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)
According to Sterling, she’d partied her way through a handful of different colleges before finally graduating. But when she graduated, it had been with a math degree. That wasn’t the only reason I believed she could unravel the mess on the page in front of her. Sterling wouldn’t be here unless she was damn sure that being near me would be worth the payoff.
For over a year, she’d avoided me like the plague. I hadn’t crowded her, but I’d been around. Working at the inn every day with her brothers. Sitting outside her hospital room when she had a head injury. Helping to board up the windows when her sister’s business was broken into a few months ago. Through all of it, Sterling had acted like I didn’t exist. If she was sitting at my kitchen table, it was because she was absolutely positive she was going to succeed.
I watched her study the page, trying to figure out what she was looking for. I knew my way around numbers. I was the Chief Financial Officer of the Inn at Sawyers Bend. Numbers were my job, but this was not the kind of math I knew, if it was math at all.
Sterling scratched out another set of scribbles and sat back, closing her eyes. She took a deep breath, letting it out in a gust as she lurched forward, dropping the pen. She flipped the notebook around so the giant fraction she’d transcribed from the secret panel was at the bottom of the page and the alphanumeric string from the base was at the middle of the page, both upside down.
Head to the side, eyes narrowed on the page, Sterling pulled her lip between her teeth, biting down so hard I wanted to protest. But Sterling’s lip wasn’t any of my business anymore, so I kept my mouth shut. A second later, she sucked in a sharp breath, bounced in her seat, and tore off the page. Flipping the notebook back around, she started again, this time transposing the fraction she’d found behind the secret panel so the bottom line was now on the top. She copied the alphanumeric string from the base below the rearranged fraction, her eyes popping back and forth.
It still didn’t make sense to me, but Sterling snatched up the pen and began to write. “Holy fucking shit,” she whispered to herself, the pen moving faster. She lifted her face to mine, her eyes bright and glowing with triumph. “Holy fucking shit, Forrest. Do you see this?”
I didn’t. Not at first. She slashed out with the pen, dividing the long string of letters and numbers into sections, and I saw it: East Eagle. 1523. KCUB. B42001.
“Is that an address?” Sterling asked. “East Eagle? It sounds like a street name.” She looked at me, expectant, and the words teased at the back of my brain.
East Eagle. She was right. It did sound like a street. And more than that, it sounded familiar.
My first instinct was to think of Sawyers Bend. And Boston, where I’d lived before I’d moved here. But this was my father’s code. What did East Eagle mean to him? And then it snapped into place: Willow Springs. I’d grown up there, a sleepy little town too far west of Atlanta to qualify as a suburb, at least back then. Like many small towns, Willow Springs had a Main Street. And branching off Main Street, just past the town hall, was Eagle Street.
“East Eagle Street,” I said slowly, my mind flying back in time. “In Willow Springs, Georgia.”
Sterling grabbed her phone, tapping furiously at the screen. Her fingers curved in a tight grip as her eyes flashed to mine. “Do you know what’s at 1523 East Eagle Street in Willow Springs, Georgia?”
I shook my head.
“A fucking bank!” Sterling let out a whoop, dropping her phone to drum her hands on the tabletop. “I knew it!” Picking her phone up again, she tapped the screen, her eyes flying over the page.
“What’s the rest of it?” I asked, pointing to her notes. KCUB. B42001. “What does that part mean?”
Sterling shook her head, chewing on her lower lip as she thought. “I don’t know. It’s too short to be an account number,” she mused and lifted her phone again, tapping and scrolling until she found what she was looking for. She read aloud, “Willow Springs Community Bank, which has been in operation since the mid-sixties, offers safe deposit box rentals.”
B42001. “Box 42001?” I asked. My mind raced—safe deposit boxes needed a key, and I didn’t have a key. My father died when I was thirteen. Seventeen years had passed. If there had been a key, I had no clue where it was. My mother had gotten rid of most of his things. Anyway, we’d needed the cash back then. If she’d had a key to a safe deposit box, she sure as hell would have opened it.