Hard to Find: A Tillgiven Romantic Mystery

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  I understood. But I just nodded. The policeman responded better to my silence than to Isaac’s more confrontational tones.

  Before they let us actually leave, they added our photographs and fingerprints to the file they had started. And, while we were wiping the ink off our fingers with baby wipes, the short little officer in charge of fingerprints gave me a stern look. “Finish your vacation quietly. We don’t want trouble in Nice, and we are watching you.”

  With the threat of French arrest looming over my head, I followed Isaac out to the grimy sidewalk in front of the depressing socialist block. I was being watched, but that didn’t mean we could stop looking for Si.

  Isaac Daniels 6

  I walked the shaking Dani Honeywell as far from the police station as I could before I spoke again. It hadn’t been hard to find her on the beach, once I turned the right direction. But the arrest was something else. I could do nothing more than agree with the policeman: we needed to finish up our “vacation” in Nice as quickly as possible.

  Once we were safely on the Promenade, and pretty close to our car again, I spoke up. “To the surf shop, I think?”

  She consulted her phone. “It’s almost nine. That’s probably a good idea.” She had the address in her phone, but it took us a long time to find it. It wasn’t far from the hostel, but the hostel was far from our starting point, and neither of us were familiar with the town. The shop was nearly empty when we got there, just the man behind the counter and Si, who looked well rested and happy.

  “Out to surf the Med?” I asked.

  “Another notch on your board?” Dani asked.

  Si smiled from ear to ear. “I will surf all the great waves before I’m twenty.”

  I ground my teeth. What this boy needed was some real goals. “But not today. We need to get back to the school for about a thousand urgent reasons, the least of which is Stina’s sudden need to go be a supermodel in Venezuela.”

  “She’s hot for an old lady.”

  Dani punched Si’s arm. I would have prevented it if I had seen it coming, because Si was exactly the age and personality that enjoyed girls punching him.

  “She’s single, right?” Si rubbed his shoulder and grinned.

  I turned to the man behind the counter. “Si won’t be needing his board today.”

  “No problem.” He pushed aside a stack of papers that Si had been about to sign.

  “First we’re checking out of the hostel, then the hotel, and then we’re driving home as fast as we can.”

  “Hotel?”

  “Yes. Wasn’t he sweet? He got me a room.”

  Si cocked an eyebrow but blushed.

  “I stayed in the car. Come on.” I managed to lead Si out of the surf shop without bodily harm. The shop was close to the hostel, so we made quick work of checking out and relieving the locker of his pack.

  “Any news from Drew?” Si walked along, hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes down.

  Dani shook her head. “I’ve been a bit occupied this morning.”

  Si held out his hand, and Dani placed her phone in it. “Let me check out a few things.”

  He tapped at the screen silently as we wended our way through the maze of Old Town. The town had woken up, restaurants, shops, and cafés all bustling with activity.

  We passed another little place with a socca sign, and my stomach responded noisily. A few paces past, I realized I was alone on the sidewalk, my companions having stopped to buy a snack. I backed up and joined them. No need to starve to death, after all.

  My savory crepe-like thing, made with chickpea dough, according to the lady selling them, dripped with butter and satisfied for the moment. Unfortunately, Si and Dani had taken a little table and were in the middle of a quiet conversation over her phone, ignoring their huge slices of socca.

  I hovered over them impatiently, but they didn’t seem to notice, so I sat down.

  “What?”

  “Drew sent this message to ‘Marissa’: ‘Fly. All is known.’” Dani’s eyes were huge with fear. “Marissa responded with a picture message…like words made of stick figures. And then communication stopped.”

  I almost laughed. “You don’t know that old story?”

  Dani shook her head, her face pale with worry.

  “It’s an urban legend, popular with preachers. Some say Doyle sent the message, others say Oxford hooligans did. Some say it was to Doyle’s friends, others say to a bunch of Church of England bishops.”

  Si sighed heavily, like I was taking too long to get to the point.

  “In any case, the story goes someone sent a bunch of people that message as a joke, but anywhere from four of the recipients to all the recipients hit the road out of guilt over something or other.”

  Dani nodded her head, a little color returning to her face.

  “The picture message is from the Doyle story ‘The Dancing Men.’ It’s just code. I’d guess that the first message was code that they found out the email had been hacked. The second message is probably the new email address to send messages to. If you’re a code cracker, you can probably figure out the email.”

  Dani turned back to the phone and pondered it while Si finished his socca. “There aren’t enough letters in this image.” She shook her head sadly.

  “Let me see.”

  She passed me the phone. I’m not a code breaker, but I’ve put in my time studying languages—mostly dead ones. I counted backward from the end trying to see if I could tell what kind of account it was. My guess was Gmail, but there didn’t seem to be the right number of figures for even that.

  Dani was scratching ideas on the greasy parchment paper that held her barely touched food. “It’s not email.”

  “No?” I frowned at her notes.

  “Not enough letters. You see that too. Even if it was Gmail that only leaves one letter or symbol or whatever for the name part.”

  “But it could be a code within a code, like the one letter stands for a word only they know, or the figures are just the name part of the email.”

  “No, look again. It’s so simple once you realize what you’re looking at.”

  “Once you know what it is, it’s easy to know what it is?” Si ripped Dani’s socca in half and took a big bite.

  I looked at the figures. There were two words, but the longest only had seven letters. There was no way we had enough figures to decode it.

  “What shape is the last figure of the first word in?” Dani’s eyes sparkled.

  The last stick figure in the line was upright, arms out, legs together, like a cross. “Do you think it’s…a church? Maybe this is the name of the place they’re eloping to?”

  “Oh no, it’s about communication for sure. It’s not a cross, it’s a plus. And then, look, figures two and three, reading from the left to right, like normal, are exactly the same. And figures one and four are the same. Imagine for a moment that figures two and three are Os and figures one and four are Gs, combined with a plus.”

  “Google+?” Si asked, his mouth full.

  “But no one uses Google+.” I shook my head. Two young, headstrong lovers into Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t communicate with each other over something like Google+. I was sure.

  “It’s absolutely what it is. They’ve ditched the hacked email and made themselves a private circle on Google+. In the first word, the two-letter combo right before the plus is the same as the two-letter combo at the end of the second word. It’s the “le” from Google and circle. And the first and third letters of the second word are the same, so clearly the C. They’ve made a Google circle of two, which is basically unhackable.” She was flushed but frustrated. Happy to have solved the code so quickly, but obviously upset that her sister had bested her.

  Si smiled. “Nothing is unhackable.” He pulled out his own phone. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  I stood up. “You can hack it in the car. You’ll have all the time in the world.”

  Dani shoved her phone into her pocket and picked up her socc
a. “Good point. I don’t see any reason to think they’re down here, not with all their talk of anvils and stuff. If we head north right now, we’ll close the gap between us.”

  Si walked in silence, nose to his phone. I supposed I was lucky he had something to distract him from the surf. He was going along with our plan too easily for my taste. I kept a few paces behind them both. I couldn’t, at this point, trust either of them out of my sight.

  We were a mile from the hotel when my phone buzzed. “Where are you?” The text was from Stina. I didn’t want to respond, but I did.

  “Nice.”

  “Yes, I know. But WHERE?”

  “Promenade.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  I ignored that.

  “WHERE R U?”

  “Almost to Englenook Inn.”

  For some reason that shut her up, but it set me on edge. I had a feeling I shouldn’t have named the hotel.

  We got to the hotel and checked out, but I kept one eye out over my shoulder. I had a terrible feeling that I was about to be ambushed.

  Because I was.

  Stina was standing at the school Saab. A taxi—presumably hers—was just driving away. I could see her from the door of the hotel. I wanted to take a back door out, but that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I walked up to her like it was perfectly reasonable that we should both be there, and not in Sweden. I beeped the car doors open. I stuffed Dani and Si’s packs into the trunk.

  Stina put herself in the driver’s seat.

  I stared at her.

  Si and Dani got in the backseat.

  I stared at them.

  Why were they all acting like this was reasonable?

  Stina popped open the passenger door. “Get in.”

  I got in.

  “My brother Karl is waiting at the airport. He’ll take you back to the school. I will take care of the car and see you back in four days when the shoot is over.”

  “Are you really a model? That’s so cool.” Dani was acting like the school secretary was Heidi Klum or something.

  “Ja. Sure. I’ve been a model for a long time. But it’s slowing down now. I’m getting old.”

  “Cougar old?” Si asked.

  Stina laughed. “Nej, little boy. Just model old. Not much work and I get bored, so I work at the school.”

  “But why the school?” We were almost at the airport, but I had time to ask.

  “Because it is my school, ja? My farfar, oh, you know, grandfar, he founded it.”

  “I thought it was part of the system my uncle runs.”

  “Oh, ja, it’s one of those schools, but someone had to put up the money.”

  With that, she parked.

  She led us into the airport but seemed to change her mind. “Wait here a moment.” She held up one finger, her eyes scanning the walls, maybe for the flight schedule, but if we were taking a private plane, I didn’t know why.

  A laughing group of teenagers in matching warm-ups jostled into our space.

  “Watch out,” Dani snapped.

  “Who’s this, then?” One of the boys dropped his sunglasses down his nose and circled Dani. “You someone important?” Something about his accent made me think Jamaica, but fake.

  “Just watch it.” Dani seemed to back down a little.

  I spotted a police officer on a Segway across the room, coming toward us. “Calm down, Dani,” I whispered.

  She spun around. “I’m not upset!”

  Si laughed.

  The team had stopped paying attention to us.

  Stina came back. “Okay, good. I just had to check my flight; now come outside with me to the plane.”

  I glanced back at the officer, who was very close behind us now, but followed Stina outside. “What about the car?” I asked.

  “I will take care of it, don’t worry.”

  “But how?” Leaving the car behind was bugging me. I didn’t like it just sitting in Nice while all of us flew away, and I didn’t like being at the school without a ride.

  “Never mind,” she snapped. The stress of the moment was getting to her, it seemed.

  “Watch it!” Dani shouted.

  I grabbed for her jacket sleeve to stop her from shoving the tourist who had bumped her, but I was too late.

  “Pardon?” The tourist in question was a silver-haired American, by his accent. “What did I do?”

  “You were trying to steal my wallet!”

  The woman with the silver-haired man—I assumed his wife—looked at Dani with disgust. “My husband didn’t try and pick your pocket.”

  “She’s had a hard day,” I interjected.

  But then I saw someone in maroon cargo pants running as fast as possible through the parking lot. “No way!”

  “What?”

  “That’s the guy that stole Dani’s wallet this morning!”

  Si cut loose from me, though technically it wasn’t like he was handcuffed or anything, pushed his way through the doors, and chased the pickpocket down. Si was fast and tackled him, rolling him into a luggage cart corral.

  The policeman on the Segway and another on a bike buzzed after them.

  I sucked in a sharp breath. This wasn’t going to be good.

  Stina finally slowed down. She must have noticed that none of us had followed her. She held one perfect white hand over her eyes to see what was going on.

  Dani ran after Si and the cops.

  One officer had Si by the elbow, and, from what I could see, Dani was kicking the pickpocket.

  Only, of course, maroon pants aside, it wasn’t the same pickpocket, since this one had a ponytail that Dani had grabbed, and was also a girl.

  I tried to make myself run to save Dani from herself, but I couldn’t. It was like I was watching a show and no matter how hard I pushed myself, I could not get through the TV screen. By the time my impossibly slow feet finally brought me to the disaster, the policeman had dropped Si and was restraining Dani, arms behind her back.

  Stina sighed in aggravation. “You will take her to your office at the airport, ja?”

  “Oui.”

  “Fine. I will meet you there. These two have a plane to catch to Sweden.”

  “Le plus tot sera le mieux.” The officer laughed.

  The sooner the better? Nice. “She needs to catch a plane to Sweden, too,” I said.

  Stina shook her head, finger to her lips. “I will take care of all of that.”

  “I’m not leaving her with the French police.”

  “No, no, you’re leaving her with me. Let me take you to the plane, and then I will bring Dani to you. Don’t worry.”

  The officer was already hauling Dani off on his Segway.

  “Let us put Si on the plane first, ja? Dani is safe right now.”

  I doubted very much what she was saying, but the temptation to get Si on a plane back to school was so strong I gave in.

  We followed the officer and Dani most of the way, which helped. But then, at the private plane, where a huge Viking who answered to the name Karl was waiting for us in the cockpit, Stina marched Si and me on board alike. “Don’t worry about Dani. Deliver Si safely and leave her to me.”

  Si gave her a dark look.

  I turned and repeated the look for Stina’s benefit.

  She spoke to her Viking-like brother in Swedish, but all I understood for sure was that she was very thankful, and, no, that was it. Then she walked off the plane and across the tarmac. We were going to be flying to the school without the one person I actually wanted to bring back.

  Dani Honeywell 6

  The reason I kicked the girl with the maroon pants (and tried to drag her by the ponytail) was that I was really, really hungry. If I had had one actual meal, like a nice big plate of Thai salad rolls and peanut sauce, in the last two days, I would never have done it.

  I really missed being a vegetarian. It was hard at the school, where your choices for food were starch, starch, starch, and processed meat. It was everything my mom had ever said
school food would be like, as though the Bible school staff had carefully imported America’s worst food tradition ever to a land known for fish and fresh vegetables and stuff. Well, meatballs too. Sweden is known for meatballs, but that’s okay, because it’s their culture.

  At any rate, clearly after a few months of surviving on potatoes and gravy, my blood sugar was not where it was meant to be, and when someone jostled me from behind—and let me tell you, this was not a crowded airport, there was no reason to be jostling me unless you were trying to steal my passport—I had had it. And then I saw the maroon pants and just went for it.

  Si had already knocked her down, and had, in fact, saved my wallet. I just kicked her a few times. You might say that with the warning from the police still ringing in my ears, this was an especially bad move on my part, and you would be right. But, I was really hungry.

  And that’s exactly what I told the airport policeman in his office.

  He stared at me in disbelief.

  After about ten minutes of stony silence, Stina joined us. “Si and Isaac are headed to school. I’m leaving for Venezuela on the three-thirty flight.” She tossed me the car keys. “You can drive home. Very easy. Take the A1 to the E4. Very simple. Will only take you a day, maybe a little longer. Any questions, just call the school. Ask for Cadence. She travels the most and can help you.” Stina checked her watch. “I need to eat before I leave.”

  “We have a problem.” The officer looked at Stina. “Are you responsible for this girl?”

  “No, of course not.” Stina looked down her nose at the officer with a face that could only be called quelling.

  “You don’t take responsibility for her?”

  “Why would I do that? She’s an adult.”

  The officer held up his open palms. “You see, she has done an assault, and we have to hold her here.”

  Stina frowned. “For how long?”

  “Just until we decide if she will be charged or not. Will be only a couple of days at the most.”

  Stina nodded. She looked me up and down. I looked away. I neither wanted her responsible for me, or me locked up. I did want the car, though, so I followed their exchange closely, trying to figure out what angle I needed to take.