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What he’s saying makes complete sense to me, and I’m unsure why I haven’t come to the conclusion before.
“I think that it’s for that reason that you need to be prepared for there not to be anything about him on the laptop,” Mal adds, his eyes understanding.
“Yeah, I know, but I can’t help but hope that there will be something on it,” I reply.
“I’ve got it. Murphy was even more determined not to get off it this time. I think he was mad that I took the dogs out and didn’t take him out, not that he would’ve enjoyed it anyway,” Ace rolls his eyes as he explains what took him so long.
My smile is brief even though usually I’d find it more funny; I’m far more nervous than I thought I’d be about this. Ace is so used to hooking things up to the TV now that he has it all set up within seconds, and we’re greeted with the standard screen, no personalization or anything. He frowns and I start to get nervous.
“I’m just going to go through files and photos and all the usual stuff. You’ll be able to see exactly what I’m doing, so if anything jumps out at you as something that could potentially be interesting, let me know, and I’ll stop. Obviously, we will go through everything with a fine tooth comb, but right now, I just want to see if we can get anything interesting.” Ace explains and we all nod in agreement which he doesn’t see because he’s already opening the files.
As soon as it opens, we’re all frowning, and I say, “Well, since there appears to be only one document in the files, I think that we should look at that one.”
“Good idea,” Ace replies with a sarcastic smile that does succeed in making me chuckle.
No one talks or questions anything as Ace clicks on it, and we wait for it to load up, and when it does, I, for one, just become more confused. It’s a Word document, and it seems to have a mixture of numbers, letters, and dots in a short single line, and that’s it; there’s nothing else.
“That’s it?” I ask, the disappointment evident in my voice. “What exactly are we looking at?”
“I think it’s co-ordinates?” Malachi replies with a question in his voice, like he’s not quite sure that he’s right.
“Fuck, you know what? I think you may be right,” Ace exclaims. “We can come back to it; I just want to see if there’s anything else anywhere else on the laptop.”
My excitement starts to build again now that they’re suggesting that its co-ordinates but I stay quiet as I watch the screen while Ace goes through everything on the laptop, even the trash and some places that I wouldn’t even have the vaguest idea how to access since he uses some kind of code and when I can almost not take it anymore and I’m practically bursting with trying to hold back from asking him any questions he finally tells us what he’s found.
“It’s completely wiped clean,” Ace frowns, looking up at us, “and it’s done well enough that even I can’t recover anything from it. I would be surprised if this laptop ever had anything other than that single document on it. There’s just no trace of anything else.”
“Okay, well that certainly makes those co-ordinates interesting and something that we should look into. I think it’s safe to say that she probably wanted you to find this, but like the safe, she wanted you to work for the answers. Whatever they may be,” Rome says, turning his attention to me as he then adds, “I’m sorry that it’s not what you wanted, but at least it’s one step closer.”
I sigh but smile, “Yeah, I think I’d be more surprised if she didn’t make something complicated for me.”
“At least it keeps things interesting,” Rip smirks.
“Very true,” I agree, “please tell me that one of you knows how to find coordinates because I have never had the need to learn in the past, and I’ve got no idea where to even start.”
Mason chuckles as he pulls out his phone, “We know, and it’s a lot easier than you think. I just need to copy the coordinates into the GPS on my phone, and it should show us the location.”
My eyes widen, “Huh, you learn something every day.”
Mason chuckles, “Don’t worry, it’s not going to take me long at all.”
“Thank fuck for that.”
Chapter Eighteen
My reply has all of the guys smirking or laughing, as it’s clear to tell that I’m becoming incredibly impatient, not that I was trying to hide the fact I was getting anxious and wanting to get to the bottom of this latest mystery as soon as possible.
“Well fuck me, it’s on the grounds,” Mason replies.
“What?” I ask, not sure that I heard him properly.
“The coordinates, they lead to somewhere on the grounds.” He repeats, sounding just as surprised as he did the first time.
Ace’s fingers start flying over his laptop keyboard that he brought downstairs with my grandmother's one, and he quickly has the coordinates up on his screen, which makes me wonder why Mase looked them up first, not that it matters right now without us asking him to he hooks his laptop up to the TV and then shows us where the co-ordinates are showing up on the map.
“He’s right. Look, this is the house, and this here is where the co-ordinates are showing up, in the woods. I fucking knew there was something out there!” Ace replies triumphantly.
“No one said there wasn’t,” Rome replies and then adds, “I wonder what is out there, though? I mean, they can’t just lead to nowhere, can they?”
