“Don’t rip it,” Chris says as I twist and tug.
“I’m not,” I snap. “This isn’t easy, you know.”
Chris doesn’t say anything else.
Eventually, I manage to shift the paper enough that I can grab a corner and pull. Chris holds on to the lantern so that I can concentrate on yanking out the paper. Finally, it pops free.
“Open it,” he says. He’s practically breathing down my neck. I’ve never seen him so uptight.
“Relax, will ya? I’m going as fast as I can.”
When I get the paper unfolded, I smooth it out on the picnic table.
The top half is a comic drawing of an eagle in a nest. It’s wearing an army helmet, and it’s sitting on a grenade. The dialogue bubble by the eagle’s head says, Sometimes you gotta go out on a limb. Heh, heh, heh.
“Very funny,” Chris sneers. “This guy is a real comedian.”
I point to the lower half of the paper. “Read the rest.”
Congratulations on locating the third cache. Even more important, congratulations on retrieving it. Obviously, you enjoy a challenge. That’s good, because finding the last cache is going to be even tougher. Good luck.
Time to move forward.
After that comes the clue. At least, I think it’s a clue.
—gj22f-tje5e 16sp10fd20jpo 15o 1 gp18ujg9dbujpo
—hfp13fusj3 gjhvsf 23jui gpvs f17vb12 19usbj7iu tj4ft boe 6p21s sjh8u b14hmft
“Great,” I groan. “Now, before we can even try to figure out what the clue means, we have to figure out what it says. How’s your Russian?”
“That’s not Russian,” Chris scoffs.
“Well, it sure as heck isn’t English.”
“Maybe the guy’s a really bad speller.”
“I’ll say. He doesn’t even know his letters from his numbers.”
Chris ignores me and goes back to studying the paper. “Obviously, it’s some kind of code.”
“No kidding,” I snort. “The question is, what code?”
Without looking up, Chris says, “We’ll figure it out.”
By the end of school the next day, we still haven’t cracked the code.
When I exit the building, I don’t see Chris, so I lean against the brick wall near the entrance to wait. The air is an energetic whirr of voices as kids stream past. Two girls look my way and giggle behind their hands. I hope they’re laughing at the dorky-looking dude with the briefcase standing beside me. I move to the other side of the entrance and watch a couple of guys toss a football. A long pass bounces off the hood of a red convertible parked at the curb. One of the guys runs into the street to retrieve the football and then says something to the lady behind the wheel.
“Well?” Chris appears out of nowhere and leans against the wall too. “Did you figure it out?”
I shake my head. “Nope. How about you?”
“Uh-uh.”
“So now what?”
“We keep thinking.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, you know. Just one more day. And we’re no closer to deciphering the code than we were yesterday.”
“We’re just missing the key,” Chris mumbles, almost to himself.
“We’ve tried everything.”
“No, we haven’t,” Chris says. “Otherwise, we’d have figured it out.” He whips his copy of the clue out of his pocket and reads it aloud—the part that’s readable, that is. “The guy who wrote this is trying to tell us something. He’s giving us a clue to cracking the code. I just know it.”
“You mean the time to move forward bit? Trust me, we’re not moving anywhere. Half the code is letters, and the other half is numbers. How are we supposed to figure that out?”
“Time to move forward,” Chris mutters again. “Why say that? Why not just say, ‘Here’s the clue’? Time to move forward. Time is numbers, so let’s concentrate on that.”
“What numbers are in the code?”
I dig out a paper and pencil and write them down as Chris rattles them off. “They range from one to twenty-three,” I say when I’m done, “but two and eleven are missing. There are no repeats.”
“Okay, there are no huge numbers. Nothing bigger than twenty-three. Maybe each number represents a letter. What do you think?”
“But there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. The highest number is twenty-three.”
“So some of the letters are left out. If one equals a and so on, the missing letters would be x, y and z. It wouldn’t be hard to write a clue without those letters.”
I nod and do some fast computing. “The other numbers left out of the code are two and eleven, which would be b and k. You could probably write a message without those letters too.”
“Okay,” Chris says, and I can tell he’s getting pumped. “Let’s rewrite the code, inserting letters for those numbers, and see if it tells us anything.”
—gjvf-tjeee pspjfdtjpo oo a gprujgidbujpo
—hfpmfusjc gjhvsf wjui gpvs fqvbl susbjgiu tjdft boe fpus sjhhu bnhmft
“It still doesn’t make any sense,” I say when we’re done.
Chris stabs a finger at the paper. “Except for that.”
I look where he’s pointing. “The letter a? What’s so big about that?”
“Don’t you get it? It’s all by itself. It’s the word a. It has to be.”
“Oh, good,” I reply sarcastically. “We know one of the words is a. We’ve practically got this thing solved.”
Chris doesn’t hear me. He’s totally focused on figuring out the code. “We got the time part. Now we just need to move forward. But how?”
That’s when a bell goes off in my head. “I got it!” I say. I start to scribble, changing the letters in the first word of the code to the letters that come next alphabetically.
The result is hkwg-ukff. I chuck my pencil. “So much for that idea. I thought for sure the code was telling us to move the letters forward.”
Chris picks up my pencil and hands it back. “What if the letters have already been moved forward? Maybe we need to move them backward instead.”
So I do. Gjvf-tjeee now becomes fiue-siddd.
Chris sighs and slumps against the wall. “That’s no better.”
“It does look more like a word,” I say. I look at the original code word with numbers and letters. “What if?” I start to scribble again.
“What if what?” Chris peers over my shoulder.
“What if we leave the letters that were originally numbers alone because they’ve already been changed once?” When I finish writing, I smack the paper with my pencil. “Ta-da! Five-sided. And in case you haven’t noticed, that’s a real word.”
For a second, Chris turns into a statue. He’s not blinking. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing. Finally, he says, “Hurry up. Decode the rest.”
“Five-sided projection on a fortification,” I read, and then, “Geometric figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles.” I look up. “That second one is a square.”
Chris nods. His eyes are glittering. “And the first one is a bastion. I had a toy fort when I was a kid.” His face breaks into the biggest grin I’ve ever seen. “We’re going to Bastion Square.”
Chapter Nine
Now that we’ve figured out where the next cache is, Chris and I can’t wait to start looking for it. There’s a bus stop outside the school, so we hop on a bus for downtown and Bastion Square. We’re barely up the steps before the driver shuts the door and pulls away from the curb, so we weave our way down the aisle like a couple of drunks and flop onto the backseat. Then we slouch into opposite corners and stretch out.
Chris chucks a wadded gum wrapper at my head. “This is it,” he says. “The last cache, and we’re a day ahead of schedule. Oh, yeah. We are da men.”
“We haven’t found the cache yet,” I remind him. “Maybe we should hold off celebrating until we actually have it in our hands.”
Chris makes a face and waves away my words. “It’s in the bag, man.”
<
br /> I shake my head. “Don’t be so sure. There could be another twist. The guy who hid the caches has a thing for surprises. Or haven’t you noticed?”
“I bet you half your share of the prize that we find that cache today.”
“You really think I’m going to take that bet?” I hoot. “You’re a moron.” I chuck the gum wrapper back at him.
He grins and deflects it with his arm. Then we both sit back and look out the window.
It’s almost rush hour, and the bus is entering the city center, so traffic is starting to bog down. When we stop at a light, we’re hemmed in on all sides.
Chris whistles. “Take a look at that.”
“What?”
“Second car back.” He nods toward the line of vehicles behind the bus.
“You mean that red convertible?”
“Yeah, that and the girl inside.”
“What’s so special about her? You can’t even see her,” I say. “Her hair is covered with a scarf, and she’s wearing sunglasses.”
“She’s hot,” Chris insists.
I start to laugh.
Chris frowns. “What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking how dumb you’re going to feel when you find out that that girl is the mom of a kid we go to school with.”
He kicks my foot. “She is not.”
I kick him back. “There was a red convertible parked outside the school today. And the driver was a lady. Could’ve been this car and this lady. Most ladies in cars parked outside of schools are moms.” I pause before adding, “But if that’s your thing—” I grin and move my legs before he can kick me again.
We get off the bus at Douglas Street and hang a right onto View. After a couple of blocks, we’re in the tourist part of downtown. We cross Government Street with the Bastion Square entrance straight ahead. There is a glass and metal archway with the name welded onto it. The huge building on our right is a pub, according to the sign, but it looks like it could have been a bank once. Like all the other old buildings around here, it’s kept in good shape to attract the tourists.
From this point on, it’s foot traffic only. No cars are allowed in Bastion Square. Good thing, too. There’s no room for them. The place is swarming with pedestrians.
Chris and I walk down one side of the square to the Wharf Street boundary, then up the other side toward Langley Street, where we slide onto a bench just vacated by a couple of old guys.
“Did you see it?” Chris asks.
He means the cache. I didn’t see it, but something in his voice makes me think he might have, so I turn quickly to look at him. “Did you?”
He shakes his head. “Where do you think it could be?”
“Not in any of the buildings. The rules say it’s got to be outside somewhere. In the shrubs, maybe, or taped to the bottom of one of the benches? Over the top of a door or window? It’s so wide open here. There aren’t a lot of good hiding places. Of course, it would help if we knew what we’re looking for.”
Chris squints up at the sun and then scans the tops of the buildings.
“Don’t tell me you think it’s going to be somewhere up there,” I say as my stomach does a flip. If I can’t climb down a ten-foot cliff, I sure as heck can’t scale a fifty-foot wall.
Chris shrugs. “I don’t know. Like you said, there aren’t a lot of good hiding places around here. I’m just thinking about the possibilities.”
“Maybe there’s a clue in the note to narrow things down,” I say.
“Like what?”
Chris pulls out the paper and we study it, looking for anything that might be a hint. If there is a clue, we don’t see it. As we continue to ponder where the cache might be, Chris absentmindedly refolds the paper until it looks like it did when we pulled it out of the lantern.
That makes me wonder if the lantern is the clue. I dig through my backpack and haul it out. I can’t quite close my hand around it, but it’s still pretty small. The frame and pointed top are black, and it has four clear-plastic panels. One of them is hinged with a latch.
Chris looks at the lantern and then holds the folded paper next to it. “I don’t know how that paper ever fit inside,” he says.
I spin it in the air. “No kidding, eh? It’s kind of a cool little thing though—just like the lanterns here in the square, only miniature.”
It takes a few seconds for my words to bore into Chris’s brain, but when they do, he jumps up. “That’s it! The cache is on one of the lampposts!”
A few people pivot and stare at him like he’s some kind of lunatic.
“Shut your hole, man,” I shush him. “Do you want the entire world to hear?”
Chris sits down again. “Sorry.”
We keep our mouths closed and our butts planted on the bench until we think people have lost interest in us and moved on. Then we take another stroll around the square, checking out all the lamp standards.
“There it is,” I hiss. “That lamppost straight ahead. See it? There’s a small bag tied to the base of the lantern.”
“Got it,” Chris says quietly. He keeps walking. Even I can’t tell that he looked.
We walk out of Bastion Square. When we’re a safe distance away, I say, “I can get up that pole easy. It’ll be like climbing rope in gym class.”
“I thought you were afraid of heights,” Chris says.
“The lamppost isn’t high. I could jump down.”
Chris nods. “Okay, then. The question is, when? We can’t let anybody see us.”
I nod. “Right, but with all the restaurants and pubs around there, the square won’t quiet down till after one in the morning, I bet.”
“Then that’s when we’ll come back,” Chris says as we head to the bus stop.
“Hey, look.” I point as we pass a parking lot. “There’s that red convertible again. Wanna check it out?”
But Chris doesn’t hear me. His mind is focused on that last cache.
Chapter Ten
Chris and I decide to meet behind Broadmead Shopping Center at 1:30 am. I’ll never be able to lie in bed for three and a half hours without falling asleep, so I set the alarm on my watch and pray that nobody else hears it. I guess I doze off with my finger near the snooze button, because the alarm doesn’t even sound a full beep before I shut it off and jump out of bed. I am instantly awake and within minutes fully dressed. I arrange the pillows under the blankets to look like a body, and then I’m gone. The sneaking-out part is easy. My room is in the basement, and there’s a door leading out to the carport.
At Broadmead, Chris is waiting in the bushes. I’m not expecting him to be there, so when he jumps out, I nearly pee my pants.
We head onto Quadra Street, a straight route into town. During the day, it’s a really busy road. Now it’s so dead, I’m wondering if Victoria has been taken over by aliens and all the people have been beamed up into space. The streets are so empty, we don’t even bother stopping at traffic lights. But we keep an eye out for cars. The last thing we need is to meet up with a cop. Whenever we see headlights or hear an engine, we pull over into the shadows and wait for the vehicle to pass.
Downtown Victoria is pretty much a ghost town too. Just the same, Chris and I stick to the side streets and alleys. Near Bastion Square, we pass the parking lot where we saw the red convertible that afternoon. It’s still there, but now its top is up and it’s parked in a corner.
“Hey,” I whisper to Chris and point. “There’s your car.”
He looks and nods. “The lady who was driving it must’ve been partying. Probably took a cab home. Smart. Still, I don’t think I’d want to leave a sweet ride like that sitting in an open parking lot overnight. It could get wrecked or stolen. She’s taking a big chance.”
“You wanna check it out?”
I can tell by the way Chris hesitates that he’s tempted. But he shakes his head and says, “We can do it on the way home. After we get the cache.”
We leave our bikes near the entrance to Bastion Square and s
lip into a dark doorway. Though it’s the middle of the night, the streetlamps shed a lot of light, and we can’t take the chance of being seen. We scan the square to make sure we’re alone.
We’re not.
On one of the benches across the courtyard is a bag lady with her cart. She looks like she’s sleeping.
“Great!” Chris mutters. “If she stays there all night, we’re never going to be able to get the cache.”
“Maybe we can scare her away,” I suggest. “You know—make a noise so she thinks someone is coming.”
“What kind of noise?”
“I don’t know. Drop something, maybe, or smack something against the wall.”
Chris nods. “Good idea. Wait here and watch her.”
Chris creeps back to the corner of the building, hauls a flashlight out of his backpack and bangs it against a metal drainpipe. The clanging echoes throughout the square, and I worry that it might do more than wake up the bag lady. All we need is for a security guard to come running. I glance around nervously.
“Well?” Chris says as he slides back into the doorway beside me.
I look toward the bench. “I think it worked. She’s awake, anyway.”
As we watch, the woman gets up, grabs her cart and shuffles slowly out of the courtyard, dissolving into the shadows.
We take one last look around before hurrying to the cache.
“It’s still there,” Chris whispers. “You ready? Want a boost?” Before I can answer, he cups his hands together and braces them on his leg.
I rub my hands up and down my jeans. I don’t want to slip. Then I grab the post, step into the foothold Chris has made and wrap my body around the pole. I slide my knees up and grip the slippery metal with the tread of my runners, reach for a higher grip with my hands and then straighten my legs. I repeat the process a few more times. My gaze is glued to the little leather pouch tied to the base of the lantern. Near the top of the pole, I lose my grip and slide down a few centimeters, but my runners act as a brake, and I’m able to pull myself back up.
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