Page 74 of The Meaning Of You

I scowled. “Jesus Christ, Madigan. If you don’t stop pissing around and tell me what you found, we’re gonna have a situation on our hands.”

Mads tut-tutted. “So impatient.” He slid his hand between the cushion and the arm of the chair and brought up the portableUV light source. He handed it to me. “Pages 205 and 278. But first—” He grabbed the blanket off the back of the chair and opened it over the two of us like a tent. He nudged me in the dark. “Okay.”

I flicked to the first page and ran the light over the text, gasping when it lit up in a pattern of small circles all over the text. I flicked to the second page he’d indicated and it was the same. “Is this the key?”

“Yes,” Mads said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

I leaned my head closer to his and whispered back, “You do realise we’re alone?”

He groaned and elbowed me in the ribs. “Do you want to know or not?”

“Sorry.”

He pulled the blanket off our heads and shoved a piece of A4 paper into my hand. “There are twenty-six different letters. Twelve on each page.” He pointed to the letters on the paper. “These are in the same order as in the book. No repeat. An alphabet-sized number. They act as a substitution code, but when you put the key next to the actual coded work, there is no obvious relationship between the two.”

I frowned. “Meaning?”

“Meaning he hasn’t just moved all the letters over three or something simple like that. These letters are randomly chosen to replace the alphabet, and that means unless you have the key, you are royally screwed.”

“So was he if he lost it,” I pointed out.

“True, but that’s the risk, isn’t it?” Mads explained. “And I’d be surprised if he didn’t have a backup to both, hidden somewhere much harder to get to, maybe a safe deposit box.”

I studied the slight smugness in his expression. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“What makes you think?—”

“Because I know you,” I grumbled. “And I know you’re enjoying drip feeding this information. What aren’t you telling me?” Then it hit me. “Shit. You’ve transcribed some of it, haven’t you?” I swear I growled, “Goddammit, Mads, if you don’t spill the beans right this minute, I will walk into that kitchen and empty every single drawer onto the floor and piss on it.”

His eyes bugged, scandalised. “You wouldn’t.”

I shot him a steely look. “Try me.”

He swallowed hard. “Okay, okay. I did start to decode a little of it to test my theory. Turned out that it wasn’t a simple substitution like I thought.”

I was so close to throttling that pretty little neck, and it must’ve shown, because Mads’ eyes widened and he grabbed a folder from somewhere beside his chair. He removed another sheet of paper and slid it toward me on the coffee table. Then he took his pencil and we both leaned forward.

“This top line is the twenty-six circled letters from the book, written in order, with the normal alphabet noted underneath.” He indicated both with the pencil. “It assumes the first letter circled,C, equates to the first letter of the alphabet,A. So everyCin the notebook stands for anA. And so on. Let’s look at the first three.” He pointed with his pencil.

“These are the first three circled letters in the order they appeared in the book.” He tapped the pencil on theC,L, andN. “We substitute those for the first three letters of the alphabetA,B, andC, and then apply that idea to the code in the notebook.”

I looked up at him. “Simple enough.”

“But it didn’t work. The transcript came out garbage.”

I frowned. “So you were wrong?”

He waggled his hand. “Not exactly, but it took me working with it to realise it wasn’t a simple exchange. The key also needed to be shifted to the right. Not rocket science but highly effective.”

I threw up my hands. “I have zero idea what you’re talking about.”

He shot me a wink. “Then I’ll tell you again. Try and keep up.”

I rolled my eyes. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate with Mads sitting so close, the musty smell of sleep clinging to his clothes, his wayward hair demanding to be smoothed.

“My next step was to try shifting the alphabet line along one to the right. So theLbecame theAinstead and theCbecame aZ... and that worked.”

I blinked. “It worked?”

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