Page 57 of Butterflies and Hazel Eyes
He leaned forward and grasped his chin. “It would be a weird place to hide something personal. Why not just get a safety deposit box? Anyone can go through the drawers in a desk.”
I held my hand out to say,exactly.“Honey clearly altered it since the drawer didn’t come this way. She wants whatever is under there to blend in and appear to be the bottom of the drawer, and the steps she took to hide whatever this is tells me she has a good reason to keep it hidden. I don’t know what it could be, but I fear it’s treading into her personal life to open it. You would think if it were super important, she wouldn’t have left it here, though.”
He stood over me, studying the drawer. “Technically, it’s my desk. She just uses it. Let’s open it. Best-case scenario, it’s nothing. If that’s the case, we’ll close it up and put it all back.”
I didn’t want to ask him what the worst case was, so I braced my fingers on the cardboard and wiggled it. “I have to open this in a way she can’t tell we tampered with it. If she notices we did, we’d have to explain.” I shook my fingers lightly on the top, and the cardboard slid into a notch. Once the opening in the back appeared, I could slide the cardboard out. Underneath were manila envelopes and flash drives, to the tune of half a dozen. I glanced up at Gulliver as I lifted the drawer and put it on top of the desk. “What the hell is all this?”
He lifted an envelope from the bottom and slid some papers out. When he turned them over and I noticed the printing, I inhaled sharply. “What?” he asked, flipping through them. “It’s nothing more than rows and rows of zeros and ones.”
I opened another envelope, only to find the same thing. “It’s binary code, Gulliver,” I explained, my voice shaking. “This is all encoded for some reason.”
“Is she learning to code on the side?” he asked, perplexed.
I shook my head. “No, you don’t code in binary. Binary code is what a computer does to process all the information coming at it. Everything breaks down to zeros and ones.” I lifted a flash drive into the air. “I would guess these are filled with it too.”
He scratched his temple. “But why? What does it mean?”
“I don’t know, but my what-the-hell meter is screaming at me.”
“Can you decode these?” he asked, shaking the papers in his hands.
“I can, but it’s going to take some time. I’ll have to type it all into a decoding program. There are six envelopes, and I would guess each flash drive is full too. If the data on the flash drives is in binary, that’s easier. I can copy and paste instead of typing it in.”
I sighed and started straightening the papers. “She’s not coming in today, right?” I asked, and he shook his head. “I’ll take pictures of the papers, make copies of the flash drives, and return them all tonight. She’ll never know.”
He pointed at the copy machine in the corner. “You can make copies here.”
I waved my hand at the machine. “I’d rather not. I’m not saying someone is keeping track of what we copy, but I also don’t know for sure that they aren’t. Pictures can be erased, and the burner phone I use for them can go in the garbage if what we find is bad. Leaving any kind of trace that we’re on to her is a horrible idea.”
“You’re convinced whatever we’re about to discover is bad news.”
I dropped the papers into the drawer and rubbed my temples. “As much as I hate to say it, Gulliver, it probably is. No one does this. There’s no other reason to use binary code except to hide something. We already know someone is trying to get your research, and now we come across this.”
He tilted his head slowly. “You think Honey is part of the conspiracy to get the research?” He held up his hand as if to saywait.“I don’t think so. She has no access to the research area. Not to mention, she wouldn’t understand it if she did.”
“Or so she lets on. The truth is, she might be smarter and more technologically advanced than you think. These papers are a case in point. She has to know something about technology to convert written word to binary code. I’m not sure I like where this is going, to be honest. She is best friends with Mathias.”
He shook his head with determination when he caught my drift. “No, Mathias is aboveboard. He’s the one who put his money into this research. There’s no reason for him to sabotage it. He knows his payday goes bye-bye if this information lands in someone else’s hands before we’re finished. He also knows he will see the biggest payday because he’s put the most money into the project.”
“When you put it that way, you’re right, but it’s still very odd.” I held up an envelope and shook it. “Maybe it’s nothing. Let’s stick with the plan. I’ll decode this information before we do anything, including telling Mathias about it. Agreed?”
He leaned on his crutches and sighed. “Agreed, but we’re nearing the end of the formula, so we need to make this our top priority, Charity.”
“I’ll take this to the apartment and start now,” I promised. “I will have to hide what I’m doing. No one can know we found this until we know what it is.”
“We’ve entered the land of the surreal, sweetheart. If you can find anything in those papers to help us figure this out, we’ll owe you big-time.”
I grasped his chin and pulled his head down so I could kiss his lips. “No, your success is as important to me as my own. No one is going to mess with you if I have the power to stop it. It’s going to be time intensive, but I will find something to help you. I promise.”
His eyes crinkled in a smile, but his gaze stayed laser focused on my lips. “You’re the best ever,” he whispered.
Then he kissed me with enough tongue to remind me he was the best ever too.
♥
It was late and I wasworking in the apartment again, decoding and deciphering the paperwork I’d taken from Honey’s desk. I had spent the better part of the last week painstakingly decoding the information, and whatever she was involved in, I couldn’t necessarily link it to Butterfly Junction, but I also couldn’t completely rule it out. The coded information was from a chat room or forum, and I sensed that the chats were in code. Without a sheet of code words, though, it didn’t mean much to me.
My phone rang, and I answered when I saw it was the campground’s number. “Hey, cutie, what’s happening?” I asked Laverne.
