Wordless (Pink Sofa Secrets Book 1)

by Mel Sterling

  He was grinning.

  Jack wasn't.

  Jack had observed where her gaze had been, and some of that strange sadness she'd glimpsed in him before was there in his eyes. He was holding a stack of books in both hands. Lexie took them gently.

  "That's a fine piece of equipment you have there, Gard," she said. "How about you come behind Jack or me, and alphabetize the shelves as we go."

  Gard nudged Jack with a hard elbow. Lexie saw Jack brace himself against the shove. "Ya hear that, JT? She likes my equipment."

  Jack's snorted retort of "In your dreams, soldier," was both a beat too late and a shade too serious in tone for success as a joke. Lexie peeped at him sidelong, speculating, as she turned with the stack of books and headed for a bookcase in the Science aisle. There was something buried deep between Jack and Gard, something that had to do with the war. She couldn't dwell on it now, though. She had the bookstore to put back together, and a lot more thinking to do about Gilly and the crimes that had been centered here.

  Whatever was going on, Lexie knew it wasn't foolproof. If it were, the postal police and the FBI wouldn't have been in her store yesterday. Somewhere along the line the system had broken, and that break led the FBI to the bookstore.

  While she examined each book in her arms, first for damage and then for its proper section, she found herself thinking out loud to Jack, who was working nearby. "I can't wrap my head around this. Who would target a bookstore? Why run the risk that someone else would buy a book that's been tampered with, before it could be bought online and mailed?"

  "It's got to be to deflect suspicion from the person who's doing it. They think it's untraceable, going through you."

  "But…doesn't it have to be someone who comes in, chooses the book, maybe steals it and takes it home, puts the data card somewhere inside it, then somehow puts it back so that it can be bought? That takes a lot of coordination."

  Lexie heard the soft thumps as Gard sorted books on a shelf. His Georgia drawl was smooth as butter. "That's just it. Crooks are dumb, pardon my opinion. If they spent the same amount of effort at a legit job as they do being crooks, they'd get somewhere in this world."

  Jack snorted. "Oh, I got the feeling from the Feds yesterday that this is big. Like millions, maybe billions big. The crooks are getting somewhere, believe me. The bookstore's just a cover. They could do this any of a hundred ways, dead drops in a park at midnight, for example. This setup's ideal for a lot of reasons. First of all, there are no cameras in here."

  "I've got an alarm system—"

  "Sure, but you're not filming. Whoever's choosing the books has time and leisure to examine them, pick one that's perfect for shipping the chips inside. Bookstores encourage browsing."

  "But—they could buy the books, modify them and mail them themselves—"

  Jack shook his head, as did Gard, a few feet away. "It's better to adulterate the book, then have the bookstore sell and ship. That way it's your fingerprints on the book and the packaging, your return address on the box. Your credit card info tied to the shipping transaction."

  Lexie felt her breath catch in her throat. There seemed to be no air to breathe. No matter how she looked at this, Uncle Horace's store, not to mention herself and Ben, were the perfect patsies. They were the ones who would take the fall, not the real criminals. She grabbed for the shelf to steady herself, and instantly Jack was there, a hand cupped at her elbow.

  "We're not going to let anything happen to you, Alexia," he said.

  "No, ma'am," echoed Gard.

  Her head snapped toward the muscular Marine. "You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't get involved. There's no need for you to put yourself at risk, you hardly know me—"

  Gard crossed his arms, lifted his chin and spraddled his legs with a decisive clack of his artificial leg on the hard floor. She'd never seen someone look so immovable, obdurate and completely at ease, all at the same time. The stance emphasized the strength of his arms, the long, bulky muscles of his thighs. She could easily envision him directing a platoon of men and inspiring confidence. Gard was a man other men followed. A vision of the old G.I. Joe toys flashed through her mind, and she almost smiled, even through her own churning anxiety.

  "Yes, sir!" she snapped out, straightening and standing as tall as she could.

  Jack laughed. At first it was just a snort, but then his grin widened and he started whooping and slapping his leg.

  "Smile when you say that, soldier," Gard rapped, turning back to his shelf with a grin that tightened his full lips.

  She looked from one man to the other and realized she'd reacted exactly as the two of them had intended. They'd derailed her from the awful track of dread and fear, broken that cycle so she could focus again. It was a very odd feeling to find herself tumbling along in the wake of their easy teamwork, to find herself steadied and comforted by their simple assured presences. Jack gazed into her eyes, the laughter ebbing, but leaving the good humor brimming in his own eyes. Then he bent and kissed her slowly, sweetly, exactly as if there was not another soul in the room, or a looming catastrophe waiting to drown them in its immensity.

  When he lifted his head, Lexie, shaken all the way to her curling toes, murmured, "I thought I told you not to do that."

  Jack wore an unrepentant smile. "I was never very good at taking orders. Just ask Gard."

  They'd been shelving and sorting for nearly an hour when Ben emerged from the back room. All three of them stopped working and turned.

  The young man looked haggard, mouth drawn, cheeks sunken. He pinched the sheets of paper in his hand between thumb and forefinger as if he didn't want to touch them. Jack watched Lexie take in Ben's demeanor in a single glance and draw a deep breath.

  "It might be bad," Ben said. "Really bad."

  "What does that mean?" Lexie's voice was almost a squeak.

  Ben brought the papers to Jack's usual table and separated them into two piles. He laid a single sheet of paper on top, covered with handwriting. Jack, Lexie and Gard ringed the table to see.

  Ben touched the first pile, fingers tented. "These are all the books that were sold to the same customer, Barczak. A few of them go to the same mailing address, but for the most part, different addresses. All over the country. The guy's bought a lot from us over the past eight months."

  "Eight months?" Lexie reached for the pile and riffled quickly through them.

  "Horace was right," Jack breathed. "This next pile?"

  "Those are books going to a different customer. Same time period as these to Barczak."

  "What made you pick them out of all the sales?"

  "The titles match the ones sold to Barczak. Within two weeks of the Barczak sale, another one goes out." Ben turned to Lexie. "You know how sometimes things sell in clusters here at the store. We can go weeks without a Stephen King book selling, then one week eight of them go. Who knows why? But it happens, even in our online sales sometimes. I just pulled these invoices because they were the same titles Barczak bought."

  Lexie shook her head. "That doesn't make sense."

  Jack looked at her, standing across the small table from him, between Ben and Gard. He would have preferred to be next to her himself so he could put a steadying hand at the back of her waist in case she needed him, but perhaps what she needed more right now was to be Alexia Worth, businesswoman with a mission. Gard was watching him, face inscrutable and calm. What are you thinking, Gard? he wondered. Gard's face was almost as blank as when the man wore his desert sunglasses and sat riding shotgun, scanning out across the scrub and irrigation canals of Iraq.

  Ben shrugged. "Something told me to pull them. Look at them."

  Jack fanned them over the table.

  They were all addressed to John Howard of Reno, Nevada.

  "Tell me that's not a pattern," Ben said.

  They all exchanged glances, but no one said anything. Jack's mouth tightened. Red herring? Someone getting the news a little too late? Multiple copies of the book adulterated?
>
  "What about this list?" Gard touched the handwritten sheet.

  Ben's cheeks sucked in as if he were biting their insides.

  Lexie spoke for him. "That's the list of books Ben remembers Gilly borrowing from the store. I asked him to write them down before he researched the files."

  Jack glanced over Ben's neat printing. Even without a close examination, he could see there was a high correlation between the books on Ben's list and the stacks of sales. No wonder Ben looked like hell. The young man was crushing hard on the barista next door. Even Jack felt a definite sinking in his gut. He wanted this all to be wrong as badly as Ben must, though for different reasons.

  "It's not Gilly," Ben said. "I know it's not."

  "It looks bad, man," Jack said.

  "Someone's using her." Ben's tone was stubborn.

  "Okay, but who?" Lexie's fingers shook a little as she began checking Ben's list against the pile of Barczak sales. "I've been thinking about the people I know of who are our regulars, the folks who browse the shelves for a long time. Nobody seems…I don't know, criminal? Is that the word I mean? They just seem like customers. People we know. I'd hate to think there's someone who's been in here, choosing books that are perfect for smuggling their chips in, and somehow getting Gilly to—" She shook her head. "I'm trying to make sense of this."

  Gard picked up the stack of sales to John Howard and paged slowly through them. "These are all hardcovers, is that right?"

  Ben nodded, patently eager to have something other than Gilly to focus on. "All of them. They were titles we had multiple copies of the same edition."

  "Rare books?" Jack asked, remembering Horace's concern.

  "Some, but not all. We don't often have multiple copies of the same edition of a rare book."

  Gard mused, "Hardcovers have room down the spines, or you could peel up that paper inside the cover and put something underneath it."

  "That's called the pastedown on the boards." Ben selected a hardcover from a shelf within reach. "If what you're mailing is small, a lot of stuff could fit down the spine." He slipped a finger between binding and spine. "I suppose you could lift the pastedown, if you were careful, put something underneath it, maybe hollow out the board a little, make some room. Then glue it back down. Some of the more beat-up books would make that easy, like where the hinges at the spine are weak and pulling apart or cracking."

  Lexie and Jack looked at each other, and he knew what she was thinking. That was why every hardcover had been checked, front, back, and spine, on the scanning table the Feds had wheeled in. Searching for something secreted in the boards. They'd been less careful with the paperbacks, scanning whole stacks at a time, focusing on the spines.

  Ben took the pages from Lexie. "The latest sale—this Vonnegut right here—we haven't had time for the follow-up sale to happen yet. Mr. Howard hasn't placed his order, although I haven't checked the sales system yet today. Maybe he has."

  "I'll go take it out of inventory right now. I was too shaken up to think straight yesterday, and we didn't know then about the double sales." She turned for the cash register desk.

  Gard put out a hand to stop her. "Leave it. The more data, the better."

  "Shouldn't we stop them? Him? Whoever?"

  Jack finished Gard's train of thought as easily as if they were still riding in that too-familiar doomed Humvee. "Now we know the trend, we can tell the Feds. They can put a watch on things, maybe catch the guy this way." A sudden thought struck him, and he interrupted himself excitedly. "Hey, do you have this guy Howard's credit card info on file?"

  Lexie and Ben shook their heads at the same time. Lexie was the one to answer. "We use a processing service, so we never see the customer's payment data. The processors might, though."

  "It's a lead. We'll tell the FBI. I bet they can get something from that, and they'll be pleased you were the one who gave it to them. Looks good for you."

  Lexie snorted. "Now you sound like I'll need to plea bargain! Show I cooperated—"

  "That's not what Jack's saying, Lexie." There was Gard, coming to the defense of a man under his command again. "It's just better if you look as innocent and eager to help as you really are."

  For a moment Jack resented Gard for assuming the leadership role, but then he caught Gard sliding him a glance, as if looking for validation. Seeking Jack's approval. Letting Jack know that although Gard was in the habit of making decisions and giving orders, in this situation he was working to support Jack's choices and viewpoints. This time, Gard knew he didn't have all the intel he needed to guide his troops. Jack did.

  Over Lexie's bent head, Jack gave Gard a small nod. Lexie was prickly enough right now. If she felt Jack and Gard were manipulating her in some way, or wresting control from her, she'd blow them both sky-high with her blue-eyed fury. While Jack enjoyed provoking responses from her, now wasn't the time for those kinds of games.

  Ben was still paging through the stack of orders, a scowl on his face. "Why the second sale? That's the part I don't get."

  Gard shrugged. "Simple. They're using a book cipher. So you need two copies of the same book."

  "Exactly the same book?" Lexie turned, putting a hand to her mouth.

  "Yep."

  "Why?" Ben asked.

  "They're the key to the code. Somewhere in the data is a reference that lets each person decrypt some information. Maybe it's a password to unlock a file, maybe it's a series of letter or number substitutions, and you need a certain page of a certain book to break the code."

  Jack said, admiringly, "For an ugly jarhead, you're pretty damn smart."

  "Smile when you say that, soldier," Gard shot back.

  Lexie's eyes rounded, and she looked at each of them in turn. "That's why they're onto us. Onto the crooks, I mean. The Feds. Oh, I don't know how to say it. But that package that got taken from my house? I think I must have mailed the wrong edition for the first order. It was the same title, but a different edition."

  "Different how?" Jack demanded.

  "We were out of that particular title, so I…substituted with another edition. Same book, as far as the text, but for sure the pages would be different. No match. I was hoping it wouldn't matter to the customer. I sent a nicer copy. I didn't want the store to lose a sale, so I…cheated, a little, I guess. Maybe that book didn't have the stuff in it, so when the twin order came in, somebody got the word to pull the plug. So they broke into my house."

  "You screwed up the crooks!" Ben crowed. "Boy, I bet they're pissed at us—"

  Jack watched Ben realize what he'd said, and what it could mean to them, particularly the two who worked in the store.

  "Yep," Gard said again.

  Lexie put her arms around herself, hugging tight. Jack felt a cold knife in his heart.

  She was frightened.

  Jack didn't like that at all. He would do anything, anything, to wipe the fear from her face.

  "We'd…uh, better get Gilly in here," Ben said. "I mean, if there's danger now, shouldn't we let her know? In case he's right?" Ben's chin indicated Gard, who was drawing small, tight circles on the floor with the tip of his prosthesis. "We don't want the bad guys surprising her like they surprised Lexie."

  Jack shook his head. "Can't talk to her about this."

  "Why not?" Ben demanded. "She's not guilty. They're using her."

  "But if she is guilty, she'll tip off her connection, and we don't know what will happen next. Maybe nothing."

  "But maybe plenty," Gard said, darkly.

  Ben clutched at the top of his head with both hands, as if to keep his churning thoughts and emotions inside. "You can't put her in danger like that, man."

  Jack took hold of Ben's arm. "I'm not going to let you put Lexie—or yourself, for that matter—in more danger than you already are. Listen to me, Ben. Give us time to take this to the Feds. If Gilly's guilty, the people running the show already know about her. If she's not guilty, taking this to her now could just put her in harm's way. I don't see a way ar
ound it. We have to let the Feds handle it."

  "She's not involved! I know her! She would never put someone else at risk! Just because she's outspoken and liberal and has funky hair and body art doesn't make her a criminal!" He waved his arms towards the connecting door of The Cup.

  "I get it, Ben, you don't want to see her hurt. Neither do we. But it sure looks like she's involved, given the high correlation of her reading list and the sales."

  Ben's fists clenched. His jaw tightened. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Gard coming to full alertness, ready for anything. Jack had to defuse the situation. The last thing he wanted was Gard unleashing full Marine mode on Ben, or Lexie getting in the middle of things.

  "You don't get it," Ben said, through clenched teeth. "You really don't get it. You don't know what it means to have the way you look decide how everybody thinks about you, without even knowing you. I'm black, so I must belong to a gang. Gilly looks like a cross between something out of The Cat in the Hat and the seamy side of a Ray Bradbury book, so she's either a dope addict or a crook."

  Jack held up his hands. "Just…breathe, please. How about this? If the Feds haven't done something about her by tomorrow, after we've called them, we'll talk to Gilly. Warn her."

  Ben shook his head. "I'm not making any promises. This isn't right." He looked at Lexie. "You know it isn't right."

  He moved to the desk, grabbed his bookbag, and jerked the strap over his head. His anger and frustration were clear in his eyes. "I can't be here right now. I hope you understand."

  She nodded, tightening her arms around herself. "I understand. Ben, be careful out there."

  "Watch your six o'clock, buddy," Gard said. "Try not to be by yourself anywhere."

  The door banged behind Ben.