Page 63 of The Devil's Conflict

I don’t see any equipment that would suggest it, but then again, he probably wouldn’t want to leave that out for someone to walk in and see it. I glance at his desk, which is piled full of papers and smirk softly. Yeah, I remember that too. There were times that it would be piled so high on my desk because of the constant communications coming in. I always sorted and filed it once the craziness died down, but considering how high that pile is, I have a feeling Cryos does not do that.

I start to move my eyes away, but stop when something on the top sheet catches my attention. I don’t move, but I zero in on the sheet again. From this distance I see a bunch of words, with other words scribbled underneath them, and then a mirrored copy scanned to the other side of the long sheet, with the exact same words written out again.

It’s obviously a code of some kind, but why is there a mirror copy? People don’t make mirrors that match the exact same. They want someone to think they have an exact replica, but in reality, they simply are given one with actual data and one with false. Unless of course, these are both fakes.

I glance over at Cryos, who is still so engrossed in his screens that he’s not paying me the least bit of attention. I subtly shift closer to look at the sheet more closely. I narrow my eyes at the code, vaguely recalling seeing something kind of like it before,but almost different. It’s almost like someone took a bastardized version of an old code used in WWI or WWII, maybe even Vietnam, and switched things around making it a whole new code. Though I can’t be sure.

The one thing I can be sure of is that the person that deciphered it, missed a lot. They missed the fact that on the second sheet, the letters are tilted and even skewed, and some of them have extra lines through them; and to the untrained eye it might look like they made a mistake and were fixing it, but in reality, they’re actually clues to a new code.

But which one is the correct one and which one is the fake? And why did Cryos leave it sitting out like this? Seems a little odd that he wouldn’t worry someone like me or one of the women might see it.

I glance up at Cryos and see him watching me, brow raised, but more out of curiosity than anger. “Did you want me to see this?” I finally ask him after a moment.

“Why would you think that?” he counters.

“Because from what I can see, you’ve hidden everything else that could possibly be seen as club business, but you left this out, on top, scanned and facing my way. And you also called me in here when you could have come out to find me and spoke to me out there.” I narrow my eyes slightly, daring him to lie to me.

“I keep saying you’re smart,” he answers as he gets to his feet. “And so we’re clear, I’ll never admit to leaving it to you to find or that I wanted you to look at it. As far as the brothers are concerned, it fell off my desk when you stumbled into it, and you picked it up and read it. Right?” The look he gives me is hard and pointed.

Ah, so that’s how it is. He needs to save face so he doesn’t get in shit for involving me. “And if someone finds out that isn’t true? How much trouble will you get in? And me by extension?”

“No one except Sniper is going to find out, so it doesn’t matter,” he replies. “And he won’t want to get you in shit, so the only one who might get in shit is me, but he won’t be all too pissed. Especially if you can figure it out quickly and tell me where Silver made his mistakes.”

I glance down at papers again, and then pick them up to look at them closely. And just as I thought, one of them is slightly different from the others. One page has a blob of ink in the top right that looks like pen splatter, but to me looks more like it was intentionally put there. “Since these are scans, I don’t know if I can tell you that,” I explain carefully to Cryos, lifting my gaze to his. “Do you have the originals?”

“Not here. Bullet and Sniper put them in the safe and I can’t risk getting them,” Cryos answers. “But I can tell you the one on the right is from a journal that belonged to the guy who betrayed us. We found it in his room. The one on the left is from a journal we found inside a wall at the bar before it blew up.”

“And did both show the same wear and tear? Did one look slightly newer, or did one have some kind of distinct marking that was different from the other one?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t pay that close of attention. We only care about the information inside.”

“Well, Silver managed to get some of it right, though from the look of the scribbles on the sheet it took a bit for him to get it. But he missed some things. He has location coordinates, and while they both are, some of the numbers should be different.” I reach out my hand absently and say, “I need a pen.” Cryos stuffs one into my outstretched hand and I quickly start to work through the code.

I lose track of time as I start to write, so engrossed in the words turning into numbers and letters on paper. Whoever came up with this, they were trying to make sure they wouldn’t be caught, but wanted to send someone on a merry chase ifthey tried to decipher it. When I get the first page done, I look up at Cryos. “You have multiple locations in the same places,” I explain. “Whoever wrote the journals wanted you to go there, not find anything, and leave if you have the wrong one. Or, what he wants you to find isn’t the exact location of whatever he’s hiding.”

“It’s a decoy,” Cryos replies, voice clipped and his body straightening.

I nod. “Like this one.” I turn the sheet around and point to the first line. “This here, if you put in one set, and then put in the one I did, with the slight difference, you see that they are close together, but just far enough apart you might walk right by it and never think to look there.”

“That’s the one Sniper and Bullet are at now,” Cryos says as he moves away toward the computer. “I need to let them know before they leave, because this is what we’ve been missing. Don’t go anywhere, because I might need you to answer some more questions.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

SNIPER

How did we not know?

We don’t botherto hide the fact that we’re walking back up to the cabin, but we do jam the cameras to buy us more time. The door is locked, but I just boot the door in, not bothering with subtle this time. When we walk inside, I immediately know someone has been here this morning. Most of the items are still there, but a few boxes have been moved closer to the kitchen pantry.

I already know that’s deliberate, and when I glance over at Bullet, I see that he’s of the same mind too. We don’t even glance at the other boxes as we start to move back to the corner that the guys saw Vlad’s man hide out in. “What do you think?” I ask Bullet as we stare at the space. “Behind the wall, under the furniture, or under the floor?”

“Who the fuck knows,” Bullet grumbles. “But if this is one of the cabins that Bull used, then who knows how he set this shit up.”

“It’s definitely old enough to possibly have been,” I agree as I move to the wall, tapping my knuckles along and listening for hollow sounds. But nothing echoes back to me. I hear Bullet moving behind me but I’m focused on the wall. Slowly, and with care, I run my hand over the wall, trying to feel any kind of bumps, or even just something that feels odd under my hand, but again, it’s smooth with nothing obvious.

Bullet grunts as I hear furniture scraping along the floor. “No fucking way that guy was moving this last night without someone noticing,” he declares once he’s moved the sofa completely. “This is one of those old ones with a pullout bed in it too, and the frame is metal, so if they were going to hide something under it, it’s not something they would want to access a lot.” But still, he gets down on one knee and inspects the floor, running his hands over it like I’m doing.

Eventually we give up, nothing showing up, before we move to the far corner of the room to inspect the floor and wall there. We spend a good amount of time trying to find anything, but nothing. Not even a nail or board is out of place. Which alone is odd. “This place has been renovated recently,” I tell Bullet after I look at the floor and walls again as it clicks into place. “This place is old, and they didn’t have the same technology that we have now to make sure things are straight and level. And these floors and walls, they are perfectly square.”

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