“What is it?” Maude asked him.
“Come here.”
Maude stood up quickly, sat her bag in the chair, and then hurried over to him. She sat beside him. “What is it? You see something?”
“It makes no sense that she would give you this list of names when she had to know they wouldn’t help her. Don’t you agree?” he asked her as he looked at her. When he saw her so close to him, and he saw that sweet innocence in her eyes, and that beautiful mouth, and that gorgeous smooth skin, he had an urge to kiss her. Or to wrap her in his arms. Or both. Which baffled him. Why did he continue to have such a strong reaction to her?
But when Maude looked into his eyes, she could only see a man staring so intensely into her eyes that she wondered what he was seeing that held his attention so distinctly. And his eyes were tired. She could see some redness there. But they were also blue like the ocean. Just gorgeous.
So gorgeous that she suddenly remembered. “Wait a minute,” she said out loud. “I remember you. We met four years ago, at my publisher’s party. At Natasha’s meet and greet.”
Edmund was so close to her mouth that he couldn’t but stare at it. “At last she remembers,” he said.
“You were Natasha’s brother back then?”
He smiled. “I would have thought so.”
“No I mean, I thought you might have been her boyfriend. Or her husband.”
He frowned. “What on earth gave you that idea?”
She really couldn’t say what. “I don’t know. But that’s what I thought.”
Is that why you turned me down, he wanted to ask her. But didn’t.
They both looked away from each other and back at the list. “I thought there might be some code inside that list,” said Maude, “like the first letters spelling out a word, or something like that. But I didn’t see anything.”
Edmund leaned back, still staring at the list. “Not the first letter,” he said, “but surely the third one.”
Maude, shocked that he saw something, snatched the list from him and looked herself. He stared at her smooth dark neck. At her thick, soft hair. At her small, unblemished arms coming down from her satin, coffee-colored sleeveless blouse.
And that was when Maude saw it too. “I see where the third letter of the first nine names spells out SAFE DEPOS. You think she meant safe deposit box?”
“I think so. Look at the numbers.”
Maude looked. She was shocked again. “Wait a minute,” she said. “The last five numbers aren’t in sequential order.”
“Right.”
“Instead of being 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, they’re 8,4,7,6 and then 10.” She looked at Edmund. “That must be her safe deposit box number.”
“Right. At least those four out of order numbers might be.”
“Which might be where the information is stored. She had to find somebody she could trust to get this list to you. She had to know you were smart enough to figure it out.”
“Or perhaps she figured you were,” Edmund said.
Maude smiled. She appreciated the compliment. Then she shook her head. “Wow. She knew what she was doing.”
“Yes she did.”
Maude smiled. It was a lovely smile, he thought.
But then her smile turned into a disappointed look.
He saw the look. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“People on my job say I’m not a great journalist because I spend too much time trying to get the story right rather than trying to get the story out. And here was the clue right under my nose and I didn’t even see it. You aren’t even an investigative journalist, but you saw it right away.”
