain’s logbook, but evidently he had no idea what it looked like. He probably heard the rumor that it was at Swan’s shop at the same time Dad did. My father got there first, but he suspected he was being followed, so he bought another object, the radio, and left the dowsing rod behind.”

“That fits,” Sierra said.

North looked at Marge. “Did you mean it when you said I could have the logbook?”

“It’s all yours,” Marge said.

“Thanks,” North said.

Harmony looked at the locator. She smiled. “It does look like a magician’s wand.”

North tightened his grip on the dowsing rod. His eyes burned with midnight fire.

“Yes,” he said. “It does.”

CHAPTER 33

For the record,” Dexter said, “I think this is one hell of a risk. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re sure you need to find some long-lost machine to save your dad, I would refuse to allow you to enter this sector. We haven’t even begun to map it. The energy in most of those tunnels is too damn hot and disorienting.”

They were standing at the entrance to the large cavern that marked the main entrance of the Fogg Lake cave system. Sierra sensed North’s impatience but she did not blame Dexter for issuing yet another warning. Dexter was in charge, after all. If she and North did not return from their foray, he would be the one who would have to explain things to headquarters. And he would no doubt blame himself, because he was a good team leader, and that’s what good team leaders did when things went wrong.

She and North and Dexter were not the only ones gathered at the cavern entrance. A worried-looking Larissa and most of the Foundation team stationed at the Fogg Lake site were there, too. In addition, Harmony, Marge and several residents of the town, including the mayor, Euclid Oaks, were present.