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"You think she left us another message?" Larissa murmured, her brows pinched tightly.
He nodded. "I noticed she didn't give us any more clues. Yet the map that Jax found needed three codes."
"You think her sick messages are codes?" Larissa asked, her hand ghosting over her stomach absentmindedly.
"I do."
"We have 'Losar' and 'Feral'. They have to mean something."
"Let's try dropping them in the map."
He pulled out his phone, furiously pounding out the letters against the screen, his face seeming to grow darker with each letter. The phone clattered against the table. His fingers raked through his hair, pulling on the ends.
"Didn't work." I muttered, stating the obvious. "Sorry, it was a bad idea."
He barked out a dry laugh. "At this point, I'm open to bad ideas."
"I may have one." Larissa said, raising her hand.
"Shoot."
"Losar" she started, staring at the photo now stuck on the fridge. "I said she wasn't too bright because she misspelled loser, but what if we are the ones that got it wrong?"
"Not sure I catch your meaning," he responded.
"What if the reason it's spelled wrong is that the word we need isn't loser at all?"
"Oh! I get it. Like an anagram." I said, finally catching on.
"Exactly. Rearrange the letters and see what—"
"Orals." Ahren interrupted. "I can see why you like this game."
I kicked him under the table, and he tossed me a playful smirk.
"Just saying."
"The only other word I get is 'solar'. Maybe I was wrong."
"Actually," I started, dragging my words out to give me extra moments to think. "When you were taken, one of the clues we had centered around the type of light in the photo."
"And the black light bulb left at the house with the clues." Ahren said, finishing my thought.
I nodded eagerly.
"So, types of light seem to be a theme. Can we do it with 'feral'?"
Ahren sighed deeply, shaking his head. "I am older than both of you. Shouldn't the two of you be light years ahead of me, tech wise?"
He snagged his phone, punched in a few letters and dropped it in front of us. The words "anagram generator" emblazoned across the top of the screen in a deep blue font.
I quickly typed in 'feral' and pressed generate. "Flare," I murmured, reading off the only result it returned.
"Flare qualifies, right?" she asked.
"Let's find out." Ahren said, pulling the phone back to him and opening the map.
A slow smile spread across his face as he smashed the enter key. Another swath of the numbers and irrelevant information clearing from the map, allowing us a clearer picture.