Thank you for reading!
The first step of the plan was to infiltrate the catering staff for the party. Peyton helped out there—it was a company she had worked with before when setting up events for the District Attorney's office. She convinced the catering manager that Major and Liv were old college friends currently down on their luck. Not far from the truth, really, Major thought.
There was something oddly comforting about getting dressed up in full riot gear, helmet and all. For catering uniforms, they were decent quality. Maybe that was the Janko brain, but at least he felt somewhat prepared to storm Tacoma. Maybe even to deck Vaughn du Clark if he had the good luck to run into him at the right time. And beneath all of that, and the nerves, was the excitement of maybe seeing Natalie again, of reassuring himself that she was okay and apologizing for not having been there when she woke up. He assumed Liv felt something similar about the prospect of being reunited with Drake, although they hadn't talked about those details, by mutual accord.
It was, as expected, a lavish set-up. du Clark had spared no expense. And Major and Liv, their faces covered with helmet and visor, could move through the party with ease and no one would know they weren't just collecting empty glasses.
Major put a tray of empties down on one of the long tables as their manager for the evening, Jeff, shouted instructions at the other waiters. Running low on food already, and the party had barely begun. Major was glad this wasn't really his job, because Vaughn du Clark would not be happy when he found out.
Liv came up next to him, carrying an empty tray—metal, and made to look like a tray from a prison cafeteria. No detail had been overlooked. "No sign of your buddy Dr. Wyatt," she muttered at him, "and we're almost out of time."
"I don't know where he could be." Nervous energy was pouring through Major, and he just wanted to get this over with, get his zombies out safely, and put this nightmare behind him. "Let's take another lap." Wyatt had to be here somewhere.
A buzzer was sounding as they re-entered the main party, a voice letting them know the lockdown was going to begin in three minutes. Damn it, where was this guy? They should have been out of here by now.
"What should we do?" he asked Liv.
"We're inside now, we see this through." He could hear the tension in her voice, too, even through the mask covering her face. "You know anyone else who works in the lab?"
Major looked around, finally finding someone he remembered. "Twelve o'clock. Plaid shirt. Tats. Pretty sure he's one of the basement guys. I've seen him with Wyatt. He's a total dick in the gym; I doubt he'd help us."
"We should have taken the damn hand," Liv snapped.
She was right; they really should have. Major cursed the squeamishness that had left them in this position.
"Hey. You two. Get some drinks and pass them out!" It sounded like the catering manager, although it was hard to tell given that they all looked the same. Reluctantly, they left the search for Wyatt and grabbed trays, moving through the crowd together, hoping no one wanted anything.
Finally Major saw Wyatt on the other side of the room. "There's Wyatt," he told Liv. "Ten o'clock."
As he watched, though, Wyatt and the group he was with turned around and went out a door behind them, taking them out of the party and farther away from where Major and Liv stood.
"He's on the move," Liv observed.
They sped up, trying to make their way through the crowd quickly in order to catch Wyatt before he could get too far, but then Major saw the last person in front of him that he wanted to see right now: Vaughn du Clark. He was chatting up a blonde woman in a power suit, who looked like du Clark was boring her to tears and she was too polite to bother telling him so. She was way out of du Clark's league, too—she looked like she could knock him down with one well-placed kick and walk over him in her high heels and never notice it. Major respected that in a woman.
du Clark turned just as Major came up to him, but fortunately his focus was entirely on the brightly colored drinks on the tray Major was carrying. "Ah! Cocktails! Perfect timing." He grabbed two of the glasses and turned back to the woman, having forgotten the cater waiter entirely as soon as the drinks left the tray. The guy was a dick, but in this case it worked.
Major and Liv looked at each other in frustration as they saw Wyatt and his friends making their way past a staircase across the room.
The woman in the power suit shot down du Clark's frou-frou drinks and walked off—not sparing a glance for the waiters, either, Major noticed—leaving du Clark standing there with two drinks looking foolish. Score one for the lady. du Clark followed her, finally freeing Major and Liv to go after Wyatt and his friends.
Before they found Wyatt again, Rob Thomas had come on stage. The music was nice, but it was hard to hear over it, and the dancing made it even more challenging to look for a particular person. At last Liv spotted Wyatt again, just as he and his friends were disappearing through a door into the stairwell.
She and Major weaved their way through the crowd, ditching their trays on a table near the wall, and hurried on. With any luck, they'd catch Wyatt and he'd let them into the lab and they'd be home free. Not that luck had been particularly on their side yet tonight … but it had to be eventually, Major thought, trying to stay optimistic.