Page 67 of Nixon’s Promise

My back shot up straight and I yanked my hand from his.

“You try that, Nixon, and I’m never baking you chocolate chip cookies again.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.” He laughed.

It really sucked he looked so damn hot laughing. It took the wind out of my snit. I appreciated the offer, but who did he think he was telling me I catch shit if I went to town and got my damn animals’ food?

“Whatever. Just write down what you guys want for lunch.” I glanced around the room and was met with five smiling faces. Damn.

Shit.

“I totally understand,” Jameson weirdly said. “Goddamn. Sweetheart, you can bake me chocolate chip cookies anytime you want.”

“Not a chance, asshole,” Nixon growled.

I smiled at him with raised brows. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, poking the already pissed-off bear, but when the room erupted in laughter, it was worth it.

Nixon snatched a scrap of paper off the kitchen counter and my eyes fell to a handwritten coded message scrolled on a piece of unlined white paper.

I scanned the document and immediately recognized a sequence of characters. The longer I skimmed the cryptograph the more I understood how the author had coded.

“Shit,” I mumbled and looked away from the message I had no business reading.

I glanced at Nix, then Alec, and both of their expressions confirmed I shouldn’t have seen what I saw.

“Sorry. Shit. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t being nosy, I just looked down.” I shook my head and stepped away from the counter, muttering more apologies.

“Can you read that?” Alec asked and moved toward me.

Oh, no. He looked angry, really angry.

My hands came up in a defensive gesture, warding him off. I answered honestly. “Some of it. I didn’t know what it was. I just glanced at it. Swear I won’t tell anyone what I saw. You don’t have to worry.”

Great, now I was rambling. But it wasn’t every day I read someone threatening to blow up Carpenter’s Hall.

“What does it say?” Alec asked, still sounding irritated. But some of his anger had subsided.

Holden and Nixon neared, both staring at me with curiosity.

“What?” I asked, confused.

Was this a test? Did Alec want to know how much I had read? I looked to Nixon for guidance, and with a tight smile he nodded his encouragement.

“Um. Well,” I started. “It—”

“McKenna, you’re not in trouble. No one’s been able to break the code,” Alec told me. “I just want to know what it says. But more than that, I want to know how within seconds of looking you were able to crack the code.”

“It took me a little longer than seconds,” I stupidly argued.

“I was watching you, McKenna. I also counted, your eyes widened and your back went straight within five seconds of you looking down,” Alec continued.

“Well, I recognized the code immediately. I use something similar when I’m coding a program—”

“You cracked it, but a computer and crypto at the DHS couldn’t?” Holden asked with a healthy dose of skepticism.

“The computer doesn’t surprise me, that’s why I use part of this code. It’s almost like it’s too easy. The computer is running trillions of possibilities trying to find the cipher, when all it takes is one character being off and the program moves on, not realizing the symbol or letter was meaningless. And the analyst often times looks for mountains when they should be looking for bumps.” I looked down at the message and continued. “At first glance, I’d say this message is using three different types of code. The easiest to make out is the transposition. The computer overlooked the code because the author placed irrelevant characters in the rearranged letters.”

Jameson, Weston, and Chasin had all gathered around and were staring at the paper.