Prologue

With a deep breath, he stared up at the main entrance to Blake Industries. He had expected it to be closer to downtown Riley or even Crystal Cove. Pulling off to the right, he parked his car in a large lot outside of the entry gate into the campus. The huge primary building leapt up out of the park-like landscape surrounded by virgin forests. While he was here, maybe he could talk them into allowing him to do a piece on the impact of the mega-complex on the surrounding ecosystem. But that would be later. Right now, he was on a mission.

He opened one of the thick glass double doors to the Entry Control Facility and entered the lobby. As a single-story structure of about 40,000 square feet, it was small in comparison to the rest of the buildings behind it. But it was huge compared to similar buildings he had visited at other places in the past. He counted at least four security cameras and assumed them all to be the pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) type being aimed by someone in a control room behind the scenes. There was no place within the lobby that anyone could duck away from their fields of view.

Across the room, there were four bulletproof window panels—each with a receptionist sitting on the other side. All four receptionists were women. Two of them were labeled 'With an Appointment' and the other two were labeled 'No Appointment.' There were two visitors waiting quietly in line at each window. He got in the far line under 'No Appointment'. The wait was a short one as each of the two people ahead of him were turned away in short order.

He stepped up and smiled.

Garbled words came from the receptionist through the screened hole in the compressed laminate glass.

He leaned closer. "Excuse me?"

The woman behind the glass was professional. "Please state your name."

"Randall La Gorce."

She typed that into a computer which sat below the level of the counter. He couldn't see it. "How can I help you, Mr. La Gorce?"

"I am trying to get a message to Miss Daphne Blake."

"The daughter of Mr. Blake?"

"Yes. That is why I came here. I've been unsuccessful at contacting her through other means."

"I'm sorry, but Miss Blake is not an employee here and I will not be able to forward a message to her."

"Well, then maybe you could send to message to Mr. Blake and he might possibly forward it to his daughter."

Her professionalism broke just a little. "Not if I want to keep my job. I'm afraid that I am unable to help you, Mr. La Gorce."

He smiled again. "Thank you. I kind of expected as much." He turned and walked back to his car. It would have been so much easier if the teenagers had responded to the personal messages he had sent to their YouTube channel.

It was now time for the needle-in-a-haystack approach. But at least Crystal Cove was a reasonably small haystack. La Gorce returned to his motel and plugged into the internet. Trained in his craft, he had made notes of what information could be gleaned about the quartet from their uploads. Reading down through the list, he waited for one to jump out at him that could lead him to one or more of them. His eye stopped.

He typed into the search engine Where can I find Scooby Snax in Crystal Cove? Six locations popped up. This didn't guarantee that they were the only six places where they could be found, but it was a starting point. He typed the names into his map app and it calculated the most efficient route to all of them. He went to the first five and bought out their entire allotment of the items and made sure to ask if there were any more in the back. After the fifth store, he had spent just under a thousand dollars on dog biscuits. That would be a fun one to explain on his expense report. But at least he had kept the receipts.

At the sixth store, he waited.

After skipping both breakfast and lunch in his haste to make this meeting happen, the idea of opening one of the bags of dog food crept into his mind. But he would have to be a lot hungrier to cross that line. There was no doubt in his mind that Norville Rogers eating the dog biscuits was a put-on for comic effect. But he was in front of a grocery store full of food and there was no reason that he had to just sit out in a car in the middle of the summer.

It was not a huge supermarket and had no place to sit inside and the deli included little more than pre-packaged sandwiches, chips, and soft drinks but there was a bench out front in the shade of the canopy where he was sitting and finishing the last of the Fritos with the last bite of the surprisingly good (or maybe he was just really hungry) sandwich. The big bonus was finding Cheerwine this far from North Carolina. He had bought a six-pack since his motel room had a small refrigerator.

Then, he saw a boy and his dog.

La Gorce put the remainder of his lunch into the white plastic bag with the store's logo and stood, wiping some of the Frito grease from his hands onto his trousers. The pair were going to walk right past him on the sidewalk, this could not have worked out better.

He could even hear the young man speaking to his pet as they approached, "Quit grumbling, Scoob. A little walking won't kill either of us." There was a pause and the Rogers boy continued in his soliloquy, "Then we'll drive to Riley. There are at least one hundred stores up there that will have Scooby Snax." Another pause, "No, there is no shortage of Scooby Snax. It would be in the news. There would be bulletins and stuff. Wars have started over less."

La Gorce stepped in front of the pair and extended his hand, "Shaggy Rogers? My name is Randall La Gorce and I'm…"

The boy screamed.

The dog screamed.

And they both ran away.

La Gorce watched them receding into the distance and disappearing among the trees at the corner of the parking lot. Foot pursuit was ridiculous. It had been over ten years since the last time he had even tried to jog. It was time to try something else. He turned and started walking back toward the rental car.

Wait…

The dog screamed?