Page 84 of The Stone Family Warrior

Chapter 29

It was nice to have Brooks around, Trent thought as Brooks herded them all into the library for a brainstorming session a couple of hours later.

After a leisurely lunch, the family had cleaned up, put babies down for naps, and assembled to get down to business. The men had brought other furniture in, and people were splayed out over couches and chairs. Micah and Cade were in there, sitting on the floor in front of Brooks as if they were ready to be taught by a master. Brooks had reorganized the whiteboards and even bought another one. Now he had all the pictures up and he had equations on the board. He had a projector and his computer set up on a screen.

Brooks didn’t have his suit on. He had traded it out for khaki shorts and a beach shirt, but it was clear he was still in command mode. He pressed a button in his hand, and an image appeared on the screen. “I’m going to give you a brief overview—not that you all need it, but I have found that when you work a case, it is good to bring it all to your mind when you’re working a problem.”

He pushed the button in his hand again, and another image appeared. “I’m going to quickly go through all of our pictures that have the numbers in the addresses. They’re associated with the numbers that Dad and Mom squeezed together and then added words—” He chuckled. “—to throw us off even more.”

Each picture with the address below it popped up on the screen, one by one. When he got to the end, he said, “So we know the pictures are correlated with the addresses that bring this number together. What we don’t know is why that is important for the next step in finding the treasure.”

No one said anything. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on Brooks.

Trent smiled and looked at the little notepad and pen in his hands—Brooks had also supplied those. He jotted down the numbers. Even though a big part had been figured out, it left them with more questions.

Brooks pushed the button in his hand, and another picture appeared before them. “Each of these numbers has to symbolize something. Ciphers are the things that crack codes. The lynch pins to the rest of the puzzle. We need to think about what was important to Mom and Dad."

He paused.

Brooks rushed on. "Obviously, we are important to them. Obviously, these places that they went with us were important to them. Now we need to figure out what that means.” He paused, then adjusted his watch and pressed some buttons. “I’m going to give you five minutes. I don’t want you to talk. I want you to group-think this through. You write down the numbers and think about what they could symbolize or what’s important to Dad or what they mean.” He tapped his watch. “Go.”

The family went silent, and everyone busied themselves with writing and thinking. Trent noted that Liberty was doing the same thing, but she had divided up the numbers and put the names in front of each child that belonged to those numbers. He stared at the numbers, wishing that the next part would be revealed quickly. But he tried to focus and think of different angles to approach this. He peeked at Liberty’s paper again, and he saw that she had put the address next to every number as well.

“It has been five minutes,” Brooks said. “What do we have?”

Several of his siblings shouted things out. “Maybe it also has to do with how old we were then,” someone remarked.

Someone else shouted out, “What about the exact longitude and latitude of each of those places? Do they intersect with anything?”

A third person asked, “What if each place is a symbol?”

Brooks turned to the board and wrote down everything they said.

Trent was thinking about all of those things as he stared at Liberty’s paper. The beginning of each address seemed to be spelling out a word. Quickly, he took the first letter of each address and put it down beneath each number on his paper.

Then he stared at the word. “Fortress,” he whispered.

Several of his siblings were talking at once. Liberty was the only one who seemed to be paying attention to him. She let out a little gasp. “Fortress.”

Marshall leaned over. “What’s going on?”

Hunter turned around. “Yeah, what are you guys talking about?”

“Oh my gosh.” Trent’s hearbeat sped up. He could hardly believe it.

“Trent, tell us what’s going on,” Brooks commanded.

Trent stood and hurried to the front of the room next to Brooks and the whiteboard. He picked up a marker with one hand and quickly erased everything Brooks had written with the other. Brooks’s protest died when Trent put down the number addresses, re-created everything that was on Liberty’s paper, then jotted down the letters.

“Holy cow,” Trey called out.

Kensi laughed and asked, “Fortress of Solitude? Is that what it is? Something about Superman?”

Brooks shook his head and grinned. “Dad loved those movies so much.”

Trent turned to all the faces looking expectantly at him. “Fortress of Solitude. But what does that mean for us? For the treasure?”

Blank faces stared back at him. He could feel how much the rest of them wanted to crack this as much as he did.

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