"Hey guys", Liz said to the boys, "we’re just finishing up here have you boys eaten?"

They both shook their heads indicating no. "Lets go upstairs then, I’ll fix us all some soup and sandwiches and we can talk." Liz said

Max, Maria and Alex settled themselves around the coffee table in the living room as Liz busied herself in the kitchen. Glancing down Max spotted a book on the table and started flipping through the pages. He stopped at a page showing pictures of several woven baskets with intricate designs woven into them. He showed the page to Alex, who was startled to see that it contained some of the same designs from Atherton’s journal. Maria wondering what the boys were so interested in commented, "Liz’s Grandma Claudia wrote that book."

Liz came into the room carrying a large plate of sandwiches and several bowels of soup. "What’s up guys? Why so serious?" Liz Asked.

"Maria said your grandmother wrote this book, where did she take these pictures?" Max questioned.

Liz took the book from Alex’s hand and flipped to the back in the bibliography section. And saw that many of the pictures came from Peru, and as well as several other tribes in Central & North America. " My Grandma Claudia was quite a traveler, She was always bring things back from the trips she went on. She had a theory about how civilization started on the north and South American continents. This was the last book she published, but she started noticing similarities between the design motifs between the different Native American populations, more that what should be accounted for by simple trading. She had just returned from a research trip when she died."

Max looked at Liz, "I wish I could have known her better, Liz. I think she would have had some of the answers we have been searching for." Max pointed to the picture, "I know this design, I mean my body remembers this, but it’s not quite right." Max took a scrap piece of paper and started drawing on it. The image Max drew was almost identical but a few of the line lengths had been altered slightly. "This is what it should be." Max said with authority, "it means protector."

Liz looked bewildered, "How can you know what a symbol on a ancient wicker basket from Peru is supposed to look like much less what it means?"

Max only shook his head, "I don’t know, It’s like the cave, I have a feeling about it, but I just can’t put the words to it." He paused struggling to find the words, " It’s like I have some knowledge trapped in my body, but I can’t access it. I just know when it’s familiar to me."

Maria chose this time to ask what had been on the back of everybody’s mind. "Max when was Carrie meeting you? And what are you planning to tell her?"

Before Max could answer, Alex spoke up; "I was able to find out more about Carrie this morning." He paused as all eyes turned to look at him, "She is 20, and did have a brother at least up until 4 years ago. Something must have happened to him because he just vanished." Alex pulled a crumpled sheet of computer paper out of his pocket, "According to the records I was able to pull, Carrie graduated at the top of her class and was accepted into the FBI training academy shortly afterwards. She was transferred to Stephens’ team a month ago."

Max took the paper from Alex’s hands, "do you think you would be able to locate Carrie’s brother if you had more information?" Alex agreed that he might. " Carrie was going to stop by the UFO center at about 4:00, My boss has had me copying the journal all morning I’m just about through, so I was just going to give her the book back, and let my boss Mr. Milton talk to her. After all he did know her ‘grandpa’" Max said with a smirk

"What about that tracking device? They are going to know that you had the book out at the reservation, I would be better if you brought it up rather than have them nosing around asking questions." Alex said

"Good point, I’ll tell her that I thought some of the pictures were taken at the reservation, and thought I would ask some questions. But that everyone I talked to said that everyone in the pictures had died, and that journal didn’t mean anything to anyone." Max chuckled, " that’s probably the answer they got when they were trying to figure out what this all meant on their own."

Liz had a twinkle in her eye, "I bet that’s what happened, when they took all this stuff from your room, they couldn’t make sense of it, so they decide to give it back in the hopes that you would be able to do the work for them. We just need to make sure that we stay two steps ahead of them, and give them enough clues so that they don’t suspect that we are on to them."

"Perhaps we can get Carrie on our side, she seems really nice, maybe she can convince her boss to look somewhere else for answers, and leave us alone." Maria added.

The food had all been eaten, and Max looked at his watch, " Time for me to get back to work, I’ll see you all tomorrow in school. I think I might try to find out where Carrie stands on all of this, We may be able to use her."

Max returned to the UFO center and had finished up making a copy of the journal, and was in the process filing the copy, along with several other documents in the research stacks, when Carrie walked in. "Hey Carrie." Max looked at his watch, "Sorry I didn’t realize that it was that late already." He bent down and picked up the journal to hand to Carrie, just as Milton walked in.

"Is your name Carrie Atherton?" Milton asked directly

Carrie, taken a bit by surprise snapped her head around to face Milton. "Why yes, I am." She turned and looked questioningly at Max.

"Carrie this is my Boss Mr. Milton, I asked him about the journal, and if he knew anything about what might have happened to your father." Max offered.

Carrie swallowed and nodded her head. "Well do you?" she asked of Milton

"Look, little lady, I don’t know who or what you are trying to pull, but you can’t possibly be Atherton’s Granddaughter. He didn’t have any children." Milton grabbed for the journal. "Oh, this is his journal, and you do bare a resemblance to the man, but Atherton was like a father to me. I was born the year of the crash, and met the man when he came to my school to talk about it. When I told him about my encounter with an alien outside the ice cream shop, he was the only one to believe me. He took me under his wing because he didn’t have any children of his own."

Carrie looked at the two of them stricken, "I’m sorry I deceived you, but my boss didn’t give me a choice." Max’s eye’s narrowed at the deception Carrie was speaking. " My Editor wanted to get some information, on Atherton. When he disappeared years ago, he left some papers behind, these just recently came into my boss’s hands. He sent me to get the story, for one of those, ‘unsolved mystery’ articles."

Milton seemed satisfied with the excuse, and handed the journal back to Carrie. "Thank you for allowing us to make a copy of the journal, but I don’t have any more information than you."

Carrie turned her eyes to Max, "you didn’t find out anything did you?" she asked Max, instantly afraid if she stayed to long he would again have her telling the truth.

"Well I did take it out to the Reservation just outside of town, but the people in the photographs were all dead." Max replied calmly, wondering what game Carrie was playing now.

Carrie turned to leave, "Max please don’t say anything to the others, if you do it will mean my job."

Max nodded to her and watched as she left.

Milton eyed Max, "Max, you need to sharpen your senses, I knew she was a fraud the moment she walked in here, I can smell Newspaper sharks a mile away. Of course I knew she wasn’t Atherton’s granddaughter as well. Now lets take a look at this journal she brought in…."

Milton took the copy of the journal from Max’s hands and retreated to his office to take a look at it.

Back at ‘home’ Carrie rushed through the door flushed, trying t figure out the best way to salvage this operation. She decided the truth would be the best course of action, hoping that she would be transferred to another assignment.

"Well what happened?" agent Stephens’ asked as soon as she walked through the door.

Carrie carefully placed the journal on the table, and sat down. " I’m afraid I wasn’t able to find out any new information."

"Why, what happened" Stephens’ asked gruffly

Carrie bent her head down, "I was made by the owner of the UFO center, someone dropped the ball on his background, turns out that he was like a son to Atherton and knew that there weren’t any kids or Grandkids. I had to switch to my secondary cover story, Milton bought it but Max was standing right there as well. I don’t know that he bought it. Ether way my mission is over, How am I supposed to covertly observe them when Max knows I’m not a high school student?"

Stephens’, who up until that time had been gently tapping his pencil against the side of the table, suddenly broke it in two. "Ending this mission is not an option! Your assignment has been changed; you are now to dig up what ever you can on these kids. All teenagers dabble in challenging authority or breaking the law! I want a reason that we can bring them in for questioning and hold them for 24 hours. Damn! The Sheriff had two of them and he just let them go, if he had only called I could have gotten them to speak. That foolish man is entirely too easy on those kids. Do what ever it is you have to, but get those kids, trainee."