Free Storm Front: NA Fantasy/Time Travel (Tesla Time Travelers Book 3) by Jen Greyson Page B

carpet. I yank open the closet to change while I’m here and I still.
    My duffle’s in the bottom. I squeeze my eyes shut, too keyed to remember when I could have brought it, but I must have dragged it with me before Tiana and I went to the warehouse. The days are a blur.
    Did I remember it right? I yank the zipper and pull out my jeans. The paper’s still there. Hurrying, I slip into new clothes and flatten the paper. Nikola’s writing pierces my heart and I trace each letter. “What does it mean?”
    I screwed up the name of the diner but got the rest right. January 6, 2:00 p.m., Misters Gehlen and Skorzeni, Secret Service, Patrina Diner.
    I walk into Tiana’s room and sit down at her desk. Her perfume and spearmint bubble gum hang in the air.
    “Help me.” I take one of her pens from the Transformers plastic cup on the corner, doodle the names, the dates, the abbreviations. After a few minutes, my page is a mess. Nothing jumps out.
    I rewrite the dates and add dashes, turning them into a line of numbers that resembles a combination.
    I underline Tesla’s use of Misters instead of the abbreviation. That seems like an oddity, even for him. He doesn’t do things on accident. Ever.
    I abbreviate the name of the meeting place. Now I’m left with a short list:

    01-06-19-43-14-00
    MGS, SS
    PD

    A list of nothing.
    My elbow bumps Tiana’s computer and it flashes to life, so I type in the details and pause straining to listen for the phone. I should have grabbed the cordless out of Papi’s office so I can answer Brandt’s call.
    First, I want to play out this hunch. A quick internet search yields nothing for the sequence of numbers. A few places outside Paris, but nothing that jumps out. I move onto the next one. Again, it’s a fail. The SS bothers me. Isn’t that how they name ships? My thoughts flutter to that big door in his underwater warehouse, the watertight seal, the spinning wheel locking it closed, just like a submarine ship. S. S. Could it be backward? Would he deliberately have mixed it up hoping I’d figure it out? That’s one hell of a gamble. And what if it sends me in the wrong direction?
    I type in SS MGS and hit enter.

C HAPTER 24

    P ENYA .

    DNA SEQUENCING .
    The details in the folder.
    She’s got it.
    Now she just needs Tiana to catch up to where Evy was.
    Waiting is impossible.

C HAPTER 25

    “Y OU ’ VE GOT TO be kidding me.” I trace my finger down the monitor, skimming the information. SS, MGS is an abbreviation for sire-maternal grandsire . I have no idea what that means. Equations and explanations—variances and selections—fill the page. This has to be a miss. It’s all about DNA and genetics and how traits get passed—
    “Oh shit.” I squeeze my eyes shut.
    I could be onto something, but this isn’t what he wrote down. He didn’t write down SS MGS. He wrote it the other way around. He chose to write it in a way that would yield nothing.
    I lean back in the chair and link my hands on top of my head. The page of gibberish mocks me.
    This means nothing. Except to someone like me who’s the product of a long line of genetics.
    Only one person would know if I’m on the right track.
    I have to find my way back to Nikola.

C HAPTER 26

    E VERY TIME P EÑA was in his lab and came to see Evie she left a secret. The secrets that Constantine is talking about. She talked about papers that she found. Have her remember all of that. She and Iliff have to work through that. Evie has to ask him questions. What would this have been for question mark what were you guys working on? What was sheet after? That’s the only way were going to find Tiana. Is if we can think about if we can reconstruct what she wanted and whether or not she got it.
    Far more likely that she did not accomplish what she wanted,” Constantine says. “It is the enemy who has failed who is stronger than any who have succeeded. She will be hungry from the defeat.” He drags his fingers down the back of my arm