Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Emmett leaned against the edge of the desk next to me.
“Any thoughts?” he asked.
I looked closer at the numbers, which were grouped in pairs to longer strings. There were some singular numbers too.
“The numbers probably translate to letters, but I’m pretty sure their alphabet is different from ours. I’ll have to ask Brianna,” I replied. The rebels wouldn’t make their code too difficult, but they had to make their messages not the easiest to decipher if any enemies intercepted them.
After a minute, Brianna hurried into the room with a lined notebook in her hand, which I assumed were her notes. I had met plenty of translators in my life, but she was certainly the most attractive one I had ever worked with. Not that I should see her like that because she was David’s wife, but she looked good in her jeans and fitted white t-shirt.
“Sorry, I’m here,” she said as she moved to my other side, her fingers hastily pushing her hair away from her slightly flushed face.
“We got a message from the rebel group, but it’s written in code. I believe it’s a basic code, but it may be written in Vlasic,” I explained to her as I gestured to the jumble of numbers. “How many letters are in the Vlasic alphabet?”
Brianna flipped open her notebook and pressed her forefinger against one of the lines.
“Thirty,” she said. “Their sentence structure is different from ours too, so we’ll have to keep that in mind.”
“We’ll leave you to it,” David said, flashing his wife a proud, encouraging smile. He kissed her on the cheek before motioning for the others to leave me, Emmett, and Brianna behind. “Everyone else, equipment check.”
“Emmett, grab Brianna a chair,” I told my brother, not wanting to be rude.
Emmett nodded and left for a minute before coming back with two wooden chairs. He put them to my right, inviting Brianna to sit down between us.
“Thank you,” Brianna said before sitting up straight with her pen poised over a blank notebook page. “Can you read the numbers? I’ll match them up with the letter position in the alphabet. I might have to guess with numbers over nine, but we’ll roll with it.”
Emmett and I pitched her a surprised look.
Brianna shrugged.
“I didn’t only take language classes in college. I took a few cybersecurity and math classes,” she replied.
Well, I couldn’t argue with that. She was a bundle of surprises. I slowly read the numbers aloud, telling her when there were breaks so that she could make note of them. When I was finished, my eyes shifted over to my brother, who was watching Brianna work with an intrigued look on his face.
Emmett must’ve felt my eyes on him because he pitched a quick look my way, the corner of his mouth threatening to turn up. After his rocky divorce a little while ago, he hadn’t shown any interest in getting close to any woman, but he certainly had his eyes on her.
I couldn’t blame him. Even from sitting half a foot away from her, I could smell the sweet scent of her shampoo, and it was hard to ignore the definite curves of her figure. Our work made it hard for us to meet people and get into relationships, so David was a lucky guy to even be married.
Especially to her.
Brianna subtly bit her bottom lip as she narrowed her eyes in thought. She started drawing lines between the letters she wrote down, separating clusters that should’ve been words. She then looked up at me, my heart stirring for a second. Damn, I needed to go out if I ever got the chance to not work for more than two days.
“So, I know the sequences are separated like they’re words, but none of them made words. They’re just separated that way to throw you off, but you were right about the numbers translating to letters as they’re ordered in the alphabet,” she explained, waving her pen around as she spoke.
My eyebrows lifted.
Brianna smiled a little.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she said with a faint laugh. She turned to Emmett, who had the same expression as me. “You know, code is its own language.”
Emmett put his hands up innocently.
“Not surprised. Impressed,” he said.
A light pink color warmed Brianna’s cheeks as a grateful look filled her face.
“You have no idea how happy I am to hear that,” she replied as she wrote down a few more notes, translating some of the Vlasic words that she picked out into English so that we could read them. She did a little more ungrouping and grouping of letters until she figured out the entire message, pretty much doing my job for me since she knew the language and I didn’t.
I’d been shown up today, but I wasn’t mad at all. It wasn’t every day that a beautiful woman swept in with her language skills and sharp intelligence and stole the show.