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I stab my fingers at the numbers I’ve written on the page.
“What am I looking at?”
I swallow. “The first sequence are the numbers eleven and ninety-nine, repeated three times. See? 119911991199.”
“And?”
“And your dadlovesthose gritty cop crime novels, right?”
“Yes…”
I swallow. “Well, eleven-ninety-nine is the police radio code for ‘officer needs help’.” I drag my finger to the next numbers. “And look. These are map coordinates.”
Raph stares at the page. Then he lifts his gaze to me with a smirk on his lips. “Hon, did we maybe hit our head, or have one too many martinis—”
“Raph, please. I think this is legit.”
“Where did you even get these?”
I push the email in front of him. “This email he sent. The forms he references in this are all out of order, and some of them aren’t even real legal forms.”
Raph’s mouth purses, and he says nothing.
“Raph, I think there’s at least a chance thatnoneof this—not the divorce, or all the legal motions—is what we think it is. That maybe someone has your dad, and he managed to get a code out hidden in this rambling email—a code that asks for help and givescoordinates where to find him.”
Raph blinks in disbelief, shoving his hair back from his face. “Okay, but, where even are these coordinates—”
“Not far from here. Two and half hours away, in Litchfield County, Connecticut.”
He stares at the numbers again in disbelief.
“Raph, did you drive over here?”
He nods quietly. “Yeah, I—” His eyes snap to mine. “No, Dahlia—”
“Then I’ll go without you.”
“No! We’ll involve the authorities, like rational people!”
I shake my head. “And if whoever has your dad hears sirens and sees cop cars coming over the horizon?”
“Dahlia…”
“I’m going, Raph. You can come, or you can say ‘I told you so’ later. But I’m going.”
He takes a deep breath, eying me dubiously. Then he slowly nods. “Okay, okay. Fuck it. Let’s do this. But Iamgoing to say I told you so later.”
* * *
Three hours later,as evening settles around us, we enter the quaint town of Woodfield, in the bucolic north-west corner of Connecticut. I glance at Raph behind the wheel.
“Your phone is definitely dead?”
He makes a face. “Yeah, sorry hon.”
In my rush to get going, I was an idiot and left my phone back at Deimos’ place. And then Raph’s died on the way up here. Luckily, we’ve been using his car’s GPS to get to the map coordinates. But I really need to find a phone before Deimos freaks the fuck out and starts razing Manhattan to the ground looking for me.
Raph pulls the car around a bend onto the main street running through town, and my brows arch.
