Door on the left. There it was: JERMAINE CONNERS.

I’d timed my visit to coincide with Dad’s afternoon break, which took place at 4 p.m. for years. He was a creature of habit, and even if unusual stuff was happening at the plant, he could be counted on to keep his schedule.

I awakened his computer. His desktop wallpaper was still the family picture of us from a summer trip we’d taken to the Outer Banks: Charlie’s face flushed from a sunburn, Mom grimacing because she hadn’t fared well with our rocky canoe trip earlier in the day. A prompt asked for my dad’s password, and with a bittersweet pang I typed, “Jord4n&Charli3,” which unlocked our home laptop and I suspected would work here. I was correct. Creature of habit again. I appreciated that he had kept these reminders of family on his computer.

I typed “Ishango” into the search field, and the results were fast and plentiful: lots of project documents in Microsoft Word and spreadsheets in Excel. I uncapped the small BB-8–shaped flash drive from my key chain—Maggie had given it to me on my last birthday—and stuck it into the USB port. The copying took less than three minutes.

Success.

I was on my way out of Dad’s office when a man in a beige shirt and barf-hued tie stopped me. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Jermaine Conners’s son,” I explained, trying to maintain my casual air as I noticed the man’s face flash on the mention of my dad’s name, which I immediately regretted uttering. “I was looking for him, but he’s out. I’ll come back later.”

I started walking as the man said, “You shouldn’t be here alone. Come with me.”

“That’s okay. I’m leaving,” I assured him as I slipped into the stairwell and started pitter-pattering up the steps like a slinky cat whose paws barely touched the surface. I heard the door open again behind me, and with a quick glance back, I saw that the beige-shirt guy was following me with a look that was far from lighthearted. I took the stairs two at a time.

“Wait!” he called out as I exited the stairwell onto the first floor and power-walked toward the exit.

As I reached Hazel’s door, I stuck my head in and said, “Hi, Hazel! Just dropping by to visit my dad. Good to see you!”

“Hi, hon!” she replied, lifting herself out of her chair to step around her desk and envelop me in a vigorous hug. In contrast to the rest of this antiseptic place, she smelled like freshly baked biscuits. “You got so big! Let me take a look at you.” She stepped back and nodded approvingly.

Meanwhile, my ugly-tie guy was standing in the hallway looking like he wasn’t sure what to do next.

“Wonderful to see you, Hazel,” I said. “Gotta run!”

I extricated myself, smiled at the beige-shirt guy, and said, “Hazel is the best.” I waved back to Hazel and out of the corner of my eye saw lurking in another office … Bud Winkle.