Page 25 of Heartless Legacy

“Have you found anything interesting yet?”

“No. I had other things to deal with.” Glancing up at him, I add, “I caught Eloise on camera snooping around up here again.”

“In my room?”

“This time she was in Pax’s room. The master key fob she has doesn’t work on your door anymore. It’s my fault she got into your room the last time. I was distracted and hadn’t gotten around to reprogramming the master codes on our locks. It’s done now.” I did the same thing to Thea’s door even though it shows as unavailable in the system. I left Pax’s door untouched.

“Pax’s room? Seriously? Did he finally convince her to be waiting naked in his bed for him when he got home?”

I roll my eyes at Finn’s joke. “Come on, man. I do not need a visual of that. She was trying to get into my room before that.”

He gives me a knowing look. “What did you do?”

I shrug, holding up another piece of torn paper and turning it over in my hand. “Her fingertips will be a little sore for the next few days.”

Finn chuckles. “Did you set up an electric shock on the door handle, like you talked about last year?”

“I did.” The plan was to install it on the bunker door, in the off chance that someone found our hideout and tried to get in. “We’ll call this the testing phase before we put it on our bunker.”

“So all of this?” He gestures towards the papers again, bringing the conversation back to his original question.

“Names. Dates. I recognize a few of the names as students on campus we rejected as pledges. Others are parts of different fraternities and sororities. Thiscouldbe information I’ll need for a challenge later on.”

He asks, “You think I have a box of trash waiting for me?”

“If you do, it’s at the front desk, but I haven’t heard of anyone else getting one. Maybe it’ll be a solo challenge, like the one you just did.” I return my attention to the items in front of me. “Right now, I’m trying to piece these pages together as much as possible before running it through my software to get a better rendering of what the original documents looked like.”

Finn leans over, looking at what I have so far. “I’m pretty sure the one that says R.W. Emerson is a piece of an English paper.” He slides down onto the floor next to me, his back against the couch. “Okay, let’s see if we can make some sense out of this confetti.”

I’ve been working on the paper puzzle all week. Today I see something I haven’t noticed before. I’m just not surewhatit is. Less than half of the ripped up pieces of paper makes any sense. Of the pieces that aren’t utter gibberish, I know there are details missing. I called Finn an hour ago to help. He walks in complaining, “This paper chase couldn’t wait? I had a good lead on someone from Mayhem Night.”

Others would have given up on finding answers months ago. Not Finn. He gave Thea his word, and he’s gonna honor it, no matter what. I turn on my television, casting the image from my laptop onto it. “What do you see?”

“More pieces of your trash puzzle.”

“Really look at it, Finn. What do you see?”

“Can you blow it up?”

I enlarge the photo. It becomes more pixelated, but it’s still readable. He tilts his head to one side, then the other. “It looks like the impression of something. Like when you press down on a piece of paper too hard and the letters go through to the page underneath. Or when you pull apart pieces of paper that were stuck together, and the ink gets left behind.”

Nodding, I say, “I’ve been staring at it all day.”

“It’s a bunch of numbers and letters that got cut off.” He steps closer and taps the screen. “Are those dashes?”

“At first I thought it might be a phone number, but the digits and locations of the dashes don’t really make sense.” I rotate the image on the screen. “I guess it could be an account number, and the letters don’t matter.”

Finn turns to face me, and says, “It reminds me of an overseas address.”

This is why I have him helping me. Behind the jokes and violence, Finn is one of the most intelligent people I know. People don’t give his life experiences overseas enough credit. “Finn, you’re a fucking genius.”

“I know, and if you’re done with me here, I need to take my genius on a hunt.”

I enter the numbers and letters I can make out in the search bar. A lot of permeations come up, so I refine the search to include addresses. If there’s a match out there, I’ll find it. “Enjoy your hunt. I’ll let you know if I get a hit.”

Chapter 17

Holden

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