by Amy Gamet
“I know you’re attracted to me, Hank, and I’m attracted to you, too. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Now he was confused. He furrowed his brow. “Go ahead.”
“You want to have sex with me, but you don’t really care about me.”
Silence filled the room.
Julie let out a huff and moved to step around him.
His hand on her arm stopped her. “Wait.” His fingers trailed slowly down her arm. “I do care about you.” He stepped closer, his scent invading her senses. “Enough to get involved when every rule the Navy has, and every rule I have for myself, tells me not to.”
His words lulled her closer, tempting her with their promise. Her shaking fingers skimmed his chest, reaching higher until her hand curved around his broad shoulder. With the lightest pressure she pulled him to her, his mouth finding hers with unerring accuracy in the darkness.
She tasted like berries and spicy mint, and Hank leaned into her. He thought he could remain unaffected, aloof, enjoying her body and the pleasure she offered without involving his heart. She brought him to a place he had never been before, where bodies melded and feelings entwined, inseparable from one another. They met on a battlefield, a firestorm of emotional victory and defeat, where he fought for self preservation and was beaten down, rising stronger, more powerful, having opened his heart to love.
~~~
Julie hummed to herself as she poured a cup of coffee. She had woken up in Hank’s arms, the sunlight streaming in from the window, feeling content and happy. Carefully lifting his arm, she slipped out of bed and lowered the blinds so Hank could continue to sleep, then dressed and headed downstairs to see what the day held in store.
She had always been a morning person, enjoying the feeling of the entire day laid out before her. On the rare occasion she slept in, she usually felt sluggish and off her game. This morning, the house was deserted, and Julie didn’t know if Gwen and Marianne were still sleeping or if they were doing other things. Gwen had little respect for time in general, and could be found sleeping or awake when least expected, so Julie had learned not to assume anything.
An unopened box of chocolate-covered doughnuts beckoned her, and she thought about helping herself to one or two. She was starving, and wondered if a night of passionate lovemaking was to blame for her terrific appetite. Her manners wouldn’t allow her to open the doughnuts, so she rummaged through the cupboards until she found an already opened box of Lucky Charms.
She had loved that cereal since she was a little girl, though she only ever ate the marshmallows. Reaching for the box, a memory flashed through her mind.
Her mother was leaning over, a golden locket dangling from her neck to Julie’s young face. “It’s my good luck charm,” she said.
“Why is it good luck?”
“When I was fourteen, I fell in love with your father. He was eighteen, and my mother wouldn’t let me see him because he was so much older.”
“He enlisted in the Navy, and he asked my parents if he could send me letters. He didn’t want my mother to know what he was saying, so he wrote in code. Your father always loved codes,” she laughed, fingering the locket.
“He used numbers to stand for letters in the alphabet, then he made pictures around the outside of the paper with dots. The number of dots in each line stood for that letter of the alphabet.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Yes. My mother thought he was quite an artist, all those decorative lines around the page. Only I knew the truth. He hid his love for me in the designs on the page.”
Julie fingered the locket, for the first time noticing the dimpled dots that comprised its decoration. “Is this a code?” she asked, mesmerized.
“It is.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘Beautiful’.” Her mother smiled and Julie thought she was indeed the most beautiful woman in the world.
Frantic now, Julie put down the box of cereal and searched the room for a piece of paper. She saw a magnetic notepad on the refrigerator and hastily reached for it.
Down the left-hand side she wrote out the letters of the alphabet; next to them she numbered one through twenty-six. Across the bottom she wrote BEAUTIFUL, then she wrote the corresponding number below each letter. Some of them were two digits. In the end, she was staring at thirteen individual numbers.
“Oh, my God, Oh, my God, Oh, my God,” she whispered to herself, staring at what she knew was the key to deciphering the code from the safe deposit box. She needed to tell Hank. She turned to head for the bedroom when a cell phone on the counter in front of her began to vibrate. She glanced at the screen.
ADMIRAL BARSTOW
Time stood still. Julie was paralyzed, betrayal surrounding her like a thick smoke. The phone continued to vibrate as panic rose up like bile. Barstow was calling Hank, and there could only be one reason for that.
He really was an errand boy for the devil.
Chapter 8
The women stopped at a Walmart for supplies and cash, taking out as much money as the ATM would allow and gathering the materials Julie needed to create the cipher wheel. Then they headed south in Hank’s SUV.
Julie was sitting in the passenger seat, which was now parked an hour and a half away from Marianne’s at the Albany airport. In her lap were twelve slices of a paper towel roll, each neatly marked into twenty-seven equal sections. The thirteenth was in her hand, along with the ruler and a pen. It was careful work, but she was nearly done.
A light green minivan pulled into the next parking spot over, and Gwen hopped out of its driver’s side door. Julie finished the last of her measuring and climbed out to join her.
“I thought a minivan was more practical, in case we needed somewhere to sleep.”
“Good call.”
The women worked to move their belongings and supplies to the new vehicle, Gwen once again taking her place at the wheel. She turned around in her seat to back out cautiously, then headed toward the interstate.
“Julie, I had to give them a credit card and a driver’s license,” she said.
“Crap.”
“I know. But they wouldn’t give me the van without it, and they wouldn’t take the prepaid credit card. My license says Trueblood, but I had a MasterCard in the name of Gwen Beaumont, and she let me use that one when I pretended I had just gotten married and it was all I had.”
“Wait, you took David’s name?”
“I tried it on for size. I went back to Trueblood after a month or two.” Gwen took a last sip of her soda, the straw taking in air with a loud slurp.
“Maybe the different name will be enough to throw them off.” Julie said hopefully, though her voice sounded false to her own ears.
No use crying over spilled milk.
Julie inserted the battery into the disposable cell phone she picked up at Walmart and held the power key, its display coming to life. She hit the internet browser button and immediately looked up the Leopold Cipher.
“Are you almost done?”
“Close.”
Each of the thirteen numbered rings would be labeled with all the letters of the alphabet on it and one blank, each in a different order. This is what she needed to look up, and she meticulously copied them from the internet site to the rings she had created. The key—the thirteen numbers she gleaned from “beautiful”—would tell her the order of the rings themselves.
“Nothing to it, but to do it,” she said to herself. With shaking hands, she grabbed another roll of paper towels and slid the towels off it, then used the scissors to slice the cardboard open with one long cut.
“What’s that for?” asked Gwen.
“I need a dowel to put the rings on. It has to be a little smaller in diameter than they are.” She cut a long piece of duct tape and put the roll back together, with a sliver of itself tucked inside the roll.
“This is so exciting!”
Julie smiled at her aunt’s enjoyment, her own stomach in knots. D
igging in her pocket, she found the paper where she had written the cipher key and began to place the rings onto the long roll in the correct order.
“Now what?” asked Gwen.
“Now I turn the wheels to spell out the first thirteen letters of the coded message.” Julie skipped over the first line, knowing that had only been a reference for her to know to use the Leopold cipher.
“You put the gibberish in?”
“Yes.”
“How do you get the message out?”
Julie finished lining up the first thirteen letters of text, using a piece of tape to hold them in position. “You roll it around until you find the line that makes sense.” As she spoke, she opened her palm and let the cipher wheel roll slowly down her fingers. Her eyes scanned line after line of gibberish before the words suddenly jumped out at her.
I AM NOT DEAD
She jerked her hand back as if she’d been burned, and the cipher roll fell to the floor of the van.
“Holy shit!” Julie snapped.
“What?”
“‘I am not dead’! It says, ‘I am not dead’!”
“Holy shit,” said Gwen.
“My father is alive!”
~~~
Hank didn’t know she was gone until lunchtime.
Since Julie put the blinds down, he slept until almost eleven. When he couldn’t find her, he looked for the dogs and figured the women had taken them for a walk.
He sat alone at the kitchen table, sunlight streaming in the windows and a hot cup of coffee in front of him, planning his future with Julie Trueblood. It would be touchy, given her involvement in this case, but he had no intention of letting her go. Hank knew a good thing when it stared him in the face, and that woman was as good as it got.
He was in up to his knees emotionally. It wasn’t just physical. Hell, they had rocked the physical world off its axis last night, but that alone wouldn’t have him sitting here thinking about their future. His mind was telling him this might be the one he had waited his whole life for, and Hank was wise enough to embrace that possibility and not let it get away from him, no matter who their relationship might upset.
Barstow’s going to shit his pants.
Hank smiled at the thought as he lifted his cereal bowl to drain the remaining milk. Still, he wanted to minimize the negative consequences that dating Julie could have on his career, and that was going to take some doing.
Marianne walked in, carrying several grocery bags. “Morning.”
“Hey, Ma. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas. I thought you were out.”
“Why?”
“Because your truck’s not here.”
Hank’s brows snapped together, then he stood up and peered out the window.
“I do know what your truck looks like,” said his mother sarcastically.
“Yeah. I know.” He sat back down at the table and shrugged. “Julie must have taken it.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I just got up a few minutes ago. I thought she and Gwen took the dogs for a walk.”
“In the truck?”
That was odd. There must be a good explanation for why the two of them, the dogs and the truck were all missing. “Did they leave a note?” He hadn’t really looked for one. A sick feeling settled in the hollow of his stomach as Marianne scanned the counter tops, shaking her head.
“The pad is out, but no note.”
She wouldn’t just leave.
As if to prove it to himself, Hank walked to the pantry and looked inside, his eyes resting where the dogs’ food had been since the women arrived.
It was gone.
Hank stared at the spot longer than necessary.
Julie was gone.
But why? It didn’t make sense. He was working to keep them safe. What had changed to make them want to leave?
The only thing that had changed was a night of incredible sex. Was she running away from a relationship with him? Julie had not seemed upset by them taking things to the next level. On the contrary, she seemed as moved by what they had shared as he was.
Then what? What could possibly make them take off in his SUV like that?
An image of Julie flashed in his mind. “Are you sure we’re safe here?”
Panic slammed into Hank and set him reeling, his eyes darting to doors and windows, locks and unbroken panes.
“Was anything out of the ordinary this morning?” he asked his mother.
“No, not that I noticed. Why?”
Hank’s cell phone rang and he glanced at the caller ID. ADMIRAL BARSTOW was displayed across the screen in big blue letters. He could see Julie standing where he stood, seeing what he was seeing.
“Son of a bitch!” Hank smacked his hand down violently on the counter. “She saw my phone. Son of a bitch!” he screamed, pounding his fists as the phone continued to ring.
Marianne turned from her groceries and stared at her son.
“Jared,” he nearly shouted into the receiver.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling all morning,” said Barstow.
Any doubts about Julie’s departure vanished in an instant. Julie and Gwen were running for their lives.
Running for their lives, from me.
“It’s Christmas Day, sir,” Hank bit off the words, barely restraining his frustration with the older man.
“What goddamn difference does that make?” he barked. “You work for me, Jared. Not forty hours. All the fucking time. Do I make myself clear?”
Hank fought against the desperate need to verbally rip apart his superior officer. He concentrated on breathing in and out, feeling the air fill his lungs, and heard himself say, “Of course, sir.”
“Where are you on the McDowell case?”
“Julie’s still working on the cipher.”
“You’re sure she would tell you if she solved it?”
Not anymore.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do what you have to in order to earn her trust.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean,” Barstow chuckled, a dirty throaty noise that disgusted Hank, “she’s a beautiful woman, Jared. She just lost her father and she’s vulnerable. Do what you need to do to ingratiate yourself with her.”
Hank felt nauseous and angry, self-loathing warring with indignation in his blood.
That’s what Julie thinks I did. She thinks I betrayed her.
Barely trusting himself to speak, Hank didn’t respond at all. In his mind, his fist connected with Barstow’s face. It was all he could do to remain silent.
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“What the hell are you doing at the Albany airport?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t play with me, son. Now, I’d like to know,” he drawled out, “why you’re touring the goddamned Northeast without updating me on this fucking case. I shouldn’t have to call you to find out your fucking flight itinerary. Do you understand me, Jared?”
Realization dawned clear. “You have a GPS on my car.”
“Of course I do.” The admiral snickered. “And you’d better start explaining.”
~~~
“I remember her,” said the young man at the rental car counter. He had a swatch of dyed blonde hair amidst masses of brunette curls. “Did she do something wrong?” He held his hand to his chest, wide-eyed.
Hank had been showing Julie and Gwen’s pictures around to ticket agents and car rental employees for nearly an hour. It had taken thirty-five minutes to have their pictures sent from DMV in the first place.
“When was she here?”
“Just before lunch. Let me pull up the transaction.” He typed efficiently into his computer. “Eleven twenty-two. She rented a light green Honda Odyssey. What did she do?”
“I’ll need the license plate number.”
“Of course.” He leaned over the counter and whispered, “Was it a robbery? There was a bank robbery rig
ht down the street last week.”
“No.” Hank looked at his watch, which read 3:34. They had more than a four hour jump on him. At least they were driving, not halfway to Mexico on an airplane.
“It has Illinois plates, number F73 8M1. I’ll write that down for you.” He grabbed a purple sticky note and looked at Hank from under his lashes. “Did she skip bail? I won’t tell anyone.”
“I can’t discuss the details. Thanks for your help.”
He straightened and handed Hank the paper. “Is there anything else I can do for you today, sir?”
“No, that’s all.”
He pulled back the note before Hank could grab it. “Airport security has surveillance footage, if that would be helpful.”
“Really?”
The clerk nodded, allowing him to take the paper, then leaned over again and whispered dramatically, “Was it a murder?”
~~~
The airport security office was small and outfitted with a limited supply of dated equipment. Hank sat in the darkened room as a white-haired man in a blue uniform shirt held down a fast forward button on what looked like an old VCR.
“There’s one more feed from the south parking lot,” he said.
Julie must have parked in the quadrant of the parking garage not covered by the first three tapes Hank watched. He rubbed his forehead against the throb that was beginning to take over.
Just when he was convinced that this tape was yet another dead end, he saw his SUV pull right in front of the camera. “That’s it,” he told the security officer. “That’s the truck.”
The officer rewound the tape and began again, when the truck first entered the camera’s field of view. Hank could clearly see Gwen driving, and as she pulled in, Julie sitting in the passenger seat. What were those things in her lap?
He watched as Gwen got out of the truck, presumably to go rent the minivan. Julie remained behind, working on something.
“Can we zoom in and see what she’s doing?”
The other man pressed buttons on the archaic machine, and the image on the screen became cropped and grainy. “Is that better?”
“No.”
The security officer laughed. “It’s not like you see in the movies, is it?”
Hank thought of all the high tech security equipment he was used to dealing with, but kept that to himself. “No, it’s not.” He watched on screen as Julie wrote something, unable to see exactly what she was doing. Ten minutes later, Gwen returned with the van.
