Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Don’t go planning my funeral yet, baby,” he said, shooting me a tight little smile. “I’m not gonna say that the club never sees any action. We do. But I don’t remember the last time someone in this club died from it. Get a little roughed up, maybe shot? Sure. But not killed. We’re careful. And a lot of the club members have very… specialized skills.”
“Like ex-military,” I guessed.
“That, yeah. And lots of other shit. Been here since I was nineteen, and I’m still kicking.”
That was true.
Besides, my family was proof enough that even being on the right side of the law, living normal, kind of boring lives, didn’t insulate you from injury and early death.
“Cali, I’d get it if, now that you’ve had time to think it over, you’re having second thoughts.”
“I’m not,” I insisted, even if there’d been a few fleeting ones.
“Well, if you think on it more, and they come up, like I said… I get it.”
If I were looking for reasons not to like this man, he would be making it really hard. I mean, what guy told you, just when things were getting good, that he would understand and not hold it against you if you suddenly decided you wanted to kick him to the curb?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, brushing him off as I refocused my attention on the bills. When, suddenly, something jumped out at me. “Hey,” I said, frantically fanning out the pages.
“You have something?” he asked, a hint of eagerness slipping into his tone.
“I think… maybe…” I said, looking over the papers, tossing away the ones that didn’t fit the pattern I was starting to see.
“What is it?” he asked, getting impatient as he looked at the same pages, and clearly didn’t see what I was seeing.
“These… look,” I said, grabbing the first one I saw. “This is an electric bill for January,” I explained.
“Right,” he agreed, looking at it.
“Which, objectively, should have been paid in January or, at the latest, February, right?”
“Right.”
“Why did he write it was paid in April?” I asked, stabbing my finger at the four on the date.
“Huh,” he said, taking the page.
“Same thing here,” I said, producing a car insurance bill. “It says he paid it three months earlier than the date on the bill.”
“Okay. You’re onto something,” he agreed, taking that page too.
“And look at this,” I said, flinging up two pages.
“The dates are right on those,” he said, squinting at me.
“Yeah. Look at the word Paid,” I demanded. “He’d capitalized the wrong letters.”
“It’s a code,” he said, taking those letters as I fished for others.
“A passcode,” I clarified, glancing over toward his laptop on his dresser.
“That’s why it was in a mess like this,” he said. “Tons of bills, no one is going to stop and analyze if the bill dates and paid dates are right.”
“Exactly. He hid it in plain sight, but in a way that those of us close to him would know something was wrong. Thank god you didn’t just recycle all of this.”
“How many combinations do you think this would make?” he asked, looking between the pages I found that were wrong in one way or another.
“I suck at math, but I think, like, thousands.”
“Fuck,” he said.
“Do you have a pen?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, finding one in his nightstand, and handing it to me.
I took it, and jotted down the numbers and letters on the back of another sheet of paper, rewriting them a few times to try to make sense of them.
“Stick to the letters,” Brooks suggested. “If they spell something, the numbers might make more sense.”
“Right,” I agreed.
Some of the bills had the dates written in number form, others were written out with the weird capitalizations.
“It’s my name,” I finally concluded.
Cali.
“But there’s leftovers.”
“BL,” he said, pointing. “My initials.”
“Oh, right.”
“Do the numbers correlate to anything? They’re not your birthday.”
No, they weren’t. And I pretended to ignore the gooey feeling in my chest at realizing he remembered my birthdate.
“Or yours,” I concluded. “Wait,” I said, something tickling the edges of my memory. “Remember the last time we all went out?” I asked. “You know… before…”
“Yeah, we got burgers,” he recalled.
“It was cold, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. I had to lend you my coat,” he said.
“Right. Yeah. Maybe… December?” she asked.
“Sounds about right.”
“Twelve,” I said, bringing the numbers together. “And these… the year,” I told him, grouping those, ignoring the pang in my heart at seeing how long ago it had been.
“Which just leaves the four.”
“The fourth of December,” I agreed. “I think we have the passcode.”
“How did he know we would remember when the last time we were all together?” Brooks asked, speaking to himself.
“He knew I would remember,” I clarified.
Suddenly, I was pretty sure my secret, massive crush on my brother’s best friend wasn’t quite the secret I always thought it was.