Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
It meant something, even if she was determined to pretend it didn’t. I turned my pillow over and pressed my cheek to the cold cotton, waiting for sleep to find me.
It must have, eventually. I woke hours later, the sun stabbing my eyes, to find myself alone. Voices filtered through the closed door. After a shower, I used the unopened spare toothbrush Mae must have left for guests, seeing that Sterling had done the same with her own guest toothbrush. As ready for the day as I could be, I joined Bob, Sugar Mae, and Sterling in the kitchen.
Sterling smiled at me like nothing had changed between us. Maybe for her, it hadn’t. That thought stabbed into my heart. I pushed it away. I hadn’t given up in the year we’d been apart. I sure as hell wasn’t giving up now.
We shared breakfast with Bob and Mae. On our way out the door, Bob handed me a small tin box, the same kind that once held the strong, chalky peppermints my father had loved. They’d made my eyes water, but when he’d held out the tin, I always took one.
“I don’t know if you’ll be able to make sense of what’s inside,” Bob said. “Lord knows I couldn’t, but it wasn’t meant for me. You stay in touch, you hear?”
“I will,” I said, and I meant it.
Mae folded Sterling into a tight hug, a look of surprise flashing over Sterling’s face before she returned it. I shook Bob’s hand, thanked him, and hugged Mae. Minutes later, we were pulling out of the driveway, Sterling holding the mint tin in her lap. She hadn’t opened it yet.
I was about to ask her to look inside when we turned onto the state road. There, parked in a turnaround on the other side, was a dark sedan, Callum Leary at the wheel. Sterling rolled the window down and gave him a wide grin as we passed, giving him a thumbs-up. He acknowledged it with a brief nod.
“What was that for?” I asked. “Please tell me you’re not going to use that business card.”
Sterling rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. They obviously know where we were. They must be tracking us somehow. They won’t go bother Bob and Sugar Mae if they think we got what we came for. They’ll stay on us, right?”
That sharp brain was one of the many reasons I loved her. “Good point,” I said. “Are you going to open it?”
“In a minute.”
She waited until we had driven ten minutes without any sign of Callum Leary’s sedan behind us. Then she pried open the lid of the mint tin to find another index card inside. She squinted down at it, turned it over, and then turned it back.
“Another code, right? A clue?” I asked, glancing down into her lap to see a string of letters and numbers written in my father’s handwriting on an otherwise blank white business card.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. Sterling flipped over the card, but there was nothing on the other side. “Where’s the key?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Sterling said with a huff, clicking the lid back on the tin.
“What now?” I asked.
Sterling glanced behind us, looking again for Callum’s black sedan. She shook her head and faced forward, her eyes flicking to me, then back to the road.
“Now we go back to Heartstone Manor and tell Griffen and Hawk about the Learys,” she said. “I think we’re officially in over our heads.”
Chapter Sixteen
STERLING
We left Callum Leary behind us and made our way around the lake. I sat beside Forrest, eyes on the trees flashing by, my hands folded in my lap, mind reeling from the events of the past twenty-four hours. I didn’t know what was up and what was down anymore.
I’d solved another clue and cracked the Jefferson cipher. I’d been feeling pretty full of myself when that mint tin had landed in my hands. Then I opened it and hit a brick wall. I’d seen alphanumeric codes before, but those had come with a key. Without a key, I didn’t know where to start. I could write a program to decrypt a simple code. At least, I thought I could. I knew where to start, but it was really just a stab in the dark.
When I told Forrest we were in over our heads, I hadn’t just meant the Learys. They were a problem all their own, but only one among many. I was lost when it came to this new cipher. And beyond that—
I glanced to my left to see Forrest, his eyes locked on the road ahead, a shadow of stubble on his cheeks, his curls mussed, and a tiny quirk to the side of his mouth, curving his full lower lip.
Fuck me. What had I been thinking? Talk about being in over our heads. Was I a glutton for punishment? Was I trying to make myself miserable? It was the only explanation for doing something so fucking self-destructive. This time, I couldn’t blame Forrest. The night before, he’d stayed on his side of the bed just as he’d promised.