Page 74 of The 9th Man

“Nah, we’re getting along fine. I’ve got my quads, if we need to leave. Talk soon.”

Sue stepped back to the den and handed over their guns. “Elijah thought you might want these back.”

“Never leave home without them,” he said, adding a smile and placing the Berettas off to one side, but within easy reach.

Time to deal with those emails.

He found the ziplock bag and removed the sheet with numbers and letters they’d found in Benji’s lamp, the four number blocks similar to the ones in Ray’s email, except that on the page from the lamp, above each block was either a single letter or a word.

“It’s called a private key, onetime pad,” he said. “A tried-and-true way of encoding and decoding transmitted messages. Absolutely unbreakable unless you have the key.” He pointed. “Which we do. These number-letter substitutions you see here. Benji had one. I’m guessing Ray had one around here somewhere too.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble,” Sue said.

“Not considering the response to my Kronos email,” Jillian said.

He agreed. “A code would also be a way to make sure Ray and Benji knew they were talking to each other, not some ruse by a third party. It’s built-in security.”

“Let’s solve it,” Sue said, excitement in her voice.

He smiled. “We can’t solve them all right now, but we can do the last one. I counted. There are forty-four number blocks in Ray’s email. Let’s divide them up, make the substitutions, then put the pieces together.”

It only took them about ten minutes to convert the random numbers into organized letters that formed words. When finished the email read

Old friend, my time is over. I’ve decided to go be with Maureen and tell her I’m sorry. She was always there for me. I was never there for her. I know your time is also short, so take care. Maybe I’ll see you there too. Hopefully our friend will make it all worth it. I know we found the truth.

He glanced at Sue.

Her hands were shivering, eyes brimming with tears.

Jillian was upset too. “Your grandfather killed himself. It’s horrible. But I got mine killed.”

“What’re you talking about?” Sue asked.

She explained, starting with Benji’s deathbed narcotics-induced ramblings and ending with her desperate and impulsive sending of the Kronos email. “I was exhausted, sad, angry, looking for answers. Benji was consumed by something, almost more so than he was by the cancer. I wanted to know what and why.”

“How could you have known?” Sue asked. “I would have done the same thing.”

He liked her decisive practicality. No crying over spilt milk for her. Forward. Full steam ahead. He stood and walked to one of the windows, gazing out as night claimed the swamp.

“You think Talley’s out there?” Jillian asked.

“Who’s that?” Sue asked.

“Old friend, new enemy,” he said. “He works for a man named Thomas Rowland, the man who sent those men after Benji. Code name Kronos, we think.” He was curious. “Did Ray’s death get any media coverage?”

“Locally, yes. The whole parish turned out for the funeral.”

“So Rowland could know that Ray is gone,” Jillian said.

He nodded. “No need to send Talley, except if there’s something here, hidden, that Ray was safeguarding.”

He saw Jillian understood.

Perhaps something similar, like the rifle from the case that Benji had hidden away.

“Sue, do you have any idea about Ray’s connection to Benji? Where they met or how? They seem to be old friends. Both men obsessed with something.”

“I have no idea,” Sue said. “Papa never said anything on that, just that he had a friend in Belgium.”

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