Page 28

Code Breaker

Haley

“ H aley? Haley?” Zane calls to me.

“Shut it, Morris. She needs her rest,” Easton says louder than Zane.

I roll over. I’m disoriented. The rest of last night was a blur. Wine, so much wine. And more of everything. I’m drooling. I reach out my arm and find an empty mattress.

“Well, she’s got to be awake now. How are you feeling, Sassy?” Dante asks.

“Are you okay?” I lean over the side of the railing.

“I’m better than okay. I think I figured it out. Well, I think I figured a little section of it out. Translating this is going to take bloody forever.” Zane waves a piece of paper at me.

“Rocky’s agenda?” I ask.

“Yes, it’s bloody amazing. Come here. I mean...” He clears his throat. “Or I’ve been staring at it long enough to make me think I’ve figured it out. And honestly, I don’t have it all yet, just... Well, come here and see.” His smile covers his entire face.

“No way.” Easton shakes his head. He’s leaning over Zane’s shoulder. I’m the only one who’s been encouraging Zane to continue figuring out the agenda. All the other guys think it’s a lost cause. Admittedly, lately I’ve thought it might be impossible too.

“Give me a second. I’ll be right down.”

“Take your time,” Zane says, like a man who wants me to hurry.

I laugh. “Just a minute.” I run my fingers through my hair.

I don’t need a mirror to know that it might be clean now, but going to bed with it wet—or rather, having sex with it wet—and then falling asleep without brushing it?

Yeah, I’m going to have to take a dunk in the ocean to get it to even go into a ponytail.

I’m down the ladder, and Dante hands me a cup of coffee as my toes hit the sand. “Enjoy it, Sassy. We have enough for two more pots. I’m thinking about Christmas morning and New Year’s Day.”

“Good idea. Thank you.” I take a small sip and slide onto a seat at the table next to Zane. “Show me.”

Easton’s sitting next to Zane, and Dante’s across the table.

I take another sip of coffee. “Where are Calvin and Sam?”

“Around,” Dante says. Which has been the answer a lot lately. Well, not Calvin and Sam. Mostly Sam and someone else.

“Oh.” I raise my eyebrows and stare at Dante over my mug.

He shrugs. “Okay, Zane, give us the goods.”

“Well, I don’t have all the goods yet.” Zane laughs.

Dante moans.

And I shoot him a look. “Don’t mind the naysayers. They never spot genius.” I rest my hand on Zane’s shoulder. He’s not paying any attention to Dante.

“Right, well. I don’t have all of it yet.

But the numbers go from 1 to 50, which is confusing because the alphabet has 26 letters.

But then I thought, what if he’s used the other numbers as words he’s memorized?

Like important names or frequent words. Which is why it’s harder to solve.

Because normally you can look for three numbers that are repeated more frequently and boom, you have the word “the.” But not here.

But there are an awful lot of 5s. What if 5 is the key?

And then I thought, what if he’s got the alphabet numbered back from 50?

But there are a lot of 50s but not many 25s.

So that bloke did it backwards, but there aren’t enough 25s either.

I’ve tried it both ways. On this passageway.

But there’s a heck of a lot of 46s and that’s the most common letter in English.

So I’ve been using this passage. Over and over.

Thinking maybe he added a few numbers that equaled important words to him.

Easton said Rocky’s been doing this for ages.

Before he merged with Harding, before Candy. ”

“And they could be 50 and 49. But how many whole word numbers would he have added?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. And moving from the back seems the most logical. Again with so many 46s. I don’t know why that didn’t stand out to me months ago? I’d been jumping all over. So now I’m using this passage as a test.” He points to a part in the book.

4 49 / 34 46 46 47 / 8 / 38 37 29 46 / 9 25 9 26 / 46 33 37 38.

“These two? 4 and 49 seem to be together a lot. Then there’s that 8, so forget about that. Here—the last three phrases are the ones I’m working on. And I just got it, using the alphabet backwards. Making 48 the letter B?—”

“Not A?”

“A’s one of those high-frequency words. I believe it’s 9.”

“Right.” I think I understand it. Maybe.

“Get to it already.” Dante’s leaning over the table.

He flips to a different page. “Right. The last three words here would be ‘moved away from.’”

“What if 4 is Rocky and 49 is Harding?” Easton’s a lot more invested now.

“Could be.” Zane writes it under the corresponding numbers.

“Rockwell Harding. What’s the next bit then?”

Zane looks at his key, which is a mess of things crossed out and underlined. “Need?”

“Then 8 could be the word too. That’s a common word, right?”

“Sure is, Little Bird.” He pumps his hand in the air. “I think we’ve got enough to really figure out what’s in here.”

I plant a kiss on his cheek. “Do you want any help with it?”

His head is bowed, and he’s deep in thought. “What? Oh, I don’t think so. But thank you.”

Christmas. It’s weird to think about. How can we have been here for that long? But here we are. I used to love Christmas.

“Are you okay?” Easton’s hand lands on my shoulder.

I’m staring out at the ocean. “It’s fine.

It makes me think about my mom. Last year I was still with Steven.

But it didn’t feel like Christmas. It wasn’t fun.

” I huff. “There were so many signs. You know? I should have known that Steven wasn’t the answer.

Things had spun into the realm of not fun for a while. ”

Easton wraps his arms around me, his chin resting lightly on the top of my head. “Let the scumbag float out to sea. Tell me about your mom. What did you do for the holidays?”

“Maryland gets cold but not Maine-cold. Sometimes we would get snow. But not usually for Christmas. A couple of days before Christmas, we’d put on our snow hats.

Mine was a Capitals’ hockey one with a blue pom-pom.

Mom’s was an Orioles’ skullcap hat with a black pom-pom.

We’d make cocoa and watch A White Christmas .

It was our version of a rain dance. If we did it just the right way, savored the peppermint candy cane stir sticks long enough, we’d get snow on Christmas.

Not a lot. Not like I bet you got in Maine when you were little.

An inch or two. It would shut the city down, and Mom wouldn’t have to go to work.

She was a receptionist for a dentist. They worked right up to Christmas.

But if we got snow a few days before her vacation started, we had a longer vacation.

That was the best. Then we’d lie around the house watching movies.

As many marathons as we could get in—well, of ones that we both loved.

The really old black and white ones and all the stop-motion ones. ”

“Oh, there’s more material for Zane. I think it’s possible that he might actually finish the entire Marvel universe in his bedtime stories.”

“What about you?”

“Before my mom died? Or after?” He hugs me tighter into his chest, pulling my shoulders back so we’re flush.

“What were your good Christmases?”

His breath whispers in my ear. “That’s hard to say. I don’t suppose I’ve talked about my mom much.”

“You’ve talked about Maine. And how Susan moved you to Miami, and that’s how you got into swimming. But not about your mom, no.” I want to turn around and look at him. But at the same time, the ocean has me mesmerized, and something tells me this is going to be a lot easier for Easton if I don’t.

“I was little, you know. Nine. A lot of my swimming friends... A lot of them have told me they don’t remember much before their eleventh birthday.

For me, I’ve got the before Mom time and the after.

Moments from when I was really little. She wanted Emily and me to live a normal life.

She’d come from a normal middle-class family in California.

She met Dad in college. The photos of their wedding are like a fairytale. ”

“I’m guessing her dress didn’t have a horse on it?”

His warm laugh shakes me. “No, it did not. Like a real Grimm fairytale, things weren’t all roses in their marriage.

I remember waking up to them fighting. I don’t know what about.

They were just voices in the dark. The next morning, there would be a large flower basket on the front hall table.

Mom would pretend like nothing happened.

When Dad traveled, though, I could hear my mother crying at night. ”

I run my fingers over his hands. “That’s hard. I never heard my parents argue. Not when they were married and not after the divorce, either.”

“You’re lucky.”

His rapid heart pounds against my shoulder blades. “We don’t have to talk about this. I didn’t mean to bring you down.”

“No, it’s good to let it out. Then one day she was gone.

Pills. No goodbye, no nothing. At least, that’s what I heard the new housekeeper say a month later.

Things changed. Which, of course, they would have had to.

Dad worked a lot. Emily and I were little.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just the four of us in the house.

There was a housekeeper and a cook. Then eventually a driver. All Susan’s ideas.”

That has me tilting my head to look up at his blue eyes. “Susan? How soon after your mother died was she in the picture?”

“She was my dad’s executive secretary, as they called them back then.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“Do you think something was going on before your mom died?”

“No clue. But she didn’t waste any time moving in on him, that’s for sure.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t all bad.”

“Swimming.” I hold his hands tightly around my waist.

“Yeah, swimming. And you know, she loves Christmas. Every inch of the house was filled with decorations the year after my mom died. I don’t think you could add another bow to the place if you tried.

And then when we moved to Miami, she hired a company to do the lights.

Our house was its own nighttime spectacular.

But I still liked my mom’s homemade decorations better.

Emily insisted we put them up. She was little and capable of throwing an amazing tantrum when she tried.

By the time we were in high school, Susan had a tree placed in Emily’s room for all the ‘crafty decorations,’ as she called them. ”

“We should make some.” I roll in his arms, my forehead inches from his lips until I stand on my tiptoes.

Easton smiles. “We should.”

“I’d like to make some gifts. I’m working on some ideas. There’s one I need some help with, though. Could I borrow you?”

“You can’t borrow what you already own.”

My stomach warms. I know it’s corny, but I don’t care. I take his lips in mine. He deepens the kiss and I’m moaning into his mouth. My core’s on fire.

He pulls back. The sun pokes out from behind the jungle above his head, making me squint into the sun. I haven’t seen my sunglasses in a few days. “Now, Firefly, what do you need? I’m at your service.”

Shoot, I didn’t think about the state of his arm before I asked him. I suck on my lips and run my hands down the sides of his arms. “No, it’s okay. I’ll ask?—”

“Whatever it is, I can do it.” His tone has dropped.

I’m not sure he can with his arm, but then it’s not fair of me to ask and then rescind. It’s not hard to pick out that he’s having problems with his arm, but more so it hurts his ego that he can’t do what he’s used to doing. “Down by the waterfall, I saw?—”

“All you have to say is waterfall and I’m there.” He laughs.

I playfully slap at his firm abs. “Not waterfall time.” Although it doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now. “No, I saw a flat rock that looks like something chalk might work on. I thought I could make Zane a chalkboard to work out the code on.”

“That’s perfect. What are you going to do for chalk?”

“I... I hadn’t gotten that far? Burnt charcoal?”

“Crushed shells might work.”

When we get to the waterfall and I’m staring down at the rock that I saw a few weeks ago, I realize it’s a lot bigger than I thought it was. It’s sticking half in the water and half out. And the memory of the chest in the cave floods into my head. I never mentioned it to any of the guys.

The excitement clogs my throat. “Cave—there’s a box in the cave!”