Free Wake Up Missing by Kate Messner

until he password-protected it.”
    Dr. Gunther didn’t have a password. His in-box opened right up.

    I sank down in a chair as Sarah skimmed the e-mail. “There’s a bunch of news alerts on some terrorist group.”
    â€œWhy would he get alerts on that?”
    Sarah shrugged. “Maybe he’s paranoid terrorists will attack the clinic.”
    â€œOut here in the middle of nowhere?” I sighed. “Maybe back when it was a military base, but not now.”
    â€œHmm . . .” Sarah scrolled down. “There’s a neurology society newsletter, some Team Phoenix thing—maybe he’s in a fantasy football league. My brother does that. There’s a note from Andrei somebody about lab preparations . . . another one from some reporter who wants to do an interview about poachers in the area.”
    â€œMolly talked about that,” I said.
    â€œ. . . and he bought something on eBay.” Sarah went on. She clicked the mouse. “A butterfly, for . . . four hundred and twenty-eight dollars? It’s not even that pretty.”
    I stood up to look.
    The butterfly in the image wasn’t as striking as the blue morpho or Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing on Dr. Gunther’s wall. This one was mostly black-brown, with some pale-yellow markings and a few touches of orange and blue near its tail.
    â€œWhat about that one?” I pointed to another e-mail.
    â€œIt’s from Dr. Ames . . . about plane tickets. Looks like they’re taking a trip to Moscow next month.”
    I felt like my brain had some kind of switch flipping back and forth.
    Everything’s fine.
    No, it’s not.
    Everything’s fine.
    Something’s not right.
    â€œMoscow?”
Something’s not right.
    Sarah scrolled through the e-mail. “Yeah. I wonder who’s going to be here with us. Substitute doctors? I hope they’re not leaving us with Olga. She’s always grumpy.”
    â€œMaybe we’ll be home by then.”
    â€œNone of this is very interesting.” Sarah closed the e-mail program.
    â€œWhat’s this folder?” I pointed to the corner of the screen, to the folder labeled Research. The word made me think about experiments. Last spring, Lucy’s mom had taken us on a tour of the lab where she works at Stanford. There were rows and rows of cages along one wall, most full of white mice and rats, but a few rabbits, too.
    â€œThose are our research animals,” she’d told us. “They’re used to test medicines so we can make sure they’re safe for people.”
    I remembered feeling awful for the rabbits in those little cages.
    Research.
    What kind of research was Dr. Ames doing?
    I clicked on the folder, but there were no mice or rats or rabbits inside—just more folders labeled with names.
    Curie
    Da Vinci
    Edison
    Einstein
    Gunther
    Meitner
    Newton
    Oppenheimer
    Shilling
    â€œI don’t recognize all of them, but some of these names are scientists and inventors,” I said. “Da Vinci . . . Einstein . . . Edison . . .”
    â€œGunther?” Sarah raised her eyebrows.
    â€œYeah . . . he’s not exactly in the same league.”
    â€œMaybe
he
thinks he’s famous,” Sarah said.
    She clicked on the Edison folder. Inside were a dozen or so files—Early Life, Education, Phonograph, Electric Light, Laboratory Notes, Menlo Park, Fort Myers Estate, Botanical Research, Relationship with Ford. “This looks like stuff you’d collect for a research paper. Why would Dr. Gunther need it? He hasn’t been in school for, like, a million years.”
    â€œSome weird hobby?” I guessed. “Like his thing with butterflies?” The switch in my head flipped.
Everything’s fine.
My headache was getting worse; I wanted to sleep. “If you want to stay, you can, but I’m going to my room.”
    â€œCome on, Cat. Those MRIs take forever. We have time.” And she went back to the