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Lily swallowed, unable to turn away, drowning in watery, sloshing feelings she couldn’t repress. She did know how alive he felt.
“So, are you willing to let me figure out a scenario that works for us, to try?”
“To try,” she repeated slowly. “You mean, to try being together?”
He nodded, humming. “I’m just asking for permission to come up with some ideas to run past you.” He winked playfully. “You can opt out at any time.”
This made her smile. “Well, those terms are pretty hard to refuse.”
“Good.” Leo leaned forward, carefully pressing his bruised mouth to her cheek. “I have faith that we can do this. I love you. You don’t have to say it back. But I do. I love you.”
She stared at his perfect hands and his battered face and his eyes that seemed to see straight through her. It would be a lie to hold it in: “I love you, too.”
His eyes softened and he spoke quietly. “That is great news.”
Finally, she looked down, not sure how to tell him this next part. “They found Terry’s body.”
Leo went still. “I’m glad.”
“I don’t think there’s a problem there. For us, I mean.” She shifted in her chair, reaching forward to fidget with the corner of his hospital sheet. “But Bradley…” She met his eyes again, and her heart twisted at the pain there. “He’s in a lot of trouble.”
Blinking away, Leo fixed his gaze on the beeping monitor. “I’d imagine.”
She bent down, resting her lips on his uninjured temple. “It’ll take some time to get over that one,” she said quietly. “The treasure hunt was a bust, but maybe we get out of town for a little while. Just the two of us.”
At this, he seemed to remember something. “Can you hand me my jacket?”
She looked on the table beside his bed, where his jacket and shirt were neatly folded. Extracting the coat from the pile, she handed it to him and watched as he casually peeled the monitors from his skin. She’d been around his body for over a week; she didn’t know why the view of his torso in a hospital bed was suddenly sending her into wavy, heated territory.
Leo dug into one pocket, frowning when his hand came out empty, then dug into the other. He released a little “Ah,” and handed her a familiar scrap of sepia paper. “Read this.”
She took it, already knowing what it was. “Why are we doing this again?” she asked, worried his head wound was worse than she thought.
“Tell me what you see,” he said, recalling her words from yesterday on the ledge, dissecting the photo of her father. She looked down.
7611179107651167211110969
“Numbers,” she told him blankly.
“Read them.” She glanced at him incredulously, but he only nodded to the paper in her hand. “Humor me. Please.”
So, she recited the numbers: “Seven, six, one, one, one, seven, nine, one, zero, seven, six, five, one, one— Jesus, Leo, how did you get anything out of this?”
“Just finish,” he said quietly.
She looked back down. “Six, seven, two, one, one, one, one, zero, nine, six, nine.” She counted them. “Twenty-five numbers. No spaces.”
“Duke had no way of knowing I’d find this, but you’re lucky I did.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“Because it’s a computer code.”
“Wait. Duke used a computer code?”
“It appears he did. At least a little. It’s old. We use Unicode now, mostly, but ASCII was used for order-entry computer systems for years. Your dad might have been an old, traditional dog, but he was crafty enough to use every kind of code he could find. He might have even anticipated that ASCII would be obsolete one day, if it wasn’t already—making it even harder to solve.” He frowned. “I don’t actually know when he would have hidden this in the cave.”
“So,” she said, trying to follow, “it’s an old computer code that translates to ‘Beat ya here’? Because that is absolutely something my dad would have said.”
Leo nodded. “In ASCII, there are numbers corresponding to capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, symbols. The fact that there weren’t spaces between the string of numbers made it hard at first to know what I was looking at,” he explained. “I mean, it could have been anything—even a code he made up himself. But because I’m used to seeing numbers grouped for code, I first looked at them in doublets.” He pointed to the paper. “The fact that there was an odd number told me that maybe he mixed capital letters with lowercase to make it more complex—capital letters are two digits; lowercase are mostly three.”
She was lost. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s okay. The only thing you need to understand is that most people also probably don’t read ASCII, so in many ways it was perfect. Bradley didn’t know, and his friends definitely didn’t know.”
She smiled blandly. “Well, good job to you for figuring it out, I guess.”
