Page 74 of Tactical Revival

After what feels like forever, Jaxson is making his way up the stairs to join us.

Lance is the first to greet him. He wraps his arms around him and mutters something I can’t quite make out. Elijah is next. Silas offers him a nod before turning and heading for his truck.

Bianca throws her arms around his neck in a crushing hug. “Don’t you know that you can’t die on us yet, Payne?”

He smiles but doesn’t respond. Body stiff, I can all but see the stress sitting on his broad shoulders.

“You good?” Michael asks him before offering him a hug.

“Yeah. Bomb tech said it was a dud,” he replies, looking from Michael to me.

“A dud?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”

“It was a pressure plate, but there were no explosives.”

“Then why make the call? Why scare us?”

Jaxson’s gaze settles on mine. “It kept us from getting back to work on finding Lanetti.”

“There.” My dad finishes writing both of the riddles on a whiteboard he had Michael dig out of his storage shed. Apparently, it was used when he was coaching football. Now it contains a riddle crafted by a killer.

How times have changed.

The bomb squad found over a dozen dead pressure plates all along the shoreline. The man must have gotten out there and placed a bunch, only hoping we’d happen to stumble onto one.

It was good planning, I’ll give him that.

But even refocused, they haven’t gotten any closer to figuring the riddles out, so my father—a former detective—suggested they get more eyes on it. Sheriff Vick is standing in the corner, his thumbs in his gun belt, as he studies the words.

“‘Roses are red, violets are blue, wherever I go, you’re coming too. By the seashore, by the seaside, I’ll be forgotten, swept away by the tide.’” Jaxson reads it for his former partner, Alaric, who is currently on speaker phone.

“The second one?”

“‘Hickory dickory dock, you’ve broken the clock. Time is up, the girl will drown, hickory dickory dock,’” Jaxson says.

“It fits the formula,” Alaric says. “The warden insists that he’s had no visitors.”

“Mail?” Jaxson asks.

“Nothing there. Apparently he doesn’t get letters. I’m driving out to talk to his sister in the morning. She’s his only living relative, though they were estranged.”

“I remember she didn’t even show up for his trial,” Jaxson says. “Thanks for doing this, Alaric. I appreciate it.”

“Anytime. I wrote these down, so let me play with them a bit and see if I can come up with anything.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Talk soon,” he replies.

Jaxson ends the call, then crosses his arms and stares at the whiteboard. We’ve hardly spoken since the beach, and his mood has been volatile at best. Not that I blame him. I’d be furious too.

I am furious.

“We can eliminate the ‘roses are red, violets are blue,’” Lance says. “And the ‘hickory dickory dock.’ Since those are likely just rhyming mechanisms.”

Jaxson leans forward and underlines everything but those two lines. “‘Wherever I go, you’re coming too.’ That’s likely just him pointing out that I’m going to find her.”

“‘By the seashore, by the seaside, I’ll be forgotten swept away with the tide,’” my dad repeats.

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