Page 24 of Absent Remorse

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Amber sat in Simon’s office, staring at the pyramid,willingit to give up its secrets as it and the pieces of the previous layers lay there on Simon’s desk.

Amber poured hot water over it, trying to see if it would react to that. Nothing happened. She took it out from the office to a small refrigerator in a small kitchen area of the department, clearing aside a couple of energy drinks so that she could leave it in there. She waited, staring at the refrigerator for at least five minutes, more than long enough for the cold to take effect.

Again, there was nothing.

When the pyramid was back to a normal temperature, Amber took it back to Simon’s office, running her hands over the surface, exploring it by touch with her eyes half shut.

The first thing she noticed was that the ball bearing seemed to be magnetized, sticking to the surface of the pyramid yet able to move across it smoothly. Amber found herself wondering if that was going to be the key mechanism used in unlocking this layer. Amber moved it experimentally across the surface, seeing if its movement would do anything. She half expected symbols to reveal themselves as she moved the ball bearing into different quadrants of the puzzle, but no, there was no response to the movement.

She felt small indentations there, barely perceptible. Amber found herself thinking about the letters for heat that had been on the outer layer, providing the first clue about how to decipher it.

She took paper and a pencil, pressing down onto the raised markings and shading over them so that the symbols there stood out as absences against the shading. Amber traced all of the symbols, trying to make sure that she got the whole of each side before moving on. The arrangement of them could prove to be just as important as their individual meanings.

Not that Amber knew their meanings. She wasn’t an expert in languages, but these didn’t look like Greek, or like the Egyptian hieroglyphs that she’d had to decipher to unlock the first section of the cube.

Amber started to search for the symbols. Maybe they were some variant of Hebrew or Arabic, Hindi, or Russian? Amber started to work through the possibilities and quickly found that it was hard to pin down individual symbols within a language when she didn’t know what language it was. She would have to search through every dictionary out there to find an answer.

There didn’t seem to be any other option, though. Amber sat there, starting to scour dictionaries and word lists, trying to use each one to get a sense of which language might at least be the right ones to look at to find an answer.

She could feel herself focusing on her efforts, shutting out the outside world the way she might have if she was designing a particularly difficult puzzle or trying to memorize strings of facts ahead of a quiz. This was more serious than either of those, though, because the answer here might literally be a matter of life and death.

Amber started as Simon touched her shoulder.

“Amber?”

Amber got the impression that it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Amber looked up at him, seeing the slightly worried expression on his face.

“You’ve been working there like that for so long I thought you’d turned into a statue,” Simon said.

“I just need to focus to try to find the answers,” Amber said.

“Well, it’s getting late,” Simon replied. “I think we’ve done everything we can do today. You should go home. We can start again in the morning.”

Amber shook her head. “I’m just starting to get somewhere with this. I’ve found symbols that might be the key to all of this. I might find the answer in the next few minutes.”

“Or it could be hours, even days.”

Amber could hear the concern in Simon’s voice. Amber wasn’t going to let this go, though.

“There’s still a killer out there, we could catch him, we could—”

“You could burn yourself out trying to catch him in one day,” Simon shot back. “You think I don’t want to catch him as much as you do, Amber? Maybe even more. I’m the lead agent on this case. It’s my responsibility. But a case like this isn’t just a quick sprint. Think of how long it took us to catch the last killer.”

That was what Amberhadbeen thinking about. In their previous case, more women had been placed in terrible danger because of the time it had taken to get to the killer. Every moment they wasted now might cost someone their life.

“Just a little longer,” Amber said.

Simon shook his head, though. “Amber, I’m telling you, go home.”

Amber could see that he wasn’t going to give in, and there was only so much room she had to argue.

“All right, I’ll take the cube and—”

Simon shook his head, though. “It should stay here. It’s more secure here than at your place. I’ve been worried enough about you carrying it around all day. It’s staying in evidence until tomorrow.”

That caught Amber by surprise. It also made it hard to sneak in any extra work on it, the way Amber had intended. It seemed that she didn’t have much choice, though. The best she could do was to quietly pocket the rubbings she’d made of the pyramid’s symbols, taking them with her as she headed back through the FBI building. It was time for her to head home.

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