Page 6

When Rilfivey opened the door of her townhouse and stepped inside, it was very quiet. Seeing no one in the nearby rooms, she called up the stairwell, “April, Jilly, can you come down here?”

Sounds from upstairs told her the girls were on their way. Then she went into the kitchen to check in with Gabriela, who glanced up from where she stood at the counter.

“I’m fixing some snacks for you girls,” she announced in her accented voice, her eyes meeting Riley’s with a knowing look.

“Thanks, Gabriela,” Riley said, “we’ll be working at the dining room table for a little while. I’ll have it cleared in time for dinner.”

She walked back through the living room into the dining room, where the big wooden table often served as a makeshift command center. She put her bag down and took out printed copies of the quiz sheets that had been left with the murder victims.

The sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs announced the arrival of April and Jilly, their faces alight with curiosity. “What’s going on, Mom?” April asked, her hazel eyes reflecting the same inquisitive spirit as Riley’s.

“I need your help with a case,” Riley said, watching as a ripple of eager anticipation passed between the girls.

“Awesome!” Jilly exclaimed.

April, who had sometimes expressed interest in joining the FBI herself, looked excited.

They sat down at the table, and Riley slid copies of the quiz sheets across to each of them. “These are part of an ongoing investigation,” she explained. “Can you work through these equations for me?”

Her daughters’ enthusiasm deflated, their expressions souring at the sight of the algebra problems laid out before them.

“It’s just math?” April’s voice quivered with a touch of betrayal.

“Seriously, Mom? This is what you dragged us here for?” Jilly chimed in, her pencil tapping an impatient staccato.

“I know it doesn’t look exciting, girls, but trust me, it’s important,” Riley coaxed. “These equations are part of a real case. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious. And you’ve worked problems like this a lot more recently than I have.”

She didn’t want to tell them that this wasn’t just about algebra; these numbers were potential clues to the mind of a killer.

Reluctantly, April and Jilly picked up their pencils and began to work through the problems. Riley observed them, noting April’s methodical precision and Jilly’s quicker, more intuitive approach that led to more erasures.

As the scratching of lead filled the room, Riley’s thoughts drifted unbidden to her class earlier that day. She was glad that Leo Dillard hadn’t bothered her either before or after class, offering no more than a short stare from across the room—a welcome reprieve.

Gabriela arrived with sliced apples and orange sections arranged on a plate. Peering over their shoulders, she asked. “Esos números deben significar algo, ?verdad?”

“These numbers must mean something, yes,” Riley echoed.

Or at least she hoped so. She couldn’t shake her hunch that it was a code of sorts, surely. But what did it unlock?

“Done,” April announced, dropping her pencil onto the table with a sense of finality.

Jilly soon mirrored the action, a little less dramatically.

“Your rewards,” Gabriela said, setting down the tray of fruit.

“Thank you,” they all chimed, and with a pleased smile Gabriela returned to the kitchen.

“Good work, girls,” Riley said.

“Mom, this is weird,” Jilly said as she reached for a slice of apple. “All the answers I got are whole numbers... except for one.” She pointed at the paper where ‘x = 38.517’ was neatly written. “Why would one of them be so different?”

“Let me see,” Riley murmured, leaning forward to glance at the sheet.

“Same here,” April chimed in, her hazel eyes—so much like Riley’s own—reflecting curiosity. “Except my outlier is a negative: -78.4368. That’s even stranger.”

Riley took her computer pad out of her bag and stood looking at it for a moment, wondering how to enter those numbers. The odd digits felt familiar somehow, a forgotten language resurfacing from the depths of memory. With a snap of clarity, she remembered a conversation just the night before.

“Remember how Mrs. Whitfield made learning an adventure?” Tracy had laughed. They’d reminisced about an algebra assignment that had turned into a treasure hunt, a series of equations leading them to a physical location and a hidden prize.

“Girls,” Riley said, “I think you’re onto something big here.” She watched April and Jilly lean in, their young faces showing curiosity and anticipation.

“Like what, Mom?” April asked, tilting her head, pencil still poised between her fingers.

“Let me show you,” Riley replied as she tapped on the computer pad, bringing up Google Maps. The app responded instantly, a digital globe spinning to her command, zooming in on a landscape that could hold the key to a mystery far beyond their cozy kitchen.

“Check this out,” she continued, typing in the first set of numbers—38.517—into the latitude field, then entering -78.4368 for longitude.

The map changed, coalescing around a single point in the sprawling greenery of Virginia. The Blue Ridge Wilderness Park materialized on the screen, the coordinates pinpointing an area within its vast expanse.

“Right here,” Riley murmured, tapping the spot. “That’s what the numbers you found are telling us.”

She knew that park as a place of towering trees and silent trails—a location that was surely not chosen at random.

“Is that... is that somewhere we’re going?” Jilly’s voice broke through the suspense, her eyes wide.

“No,” Riley replied hastily. “But it’s important information. Very important.”

As she looked back at her daughters, she saw reflections of herself—the same relentless drive for answers, the same desire to see justice served.

But she also saw innocence, a precious quality she would do anything to protect.

And so, she wrapped her arms around them both, holding on to the moment before everything changed again.

“Girls,” she said, “you’ve been a real help. This could be a major break in an FBI case.”

April and Jilly leaned in closer, their bright eyes mirroring the screen’s glow.

They were eager for details, but Riley hesitated.

She’d always been meticulous about keeping her professional dangers separate from the sanctuary of home.

Yet now, the two worlds were colliding, and she wondered how much to reveal to her daughters.

“Mom, what is it?” April pressed, her curiosity growing. “What does this have to do with your work? I thought you were just teaching now.”

“Have we been helping you find clues?” Jilly chimed in.

“Something like that,” Riley managed to say. She was weighing the potential harm of telling them anything further when the front door creaked open, heralding Bill’s unexpected arrival. The girls erupted into a flurry of excited chatter, pulling him into the dining room.

“Mom solved a real mystery with our help!” Jilly exclaimed, tugging at Bill’s sleeve as he took in the scene before him.

“Really?” Bill responded, eyebrows raised in surprise. He glanced at Riley, searching her face for an explanation.

“Easy, girls,” Riley interjected, her tone light but firm. “We just found something interesting, that’s all.” She offered Bill a tight smile, trying to quell the growing excitement and the inevitable questions that were sure to follow.

“Interesting, huh?” Bill said, giving Riley a look that suggested a deeper conversation was needed.

“Girls, why don’t you go finish your snacks in the family room? I need to talk to Bill for a second,” Riley suggested, gently steering them away from the table.

“Mom, you’re not going to tell us more?” April asked, disappointment etching her features.

“Later, honey,” Riley assured her.

Bill sat down, his frame filling the chair across from her. “Riley, what’s going on?” he asked, his voice low and serious.

“I think we’ve stumbled onto something big,” she began, her words tumbling out in a rush. “Big enough that I’m considering talking to Meredith about it.”

Bill just waited for her to continue, so Riley let the barriers fall, her words spilling out. “I called Hoke Smith today,” she confessed, watching as his expression shifted from curiosity to concern. “Mrs. Whitfield’s murder—it’s part of an ongoing FBI case.”

Bill leaned forward, elbows on the table, his attention unwavering. “And?”

“And I tried to get assigned to it. Went straight to Brent Meredith. He said no.”

“Of course, he did,” Bill muttered.

“Then I went back to my office and accessed the official file anyway,” she added, the gravity of her actions sinking in. It was a breach of protocol, a risk to her career, but she couldn’t let it go—not this case, not Mrs. Whitfield.

“Riley, you know the kind of trouble you’re in if this gets out?” There was no judgment in his tone, just a plain statement of fact.

She nodded. “I know. But Bill, the girls—they helped me make a connection. We found something that the team working on the case needs to know.”

“Found what?” His posture straightened, the investigator in him taking over.

“Coordinates,” she answered. Riley fiddled with the edges of the quiz sheets.

“These are copies of sheets of paper that were pinned to the victims’ bodies.

They’re algebra problems, and I knew it would take me forever to remember how to work them.

So I got Jilly and April to do it. They pointed out something .

.. two anomalies among the answers. Then I remembered the problems that Mrs. Whitfield used to give us, where the answers were clues to a specific location.

That's what these two odd ones were, not just numbers—they’re coordinates. ”

For a moment, Bill’s eyes widened. Then, he leaned back in his chair, the creak of the wood breaking the silence that had fallen over the room. Riley watched his eyes, knowing that, like her, he understood the significance of this discovery.

“Coordinates,” he finally said, his voice carrying the gravity of the revelation. “And you think this is linked to Mrs. Whitfield’s case?”

“Has to be,” Riley confirmed, her instincts as an investigator flaring up like a beacon.

“It’s too precise, too deliberate to be a coincidence.

If the numbers were just random, they would have led us anywhere, to any spot on the globe.

But the location is specific, a spot in The Blue Ridge Wilderness Park, in the same state as both of the murders. That’s got to be checked out.”

Bill rubbed his chin, then looked directly at Riley. “Last night, Riley, we talked about this. I thought you were going to step back, to let it go.”

She felt a twinge of guilt at his reminder; she hadn’t promised to step back, but she understood she’d probably left him with that impression.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “But this... this could be big, Bill. If the team hasn’t pieced this together yet, it could be the break they need.”

“Alright,” he conceded, a sigh escaping him. “But you shouldn’t call it in. We need to do this together.”

“How do you mean?”

“Meredith is probably still at his desk,” Bill said, the edges of his words softened by the quiet sigh that accompanied them. “He’s always grinding away at this hour. We do need to tell him what you and the girls figured out. “

“Do you think I should call him and try to explain?” Riley asked.

“No, I don’t think you should do this alone,” Bill replied. “Meredith will want to hear about this firsthand, but he’s less likely to fire you if we go there together. I’ll message him that we’re on the way.”

“Then let’s go,” Riley replied, the resolution clear in her voice.

It was a tone that spoke not only of the urgency of their discovery but also of her own internal struggle—the constant balancing act between her roles as an agent and a mother.

This was the life she had chosen, or perhaps it was the life that had chosen her.

She rose from the table, feeling the familiar surge of adrenaline that came with the prospect of a breakthrough.

It coursed through her as she straightened the crumpled quiz sheets that had innocently transformed her dining table into an impromptu war room.

The answers her daughters had scribbled down were now potential keys to a killer’s mind—and Riley knew all too well how to navigate that kind of psyche.