The Lilac Code

by Becki Willis

  Still smiling, Madison padded up the stairs, her long since abandoned heels dangling from her fingers. She turned to enter the upstairs library turned private office and came up short, seeing a woman standing in her private domain. The brief flare of panic gave way to a general sense of unease. She didn’t remember seeing the woman among the reception guests, but there had been so many people swarming about the house. Perhaps she had simply missed her.

  Still, something about the woman was vaguely familiar…

  “I’m sorry,” Madison said, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt. “I didn’t realize we still had guests. I’m afraid the party is over.”

  The woman leveled her with a cold, impersonal gaze. “An excellent way of phrasing it.” The words were spoken in heavily accented English, sending warning bells through Madison’s already throbbing head.

  The unfamiliar woman took a step forward. “Such an American saying, that.” She reached into her belted coat, pulled a gun from the pocket, and aimed it directly at Madison. “The party eese, indeed, over.”

  “Who—Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “It matters not who I am. It matters only if you choose to be smart and do as I say, or if you choose to be brave and to die. Do not move.”

  She couldn’t if she wanted to. Madison’s feet were glued to the floor.

  “You have something that belongs to me. I want it back.”

  In all honesty, Madison replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “There was something missing from the suitcase.”

  Things began to slowly click in Madison’s mind. She thought she had seen this woman on the plane to Maryland, a couple of rows behind Beady Eyes. The woman with the impassive face. Did this make the woman a spy? Could this be the infamous and elusive Kalypso?

  “Wait,” she said, a sinking feeling invading her stomach. “Did my grandmother take the black light, after all?”

  “Not the black light, you imbecile. The key!”

  “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The woman wagged the gun. “Think.”

  “About what?” Madison cried. Despite the earlier warning, she turned to pace. “There wasn’t a key. There were books and folders and pens. The black light,” she added, trying to recall the exact contents, “and a ledger. Maybe a roll of mints.”

  “Think harder.”

  “Paper. Little blocks of paper, like sticky notes without the sticky. That’s it.”

  “Nothing you had to snoop for?”

  Madison stopped pacing and frowned at the other woman. She hadn’t been snooping! She went through the suitcase, hoping to find identification so she could return the suitcase to its rightful owner. “Of course not!”

  The woman insisted otherwise. “My colleague saw you with the code,” she accused.

  Confused, Madison shook her head. “You said it was a key.”

  Her voice was impatient. “To a code.”

  Her head pounded, her feet hurt, her body ached with fatigue, and now her mind was muddled. Madison had endured enough.

  “If you’re talking about the note the little girl gave me at the airport, I turned it over to the CIA. You’ll have to talk to them about it. Now if you’ll kindly leave, I am exhausted, I have a headache, and I want to go to bed.” She spoke bluntly, as if there weren’t a gun pointed directly at her.

  “I go nowhere without the key. It eese critical to the Lilac Code. I must have it back.”

  “I didn’t take anything out!” Madison cried in exasperation. “I put every single thing back in the—” Even as she made the claim, a single slip of paper came to mind. She finished her emphatic claim, even if the last word lost some of its fire. “—suitcase.”

  She remembered the narrow ribbon of paper, tucked into the seams of the lining. It must have floated from the suitcase onto the floor, where she later stepped on it. That was the paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe when she first met Maury and Barton, aka Obukov and Murdoch, in the Peralynna game room.

  Madison wouldn’t have remembered that much, if she hadn’t run across that very note just yesterday, still stuffed in the pocket of her sweater. She remembered throwing the tiny scrap into the trashcan.

  The woman saw the realization in Madison’s eyes. “Where is it?” she demanded coldly.

  “I—I threw it away.”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “Why would I keep it? There was nothing on it!”

  “You lie.”

  “An inspector’s code,” Madison insisted.

  “What was on the paper?” the woman demanded. She made a motion with her hand, reminding Madison she aimed a gun at her chest.

  As if she could forget. Her only concern was keeping the woman away from the twins, sleeping peacefully in their beds.

  “I will repeat myself but once,” the woman ground out. “What was on the paper?”

  It came to her in a rush, clearing her brain’s fog like a brisk wind.

  “Lilac!” Madison gasped.

  It made sense now. The Lilac Code was a twist on the old Purple Cipher, with its sophisticated rotation of sixes and twenties. No wonder Marino thought she went to the Cryptologic Museum for insight into breaking the code. The strange books and endless lists within the suitcase were possible combinations, awaiting a key for deciphering. Old-school techniques for an old-school code. “The sixes,” she breathed. More to herself than to the woman with the gun, she whispered, “There were six numbers. They were the master key.”

  Kalypso’s voice was sharp. “What were the numbers?”

  Startled back to reality, Madison blinked hard at the other woman. “I—I have no idea.”

  “That eese most unfortunate for you.” Kalypso cocked her pistol. “Without the paper, I have no reason to allow you to live.”

  An idea sprang to mind. “I threw it away. In that trashcan, behind the desk.”

  “Get it.”

  Madison stepped behind her desk, searching for something, anything, she could use as a weapon. There wasn’t as much as a letter opener in sight.

  “No funny beezness,” the woman warned.

  “Of course not.” Madison dutifully picked up the ornate metal trashcan, testing its weight in her hands. It would have to suffice. She carried it with her as she approached the woman, pretending to dig in its depths for the paper.

  “I think I feel it…” she said, running her hand inside.

  Arming herself with the trashcan, wearing it on her hand like a boxing glove, Madison swung without warning. Her powerful blow took the other woman by surprise and knocked her to the ground. Madison fell on top of her, wrestling for control of the gun.

  Their scuffle was short lived. Capitalizing on the element of surprise, Madison jerked the pistol from the other woman and whacked her across the head with it.

  She didn’t as much as blink. With a cold, menacing smile, Kalypso growled.

  Madison knew a moment of pure fear. There was murder in the foreign woman’s eyes.

  In the blink of an eye, the agent’s hands came up to grip Madison’s neck and squeeze. Hard. Madison’s breath came with a wheeze. Her eyes stung.

  It took mere seconds. With oxygen denied, Madison felt herself growing weak.

  “Drop your hands!”

  She had never been so relieved to hear Brash’s voice as she was in that moment. Yet, instead of lessening her hold, Kalypso’s fingers tightened around her throat.

  Brash repeated himself in a bark. “I said. Drop. Your. Hands.”

  The room grew fuzzy and dark. Madison, who sat astraddle the woman’s waist, felt herself sag forward. She was vaguely aware of movement behind her. Probably the rogue agent’s flailing legs as she put all her efforts into choking Madison to death.

  Madison heard someone cry out in pain and wondered if it were her own voice. Yet how could she make a sound, when not as much as a breath escaped her throat? Was this truly the end?

  She
was lightheaded now. Even her throat felt lighter.

  But the next sound, she knew, came from her. It was the hoarse, haggard rasp of a deep, greedy gulp of air.

  Painful.

  Exhilarating.

  Life-saving.

  Already on the verge of collapse, her lungs burned from the sudden influx of oxygen, but the knowledge registered on some level. She could breathe!

  Madison fell away as the woman beneath her squirmed in pain. Brash’s cowboy boot pinned her to the floor, unrelenting in its pressure. Madison may have even heard the snap of bone. Or perhaps it was the cocking of his gun, trained directly on the writhing woman.

  He dared not look away. Eyes steady upon the intruder, he asked his fiancé, “You okay, sweetheart?”

  Between coughs, she whispered, “Yes.”

  “Take my phone. Dial 911 and put me on speaker. I’m not taking any chances with this Jezebel.”

  With sluggish movement, Madison struggled to her feet and fished the phone from Brash’s pocket. Her fingers were clumsy on the numbers. When dispatch answered, Brash gave detailed instructions on what to do, who to send, and where to come. By the time she disconnected, Madison’s mind was clear enough to ask questions.

  “How did you know to come back?”

  “I always check the perimeter before I leave. I noticed the alarm was disabled.”

  Holding her throat, Madison spoke around the rawness. “But I set it.” Even as she said it, she tried to remember hearing the beep of confirmation. Had she been too exhausted to miss such an important detail?

  “Yeah, but it couldn’t dial out. You didn’t even know when I came in.”

  “True.”

  “I had to clear the downstairs before I made my way up here. I was almost too late.” Though his eyes and his hold on the gun never wavered, his voice belied his weakness.

  Hearing the break in his strong baritone, tears sprang to her eyes. “But you weren’t. You saved me, Brash.”

  Now thick and rich, his voice wrapped around her with love.

  “Five weeks and two days, Maddy,” Brash assured her. “Nobody, especially some sniveling spy, is going to rob me of the day I make you my wife.” He ground his foot in again for good measure, eliciting new cries of pain from the woman on the floor. “Find something we can tie her up with, sweetheart, until backup arrives.”

  “Bethani used a belt.”

  “Works for me. You can take mine off me, if you’d like.”

  The situation was dire. Kalypso, a notorious foreign spy for hire had walked into her home tonight in tiny little Juliet, Texas, penetrated the sanctuary of her bedroom suite, almost choked her to death to retrieve information vital to national security, and would have gladly orphaned Bethani and Blake (who had already faced one life-changing ordeal today) in the sake of greed. Greed, like Brash always said, was the root of all evil.

  Despite all of that, Madison’s eyes danced with a mischievous twinkle.

  “Oh, I’d like,” she assured him in a wicked, saucy drawl. “I can hardly wait to take that belt and that big ole’ belt buckle off you. Unfortunately, now is not the time.”

  His words were but a growl. “Five weeks and two days, Maddy. Five weeks and two days.”

  A scratchy giggle escaped her raw throat. “They can’t go by fast enough. After waiting for you half my life, I’ll finally be Mrs. Brash deCordova.”

  Blake and Bethani Reynolds, along with Megan deCordova,

  cordially invite you to attend the wedding of their parents

  Madison Josephine Cessna Reynolds

  and

  Brash Andrew deCordova

  in the next installment of The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series.

  Watch for your invitation in the coming months.

  Note from Author

  The Columbia Inn at Peralynna is quite real, and is used with the permission of its owners, David and Dr. Cynthia Lynn.

  My husband and I first discovered this intriguing boutique bed and breakfast in September. We were charmed by the unique layout and, particularly, by our warm and gracious hosts. We returned in February, when the Lynns graciously showed us around their home and their community. (Royal Taj Restaurant, The Iron Bridge Wine Company, and the old Savage Mills cotton mill complex are also real places.) Cynthia and I spent many hours in the four-story great room, discussing our mutual love for books and writing, and brainstorming future plots.

  The inn has a fascinating story behind it. It is, indeed, fashioned after a CIA safe house in Germany that Cynthia thought of as her family’s vacation home. She told me she simply thought their parents threw lots of parties and took their five children on spur-of-the-moment trips, often in the still of night. It was years before she realized her parents were spies and that those clandestine encounters were related to national security. In fact, the American pilot Francis Gary Powers (you probably remember the name from the blockbuster movie Bridge of Spies) was debriefed at the original safe house in Germany by her father.

  During my last visit, I had the pleasure of listening to Cynthia and her sister recall memories of the house, their parents, and their unique lifestyle abroad. Oh, the books these women could write! The character of CIA Officer Logan McKee is, in fact, Cynthia’s creation and will be the main character in a fiction series—non-classified, of course—that she plans to pen in the very near future. (No pressure, Cynthia. My readers are now salivating at the mouth, waiting to read the stories you’ve lived. If you don’t come through, they’re going to blame me for getting their hopes up. But like I said, no pressure, my friend.)

  I hope you enjoyed this book and the glimpse shared into The Columbia Inn at Peralynna. The next time you’re in the Baltimore/Columbia/DC area, you owe it to yourself to meet the Lynns and to stay in their beautiful home. Be sure and tell them I sent you. (And don’t forget to look for those secret staircases!)

  By the way, Boonsboro, Maryland is only an hour away, where you can visit Turn the Page bookstore and the Boonsboro Inn, both owned by author Nora Roberts.

  Until next time,

  Becki

  Crack the Lilac Code & Win!

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