by Kerry Taylor
“I slept some, but I woke early.” It wasn’t a lie. “Is…..is it ok to be in here?” I asked nervously.
“Of course it is. It’s mainly Dad’s office, but we all use it for homework and stuff. What are you doing?” He looked at the pages I had sprawled across the desk. There were tens of them in piles all around me, all covered in my wild scrawls.
“I was looking for a book, but I…...I found this puzzle and I…...I kinda like numbers. I guess I got carried away.” I explained shyly.
“That’s cool. I suck at Math.” Matt laughed. “You should talk to Cole. He likes puzzles and code breaking. I’ll bet he has some books and shit you might like.”
“I’ll ask him. Thanks.” I smiled, realising how much fun it would be to have someone else who was as into math as I was. As a kid, no one even understood the math puzzles I used to do, and in timeI realised I was different because of my interests, and hid them away, working on the puzzles only at home.
“Where’d you find that anyway? It doesn’t look like any puzzle I know?” Matt asked as he looked at the sheet I was working from, right in front of me.
“Well, it’s Kade’s.” I admitted sheepishly. “He w-was sleeping and I just saw it on the sofa. I didn’t think he would mind. I d-didn’t write on it or anything.”
“Kade?” Matt asked, his smile dropping as he grabbed the sheet and started studying it closer. “You got this from Kade?” He asked more urgently.
“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have…” I began frantically. I shouldn’t have touched it. It clearly wasn’t mine.
“Olivia, breathe. It’s ok. No one is mad. It’s just, I don’t think this is a puzzle.” He said as he looked from the sheet to me.
“It is. I’ve almost solved it.”
“What? What do you mean? You know what this means?” He asked as he held it up to me. I nodded nervously and held out the sheet of five sets of eighteen or nineteen digit numbers I had already solved. There was one more to complete.
“There are six different problems. I have the answers to five…..I think.”
“Where is Kade?” He asked.
“He was in the room next door. He w-was asleep though.”
“Fuck! Come with me.” He said, clearly frustrated. I was nervous by the way he was acting, but stood and took his offered hand. He smiled briefly as he pulled me around the desk and into the hall.
“Kade! Wake up!” Matt said loudly as he pulled me into the media room, now lit by the sun through the huge sliding doors. Kade looked even more uncomfortable than he had earlier, one foot on the floor and his neck at an awkward angle against the back of the sofa.
He started to stir as the door opened behind me and Kyle walked in, also in shorts and a navy tank. His biceps were on show and he looked really good, all tan ridges and sculpted muscles. He was slimmer than some of his brothers, but beautifully toned.
“What’s going on?” He asked as he walked in, throwing me a wink which instantly had my cheeks flushing hot.
“Yeah, what the fuck is going on? Some of us were up half the night working.” Kade groaned as he sat up and stretched out his neck.
“Olivia knows what this shit means.” Matt said as he waved the puzzle sheet at Kade.
“What? Where the fuck did you get that?”
“I’m sorry. I…..I took it. I just wanted to do the puzzle.” I apologised tearfully. He was mad and I felt terrible for taking his things.
“It’s ok Liv. He’s not mad. You’re ok.” Kyle said as he took a step forward so he stood at my side, so close his heat made my skin prickle.
Kade studied me for a second and took a deep breath. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back against his head.
“He’s right love, I’m not mad.” He said. “It’s just that letter, it was sent to the police department by a serial killer we’ve been chasing for weeks. Our techs have been working on it, but so far they haven’t deciphered the code.” He explained.
“It’s not a code…...well, not really. More like equations” Kade looked up to me with shock.
“You really know what that shit means?” He asked.
“I…..I think so.” I took the sheet from Matt and moved over to the table. I knelt down on the floor opposite Kade and placed the sheet before him. “These strings of numbers here…...they’re decreasing patterns that lead you to single digit numbers. The rest is a simple letter to number cipher. The numbers f-from the patterns fit into each section, finalising the equations. I…..I think I solved the first five.” It hurt to talk so much and my voice was barely coming out at the end, but it seemed important.
“Here,” Matt said as he handed the sheet with my answers to Kade. Kyle was now sitting beside Kade on the sofa and they studied my answers.
“It may be wrong. I…..I haven’t done a math problem like that since I was nine and definitely never one that complicated. I might be wrong…..It’s probably wrong.” I bumbled nervously.
“Shit!” Kyle gasped as they looked at one another.
“You’re not wrong.” Kade looked across at me with worry and confusion.
“The first six digits of these first two sets are the dates the first two murders happened.”
“Jesus Olivia! You’re a genius.” Matt gasped.
“What about the r-rest of the numbers? Each set is eighteen or nineteen digits long?”
“I don’t know, but these dates, they’re a huge step forward. The next one is three days from now.” Kade said.
“It’s GPS coordinates.” Kyle said as he pulled out his cell and started typing something into it. “Yep, the first one is downtown, where you found the first body.”
“Shit! This is huge! We know when and where. We can catch this fucker with this.” Kade said excitedly. He jumped to his feet and started shoving all of the pages into his backpack frantically.
“I…..I can solve the last problem if it would help?” I asked.
“I need to get to the office, but I can leave you the page. This is amazing Olivia! You have just stopped a serial killer from hurting anyone else!” I looked up and found him watching me with an intensity I didn’t know what to do with
“I was just messing around.” I replied shyly.
“If you can solve that when you’re just messing around, I can’t wait to see what else you can do.” Kade laughed. He leant in and kissed my temple gently, then walked past me. “I have to go. Text me the last set of numbers if Olivia gets them.”
Once he was gone, Kyle, who was sat opposite me, and Matt who was crouched beside me, just stared, making me fidget nervously.
“So you’re really smart huh?” Kyle asked eventually.
“No. I just like math. My mom was a math teacher and she used to give me problems to solve for fun.”
“That is not just normal math. The CPD geeks couldn’t even solve it.” Matt cut in.
“I was always good at numbers. They just work for me.” I shrugged. It probably helped that math had been my only distraction for the last eight years too, but I decided not to bring that up.
“Yep, you’re really smart.” Kyle laughed as he stood. “I’m going to work out. You coming Matt?”
“In a minute. You go ahead.” Kyle nodded and headed out, throwing me another wink before he left
“Are you ok? That was all kinda crazy?” Matt asked once we were alone.
“Yeah…..I think I am. I had fun with that math problem. It felt good to focus on something.” I tried to explain.
“That’s good. It helps to have something to focus on. I’ll ask Cole to find you some more to do, if you like?”
“That’d be good, thanks.”
“You ok to finish up what you were working on while I hit the gym?”
“Yes please.” I answered eagerly, making him laugh.
“Go ahead then Chica. I’ll come get you for breakfast when I’m done, yeah?” I nodded, my throat sore from so much talking. It had been a weird, but good morning. I had done something go
od, unintentionally, but still. And I felt comfortable with the guys around me. Maybe Xander had been right, Maybe I could make a happy new beginning for myself there, if I was willing to try.
KADE
“Kowalski, call a meeting. I’ve got something big!” I called as I hurried into the office. This was fucking huge! I had been working this case since the first body was found two weeks ago in a hotel room downtown. Stabbed multiple times, the victim had been posed naked on the bed, the crime scene a blood bath. Forensics came back with nothing, no witnesses, no surveillance footage. The guy was a ghost and the case was a bust. Then five days ago the second body turned up, another motel, another bloodbath, but this one in a motel outside the city. There was nothing to link the victims, one a retired teacher and the other a young female IT technician. The only lead we had was the letter that had come from the killer. He was taunting us, trying to prove he was smarter than us, and until that morning I was starting to think he was right. Now it was obvious Olivia was smarter than everyone. I had no idea how she had gotten any sense from the page filled with line after line of random letters and numbers, but she had, and we had something we could actually use to catch the sonofabitch. If I didn’t realise it before I knew it now, Olivia Byrd was special.
Everyone, including my Chief, who was desperate for a break in this case was gathered in the meeting room when I walked in with coffee and Olivia’s page of numbers.
“What have you got Maxwell?” He asked from where he sat at the head of the conference table.
“Dates and locations for the murders…...the next three, and possibly four.” I sat down as I spoke and handed the sheet over. John, my Chief studied it hard. He was in his early fifties, slightly rounded in the belly and completely bald on top. He was squinting through his black rimmed glasses, then looked up to me with confusion.
“Dates and GPS?” He asked. He was a smart man, almost thirty years on the job. He had taught me alot of what I knew and I respected him greatly. I nodded my agreement as the other three cops around the table leant in to see the page too.
“How’d you get this?” John asked.
“I found someone who could decipher the letter.” I answered simply.
“Who?”
“Does it matter? We have the date and location of the next murders. We need to get surveillance set up on the motel at those coordinates, make sure we’re ready to grab the guy.” I didn’t want Olivia getting involved in the case any further than she already was, hence trying to keep her name out of it as much as possible. She had been through so much, I just wanted to do all I could to keep her safe and protected.
“It matters if you’re going around showing critical evidence to everyone and anyone.” John snapped, annoyed by my evasiveness.
“It was my brother ok? I fell asleep working the file last night and he picked up the page. He’s a math whiz, and he solved it.” Cole was heavily into math and physics, that part was true and I knew he would prefer me use him that let Olivia’s name be thrown into the chaos.
“He gonna keep his mouth shut? We don’t need the media getting wind of this. They’re already going wild with the murders.”
“He’s my fucking brother!” I snapped, hating anyone daring to speak against my family. We had been through it all in school, the delinquent foster kids from the wrong side of town. None of us had ever been accepted by the stuck up kids at the stuck up school we attended. We were all damaged in some way, with huge chips on our shoulders and attitudes to match, but we weren’t bad. We worked hard and we were all pretty smart and we had each other, always. Kyle and I had been together, and Xander was the next grade up. We all stuck together and it was us against the world. Then Matt and Cole came along, two broken young kids, and they just fit into our family perfectly. We were tight, all of us and now we had Olivia too. It would always be us against the world.
“Good.” John nodded, obviously happy with my answer. “Get the motel set up for surveillance and have a response team on standby. Let’s get this fucker.” Everyone agreed and started to clear out. I took back the page of numbers and stood, but John stopped me before I turned to leave.
“The Byrd case?” He asked.
“It’s going to take time, Chief. Olivia, she’s scared and fragile. I can’t push her to tell me anything if she’s not ready.”
“There’s a kidnapper out there Maxwell, likely eyeing up his next victim. We need to find him before it’s too late.”
“I will speak to her, get what I can, but not until I feel she’s strong enough. She’s been through hell. I can’t…...won’t force her to talk.” I said firmly.
“You’ve got two days, or I call her in to be interviewed. I know you want to protect her, but I won’t let that maniac take another innocent child, not in my city.” John said resolutely.
“I’ll do my best.” I agreed, knowing I would have to try. I needed to do whatever I could to stop her being brought in for interview. I knew that would be more than she could handle.
“Her medical report’s on your desk. The blood on her hands wasn’t hers.” John added.
“I’ll look into it.” I agreed as I hurried out and to my desk. I had been waiting for the report, especially after meeting her the day before and seeing how terrified and broken she had seemed. I knew it would hurt to see evidence of what she had been through, but I needed to know.
As soon as I opened the file my stomach turned and rage built within me. They had photographed her injuries and scars when she was admitted at the hospital and there were so many images of her battered body. She had heavy bruising around her ribs and down her arms. There were signs she had been restrained in some way around her wrists and ankles, and the scars! There were so many of them, mainly on her back and stomach, but they also branched out to her upper chest and there were several smaller ones on her face and down her legs. She had obviously been beaten repeatedly, with all manner of weapons as well as fists. It was a miracle she had survived at all. She was so small, probably not quite five feet tall and so petite and delicate. The fucker who had taken her had tried hard to destroy her, but she had survived. I had no idea how, but she did and she got out. It was a miracle.
The last part of the report was the hardest to take in. The hospital had conducted a sexual assault forensic exam and found evidence of abuse, brutal sexual abuse over a prolonged period.
I had to slam the file closed, unable to breathe through the anger pulsing through my veins. How could anyone hurt her? She had been a damned child! An innocent child! My chest was heaving and my hands were shaking as I stood from my desk and hurried to the mens room. My stomach revolted and I threw up the coffee I had just drank. No wonder Olivia was as jumpy and nervous as she was. The fact she was functioning in any capacity at all seemed a miracle after what she had been put through for almost half of her life!
I splashed cold water on my face in an effort to calm down after I managed to stop heaving. I needed to find a way to process the anger, because I would be going home to Olivia that night, and I never wanted her to see me that way. She had seen enough hate and evil. I wanted to be there to show her there was good in the world. I wanted to take care of her and protect her as she should have always been.
I knew my feelings for her weren’t necessarily brotherly. Even as pale and thin as she was, she was a beautiful woman and it was impossible not to notice. Petite and delicate, with those huge dark blue eyes that just sucked you in every time she looked at you. Her pale skin contrasted beautifully with her dark hair and when she smiled, it lit her whole face and her eyes sparkled. I had barely seen it happen yet, but what I had seen had me affected and I found myself just craving her next smile, thinking of ways to make her happy, to see that smile often.
Yes, Olivia Byrd had me already. I knew though, she was unlikely to be looking for a relationship anytime soon after everything she had been through, so I had fought my feelings, curbing them as much as possible and telling myself all that mattered was that she knew
I was there for her. The most important thing was keeping her safe and proving to her that she wasn’t alone in this huge terrifying world. That, I could do.
OLIVIA
I was sat in the garden, sprawled on the grass in the back corner, hiding out behind the huge gazebo that dominated the space. It had been a good morning. I’d completed the puzzle and handed Kyle the last answer to pass on to Kade, then we’d all had breakfast, everyone except Kade, Xander and Simon.
Keira and Grant told me how their weekdays usually went since tomorrow was Monday. They seemed busy, dropping Evie at school and then they both worked quite long hours. The guys usually took it in turn to collect Evie after they finished school or work, then all ate dinner together, Matt usually cooking. Keira and Grant explained they tended to work late, but if I ever needed anything I only had to call and they would be there, which was extremely kind, but seemingly just representative of the good people they were.
“We weren’t sure what you would want to do about school Olivia?” Grant had asked that morning. “We thought you would be too far behind to simply join Matt and Cole in their classes and were looking into online courses and a tutor, but after this morning I wonder if you may be able to catch up pretty quickly at school after all.”
“I…..I don’t know,” I replied, panic rising within me. I used to like school before, but that wasn’t me anymore and I hadn’t opened a book in eight years. I had been smart before, working two grades ahead of my age in most subjects and much further ahead in math, but that was a long time ago.
I looked to Matt, who sat beside me, with confusion, knowing he would help me.
“We’re halfway through the semester now. Why don’t you start Olivia on the online classes, one grade back from where we are and see how she goes. If she catches up as fast as I’m sure she will, and feels ready, she could start classes at school with us for the next semester?”
“Maybe we could stay home to study with her too?” Cole asked with a hopeful look to his parents.
