Page 7 of The Shadow Code (Heroes of War #3)

Later that evening, once the laughter had quieted and the wireless had fallen silent, Ellie retreated to her bedroom.

Rain tapped incessantly at the windowpane as she changed into her nightdress, pulled on a thick cardigan against the chill and flicked the switch for the small lamp on her bedside table.

Taking her notebook with her, she slid into the single bed, smoothing the woollen blanket across her knees.

The blackout curtains were already drawn tight, and the warm amber light spilled across the note paper as she lit a cigarette with steady fingers.

Smoke curled lazily upward, catching in the still air.

As she took a drag, she thought of her mother, who would throw a fit if she could see her right now.

Ellie hitched her brows. One of the perks of living away from her mother’s disapproving eye.

She began to write, her pen moving steadily across the paper as memory served up every letter of the code.

Once finished, she stared at it, tracing the words with her eyes, again and again, as if they might shift under pressure.

A sigh escaped her as thoughts wheeled in her mind.

She should have been frightened. Perhaps she was. But more than anything, she was angry.

Someone out there wanted her off this case badly enough to threaten her family.

The question was why. She wasn’t a threat, though she had found the coded message.

A thought struck her, and a chill flicked up her spine.

What if the killer had been watching her at the crime scene?

Worse – what if someone on the team had passed her name along?

She shook her head, pushing the thought away.

No. That was fear talking and she wasn’t going to let it run the show.

She underlined Kingfisher then circled White Hart . A common pub name with several dotted around the city. But she’d heard whispers about one in particular, frequented by fascist sympathisers. What if Templeton had been trying to warn someone? None of it made sense, which likely meant it did.

She paused, lifting her head slightly. It was so still outside.

Too still. There’d already been one raid earlier, driven back by the valiant RAF fighters before it caused considerable damage.

For a moment, she allowed herself to hope they might be spared a second.

She blew out a breath. Don’t be a fool. Jerry had a pattern now, hitting London by day and returning at night to finish the job.

Bally air raids. Please don’t sound the siren .

Not yet. Not while I’m finally beginning to get somewhere with this darn code.

The Roman numerals nagged at her. X. IX – ten and nine. September tenth? Today’s date. Was she already too late? Her pen hovered over Echo 7 . A call sign? A location? And Kingfisher and Merlin’s Eye sounded like codenames perhaps; pieces of a larger puzzle.

Her mind circled back to the call at the Yard.

Drop the case, Harcourt. The warning was clear: back off or someone she loved might pay the price.

Would they really go that far? Her stomach twisted.

The house in Mayfair was her mother’s sanctuary, her father’s pride.

And now it felt marked, and not by the Luftwaffe.

She could walk away, leave the case to MI5 and pretend she hadn’t seen the code or heard Lambert’s name, but she knew she couldn’t. If they were willing to threaten her, it meant she mattered. And if she mattered, then they knew she could uncover the truth.

She sat back and exhaled slowly. If White Hart was the where, maybe Echo 7 was the who or perhaps the what.

She jotted notes beside each term, trying to force order from ambiguity.

It felt like solving a logic problem in the fog.

Too few clues and too many variables. With a sigh, she carried on and circled Merlin’s Eye then drew a tiny watchful eye beside it.

It felt like surveillance. Or maybe protection.

Sometimes visualisation helped unlock meaning, though this particular doodle remained stubbornly cryptic.

Whatever this was, Templeton had died protecting it, MI5 had seized it within hours, and someone had threatened her family. The coded message wasn’t just important; it was dangerous. She tapped her cigarette against the ashtray, and sat back, scanning the words, her mind turning over possibilities.

Ellie stared at the page, her pen hovering above the inked lines, as if the motion alone might coax the pieces into place.

She wrote the words again on a fresh page and began circling connections, the way she used to sketch out proofs during late-night tutorials at Oxford.

Back then, she could stare at a blackboard for hours and eventually tease out the symmetry.

But this was no pure equation nor a traditional cipher.

Ellie huffed out a sigh. Honestly, at this point, even a Vigenère cipher would have been easier to crack.

The words were obviously names for places and people, presumably, but clever names and known only to those in the circle of whatever it was Templeton had been part of.

A shadow network, operating with its own language, its own rules.

Was Templeton innocent or a traitor? Her eyes narrowed. MI5 definitely knew more than they were letting on. Goodness, it was all incredibly frustrating.

Perhaps Templeton had uncovered a network of traitors operating within Whitehall itself.

And if she was right, he wasn’t the only one being hunted.

The thought had barely settled when the wail of the air raid siren started up like a moan in the bones of the city, building to its familiar, clockwork chorus. Jerry was back.

Ellie flinched, every instinct sharpened, but she didn’t move straight away. From the hallway she heard shouts, the rattle of boots, the hurried scuff of slippers on linoleum. Lizzie’s voice sailed through her door.

‘We’re heading for the shelter. You coming?’

Ellie tucked the notebook under her arm, then reached for her coat. ‘Yes, right behind you.’

Outside, searchlights swept the sky and somewhere to the east, the distant pulse of engines stirred the night.

As she followed the others into the cellar, one thought burned clear: if someone was willing to kill for this message, then she was already playing a much deadlier game than she’d ever imagined.

She’d need luck, courage, and the will to keep going, even when Moaning Minnie’s wail split the air.

The key was surviving long enough to learn the rules.