fifteenth,” the first words printed in the top left hand corner read. “The Old Fox.”
As my eyes fell to the text beneath it, I realized that this was some kind of journal entry. Georgina had been staying with her parents on… October fifteenth. The date rang a bell. A rather loud bell. October sixteenth. That had been the date that the papers had announced Georgina’s accident.
This had been written the day before she died.
“Weather today was gloomy, same as yesterday, and all of this week. Pleasantly gloomy, though. Funny how anything familiar brings comfort in times like these…”
A line of dots followed, trailing across half the page, as if she was contemplating what to type next.
“Early tomorrow I take the train back up north. Weather permitting, I will return in time to make my evening call to Seamus. I will find a way to confirm what I told him previously, that my week was spent in the castle. Hopefully, Josh will already be in bed and asleep.”
Josh .
I paused for a second to gape at Arwen—who looked thoroughly confused—before fixing my eyes back on the screen.
“I still haven’t told Josh about the journey we’ll make the day after, of course. I will make a final visit to the grocer’s to collect some food for the journey, but even when I return for him and our bags, he won’t know. I’ll tell him that our destination is a surprise… and that as part of the surprise, he must remember his name is Josh.
When we arrive at the airport, he’ll be distracted by the shops. And when we board the aircraft, I will try to cover his ears during announcements.
FOEBA files are already encrypted. I left backups safely, just in case.
But Seamus won’t know where we’ve headed…
Seamus can’t know.”
As my eyes reached the end of the text, I trailed back to the beginning and started all over again. I read the same passage four times before I found my voice again.
“By Josh, she must be referring to Lawrence,” I murmured. “Some kind of code name for him. Who else would it be?” Plus, that was the first name Josh thought to call himself when I asked him to choose a name.
Arwen shrugged. “Then who is Seamus? Sounds like she was trying to escape from him.”
I rubbed my head. The fact that she’d made regular calls to him made me believe that it was a code name for her husband, Atticus. But why was she hiding things from him? Where had she planned to go with Lawrence?
My head was spinning. This journal entry revealed that the very same day she died, she had been planning to leave with Josh to somewhere she hoped Seamus would never find them.
“She was afraid of him,” Arwen commented.
“It has to be Atticus. Otherwise where is the mention of him in this letter? They were married. Supposedly living together.”
“Hmm… I wonder why she would feel the need to lie about her location to him—she’d been staying with her parents in the UK, and yet she led him to believe she was staying in ‘the castle’, most likely code for where Lawrence was staying with his nanny.”
Georgina’s apparent fear gave me chills. Was Atticus unsafe? Where is Lawrence now? I prayed that he was okay.
“And… what on earth is FOEBA?” Arwen went on.
I frowned deeply. FOEBA was the name of the folder in which all of the encrypted files were contained. Why had she encrypted the files in the first place? What was so secret about their contents?
“Maybe FOEBA is some kind of hunter terminology,” Arwen suggested.
I spent the next hour doing a thorough web search for FOEBA, but it did not bring up anything that sounded even remotely related.
“Great.” I sighed, slumping back in the sofa. It felt like we had hit another dead end. It was obvious that finding out what FOEBA was should be the next step in uncovering this mystery. “How do we figure it out?”
“Well, if I’m right in assuming that it’s hunter terminology,” Arwen replied slowly, “it looks like we will need to try to
As my eyes fell to the text beneath it, I realized that this was some kind of journal entry. Georgina had been staying with her parents on… October fifteenth. The date rang a bell. A rather loud bell. October sixteenth. That had been the date that the papers had announced Georgina’s accident.
This had been written the day before she died.
“Weather today was gloomy, same as yesterday, and all of this week. Pleasantly gloomy, though. Funny how anything familiar brings comfort in times like these…”
A line of dots followed, trailing across half the page, as if she was contemplating what to type next.
“Early tomorrow I take the train back up north. Weather permitting, I will return in time to make my evening call to Seamus. I will find a way to confirm what I told him previously, that my week was spent in the castle. Hopefully, Josh will already be in bed and asleep.”
Josh .
I paused for a second to gape at Arwen—who looked thoroughly confused—before fixing my eyes back on the screen.
“I still haven’t told Josh about the journey we’ll make the day after, of course. I will make a final visit to the grocer’s to collect some food for the journey, but even when I return for him and our bags, he won’t know. I’ll tell him that our destination is a surprise… and that as part of the surprise, he must remember his name is Josh.
When we arrive at the airport, he’ll be distracted by the shops. And when we board the aircraft, I will try to cover his ears during announcements.
FOEBA files are already encrypted. I left backups safely, just in case.
But Seamus won’t know where we’ve headed…
Seamus can’t know.”
As my eyes reached the end of the text, I trailed back to the beginning and started all over again. I read the same passage four times before I found my voice again.
“By Josh, she must be referring to Lawrence,” I murmured. “Some kind of code name for him. Who else would it be?” Plus, that was the first name Josh thought to call himself when I asked him to choose a name.
Arwen shrugged. “Then who is Seamus? Sounds like she was trying to escape from him.”
I rubbed my head. The fact that she’d made regular calls to him made me believe that it was a code name for her husband, Atticus. But why was she hiding things from him? Where had she planned to go with Lawrence?
My head was spinning. This journal entry revealed that the very same day she died, she had been planning to leave with Josh to somewhere she hoped Seamus would never find them.
“She was afraid of him,” Arwen commented.
“It has to be Atticus. Otherwise where is the mention of him in this letter? They were married. Supposedly living together.”
“Hmm… I wonder why she would feel the need to lie about her location to him—she’d been staying with her parents in the UK, and yet she led him to believe she was staying in ‘the castle’, most likely code for where Lawrence was staying with his nanny.”
Georgina’s apparent fear gave me chills. Was Atticus unsafe? Where is Lawrence now? I prayed that he was okay.
“And… what on earth is FOEBA?” Arwen went on.
I frowned deeply. FOEBA was the name of the folder in which all of the encrypted files were contained. Why had she encrypted the files in the first place? What was so secret about their contents?
“Maybe FOEBA is some kind of hunter terminology,” Arwen suggested.
I spent the next hour doing a thorough web search for FOEBA, but it did not bring up anything that sounded even remotely related.
“Great.” I sighed, slumping back in the sofa. It felt like we had hit another dead end. It was obvious that finding out what FOEBA was should be the next step in uncovering this mystery. “How do we figure it out?”
“Well, if I’m right in assuming that it’s hunter terminology,” Arwen replied slowly, “it looks like we will need to try to
Similar Books
