He knew she’d left for him, and it was wearing on him dreadfully. A fit punishment, he told himself, for forcing her hand. He was eating as much as he ever had, not because he had an appetite but because he had a company to guide through the rocky shoals of recovery from a highly publicized hacking incident while also planning a company restructuring. There were a lot of people who depended on him to be healthy. Still, nothing tasted right, and he wasn’t in much of a holiday mood, no matter how often Georgiana tried to drag him out of the apartment, or the Gardiners invited him to Montclair. Ed had been angry with him at first, but soon admitted there was no way Will could have known what would happen. He hadn’t experienced these disappearances of Elizabeth’s before.
Will hoped he’d never have to experience another. This one was literally doing him in. He was popping antacids like candy. He was even sure he’d seen a gray hair at his temple this morning, though now that he glanced in his mirror in the powder room and moved the offending lock of hair, he couldn’t find it again. When he slept, his dreams were filled with her. Not nightmares, never that. Good dreams, wonderful dreams that left him just on the verge of euphoria before drifting away, just out of his grasp, dissipating in a colorful fog. Every time, he woke to an empty bed. He tapped the desk with the end of his penknife.
He could hear Richard clattering down the hallway and sensed he’d burst through the office door any second. One, two, three . . .
Richard’s jovial face appeared around the side of the door. “Ready to go, Will?” he asked with a cheer that almost sounded natural. “It’s the staff party. Gotta make a good showing.”
He nodded, slipping the penknife back into his pocket and putting on his game face. “Ready.”
Chapter Two
In a cramped underground apartment a twelve-hour flight away from everyone she loved, Elizabeth was staring at her computer, taking notes, and glancing at an old paper calendar of her own. She stood where it was hanging crookedly on the wall and begin counting days. Counting days, she thought, and pushed away the dirge in her head. Counting days. Numbers.
“They moved again,” she heard Abby say behind her. “Last night, I think. But we lost them.” Arch mumbled an assent.
Within days of their arrival, Abby had tapped into a network of local public and satellite cameras, but the information was always just a bit too late to be of use. Because they were moving the hostages from place to place, mapping out a predictive pattern of their movements was the best approach—but behind the numbers, there were human lives at stake, and time was always an issue.
Elizabeth had tried to fall back into old habits, but unlike in the past, her life refused to stay shut down. She struggled to focus. The nightmares came, then the dreams which were, in their way, just as bad. No matter how determined she was to focus only on her mission, thoughts of Will kept drifting into her work, increasing her longing for home and family, spurring a hot anger and frustration at all that she was missing. “Ice-skating in the park, the kids’ stockings, watching NORAD track Santa, hot chocolate, Christmas,” she whispered to herself. She’d been anticipating those things since she’d arrived home. Being absent yet another year was weighing heavy on her, slowing her down. She pushed up from her desk and walked into the kitchen.
She poured herself a cup of coffee from the perpetually full carafe. Through the long, narrow window at the top of the wall, she could see that it was just as sunny as it had been the day before. As she sipped the bitter brew, she heard the chant in her head. Counting days. Numbers. She finished the coffee and rinsed out the mug before she grabbed an apple. Sinking her teeth into the white flesh of the fruit, she leaned against the sink and observed the others with a dispassionate eye.
Bob was mapping a collection of known safe houses in the area. The clues he and Abby had pulled in so far had included a code revealing a numbering system for a handful of locations, which almost formed a circle around the city. The numbers were set like a clock, with twelve at due north. He was also doing what he could to figure out floor plans for each of the homes in case they were needed. It would be best for the extraction team to catch the hostages and their captors out in the open, but Bob was adamant that they should be prepared for the less palatable incursion. Just in case.
Of course, all this preparation assumed that the hostages were being held in one of those twelve houses, and they’d not been able to confirm that.
Elizabeth tossed her half-eaten apple in the trash. After the first three days, she’d not felt very hungry, but she ate anyway. The thought came unbidden: Will would give me a lecture. She grimaced. He was making his way into her waking hours now, despite all her best efforts. This vault has serious leaks.
The only exercise she’d been getting had been calisthenics in her small bed area. Sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, even chin-ups on a bar Bob had rigged in the doorway to the room he shared with Arch. Her legs were restless and she desperately wanted a run, but it wasn’t safe to go wandering around outside. She rolled her eyes as she recalled Will trying to keep her from going outside in Manhattan after dark, then realized he’d distracted her again. Damn it.
Arch was casting his net a little wider, tapping into the known safe houses’ wifi and watching any online activity.
“Math lessons,” Arch grunted, gesturing at his screen. “They’re looking at math lessons.”
A flash of energy animated them all. Math meant numbers. Numbers meant codes. They clustered around Arch’s computer as he streamed the lessons. Twenty of them in all, and they ran every one of them.
“Is twenty the number?” Elizabeth asked out loud. “Twenty what?” The other three shook their heads.
“Too easy,” Bob muttered.
“There’s a pattern,” Arch replied without moving his head, eyes taking in the video content. “I can feel it.” He began scratching out notes on a piece of paper.
“They don’t send their best when there’s a high chance of being caught,” Elizabeth said. “They won’t trust the team they’ve sent to memorize everything.” She narrowed her eyes. “There’s definitely a pattern.”
“Then find it,” Abby said, and turned back to her computer. Bob scowled, and Elizabeth knew he was thinking things through again from their first day. What were they missing?
Elizabeth consulted the map where Bob had labeled the houses with the numbers from the broken code. When Arch was finished writing, he tore the paper out of his notebook and held it over his shoulder. Elizabeth took the paper and read the list of lesson topics as she walked the ten steps from his computer into his sleeping space. She stuck her foot under his cot to retrieve his soccer ball and tapped it out into the room, not noticing when Bob rolled his eyes. She moved back to her work station, spun the ball up onto the top of her foot, and began to juggle it. Each time the ball fell to her foot, it was propelled upward. First, she kept the ball to one foot, then the other, then passed it between them. Twenty. Math lesson. Perimeter. Thwack. House numbers. Thwack. Counting days. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Systematically, she reviewed everything related to perimeter. Nothing.
She balanced the ball on the back of her neck. Look for the pattern. Math lesson. Area. She straightened, allowing the ball to trail down her back, where it dropped to the heel of her foot. She kicked it high. Look for the pattern, she chanted silently as she spun to catch the ball on her chest. She let it fall and held it on the top of her foot for a moment before she began again, oblivious to the glares tossed her way by the men as they worked. Thwack. Pattern. Volume. Thwack. Pattern.
On and off, all day long, Elizabeth juggled the ball, glanced at her list, juggled again. At lunchtime, Abby narrowed her eyes and held up her hand when Bob tried to complain about the noise. She walked into her room and brought back three cheap MP3 players with earbuds instead.
Elizabeth was somewhere far away. She saw the activity, heard the stifled complaint, but it didn’t occur to her that it was related to her activity. Surface area.
At last, an ho
ur after the sky had darkened, she began the long list again. “Perimeter,” she mumbled. “Perimeter.” Counting days. House numbers.
The ball fell to the ground with a final thud and bounced away. “Perimeter!” she cried. “No, no, no!” She grabbed the broken code numbering the houses and began writing numbers beneath. She stared angrily at the page, then swung back to face the room. “It cannot be that easy. All the time we’ve wasted!” She clamped her jaw closed to prevent a string of obscenities from passing her lips. Her promise to her aunt not to swear out loud tied her to home. By now it was only the slenderest of threads, but she wouldn’t cut it.
Abby crossed her arms expectantly while Bob and Arch stared at her, bemused. “You’ve got something, Dutch?” she asked smugly.
Elizabeth took a breath and began to explain, one hand pressed against the side of her head, rubbing her temple. She pointed to the map. “I’ve been staring at the house numbers all day.”
“I know,” joked Abby. She held up the MP3 player. “You’ve been driving us crazy with the soccer ball thing.”
Elizabeth frowned. “It helps me think.” She waved the page in her hand. “So, we had the houses. And then I was charting the number of days between moves.”
Arch shrugged, rubbed his head. “And?”
“We assumed the code you broke was accurate,” Elizabeth said with a frustrated huff.
“It’s not?” Abby asked coolly.
“Well, sort of,” Elizabeth replied. “But if I’m right, we’re six numbers off. Look. The locations make a sort of jagged circle, right?”
Bob nodded.
“We know their last three locations. If we start the house numbers here in the south instead of the north . . .” She pointed at the map and changed the numbering. “They match up.” They all stared at the numbers, then at her. “It’s not random,” Elizabeth insisted. She wrote out a 6, then, to the left of that number, wrote a 4. “First, they stayed for six days in house four.”
“Match up to what?” Arch asked.
Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow at him and jabbed a finger at the map. “Then eight days, here, in what would now be house three.” She wrote those numbers in, right to left.
“Then two more days in house three,” she added. On the board, she had now written the number 323846.
“What are you doing, Dutch?” Bob asked impatiently in his gravelly baritone.
Elizabeth turned to face him. “They needed a simple key, one that even their dimmest members could use, right?” she hissed, her face contorted with exasperation. She was furious she hadn’t seen it sooner. The hostages could be home by now. She could be home by now. “One that could be easily looked up online without tipping anyone off if they forgot it.” She pointed at Arch and proffered the final clue. “Like under the guise of a math lesson?” His lips parted slightly.
Abby’s eyes traced the string of six numbers Elizabeth had written. Once. Twice. Three times. “Oh, for shit’s sake,” she spat, as understanding dawned, and Elizabeth nodded.
“It’s pi,” Arch said with wonder, and rolled his eyes. “Archimedes’s constant. I can’t believe I didn’t see that.”
Elizabeth wrote out the rest of the numbers with a red dry-erase marker on the large white board: 3.14159265358979323846. “It’s just pi,” she confirmed. “Twenty numbers out to the right of the decimal and read backwards.”
Abby closed her eyes briefly. “You were right, Dutch. Twenty lessons, twenty numbers out.”
“The hostages have been here how long?” Elizabeth asked.
“Eighteen days,” Abby immediately replied.
“Okay,” Elizabeth continued. She moved from right to left, counting every other number. “We know where they were hiding when they began. If we label that first house number four and slide all the numbers around on the clock to line up with it, we get this.” She erased the old numbers and replaced them. “They were in house four for six days.”
“Location three is next,” Bob said flatly.
“Eight days, house three, two more days at house three. So six days at house four, plus ten days at house three—that’s sixteen days.” Elizabeth pointed at the map. “They didn’t want to move very far at first, so they only went from house four to house three.” She tapped the house where they knew the hostages had been most recently held. “See? But they’re more confident now.”
Abby’s eyes narrowed. “They thought they had more room to move.” She didn’t sound surprised. She sounded annoyed.
Elizabeth nodded. “The next length of stay is nine days at house seven. That started at day seventeen, so that’s where they are now.”
Abby shook her head and glanced at Bob. “We suspected there was movement yesterday but couldn’t pinpoint it.”
Bob crossed his arms over his chest.
“House seven will take us through day twenty-five,” Elizabeth said. She capped the pen and set it down.
Abby’s expression was transforming with the elation of a difficult puzzle solved. “Stuck your finger in another dyke, little Dutch boy.” She gave Elizabeth a smug look and raised her eyebrows. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
Arch was shaking his head ruefully. “Math lessons,” he said softly.
“Right there in front of us the whole time,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t believe it took me so long.” Her colleagues gaped at Elizabeth’s proclamation. She didn’t notice, just motioned to the map and said confidently, “They’ll be there another week.”
Bob shook his head. “Too long to wait,” he said. He turned to his computer, and soon his fingers were flying across the keyboard.
Abby grabbed her phone. As she waited for the call to connect, she sent her team a gleaming smile. “Seventeen days to solution, boys and girls. Way ahead of deadline.”
A little more than two weeks ago, it looked like Marine hero Elizabeth Bennet and Will Darcy, FORGE CEO and hot billionaire bachelor were a serious item. They were seen together all over the city, and their steamy kiss at the Seeds for Love fundraiser was on everyone’s lips until word spread about the cyber-attack on FORGE later that very night. The attempted breach was stopped, but when the dust settled, Elizabeth Bennet had vanished. Where is everyone’s favorite cyber-security expert now?
“She’s out there doing her job,” grumbled Richard, clicking the screen off and shutting his laptop. He glanced up at Jane who was dressing for work, openly admiring her bare legs.
“I should be off around eleven,” she told him, shaking her head at his blatant leer and yanking on her pants, “but it’s Christmas Eve and you just never know what’s going to come through the door. I’ll call you when I’m actually off.”
He grinned from his position at the room’s small round table. “If they don’t get you out in time for midnight mass, tell Dr. Lucas I’ll come in and toss you over my shoulder.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’ll go over well.”
He eyed her slender neck appreciatively as she put up her hair. “How much longer do you have to do this?” he asked.
“Have to do what?” she asked.
“Work these crazy hours.”
She looked around the room and grabbed her purse. “I love my job, Richard. I have no plans to stop.” She put her hands on her hips. “Still interested?”
He smiled warmly. “Very interested, Dr. Bennet. And very patient.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” she shot back and ducked the pillow he threw at her. “I think you’d better make sure you check out of this room on time,” she responded mischievously. “You need to take a shower and eat some breakfast if you’re going to face Uncle Ed later.”
Richard lifted his eyebrows and stood to collect his clothes. “You think I’d court you without letting your uncle know that I’m serious?”
Jane laughed. “Court me? Is that what you call this?” Suddenly, her forehead crinkled. “Ewww, Richard. You didn’t . . .”
He laughed, a soft, genuine laugh. “I’m still among the living, Ja
ne, so no, I didn’t tell him I was hoping to bed his niece. I did let him infer that we were headed this way.” He bent to pick up his socks.
“I’m not sure that’s much better,” she said doubtfully, staring at him.
Richard met her troubled gaze and winked. “It is. Trust me. There are some things that everyone knows but should never be spoken.”
Jane checked her phone and startled. “Okay, now I’m late.” She picked up her keys. Richard strolled over to her, still clad only in his pajama pants.
“You’re so beautiful when you tease me,” he said, pushing a few stray locks of hair from her face. “And I never have to worry about harmonicas in my car grill or angry generals sending wake-up calls.”
“Or your phone being changed to Chinese?” she asked, all innocence.
He threw his head back. “What a waste. Who knew she could charm a kid who spoke Chinese?”
Jane released a rattling sigh that nearly broke his heart. “I miss her,” she whispered.
Richard held her a little tighter. “I know, sweetheart. I do too.” He shifted to hold her out at arm’s length. “I know you’ve told me what happened when you were kids,” he continued, “but it’s okay to talk to me about now, too.”
She snorted. “Says the Marine who doesn’t talk about anything.”
“Says the Marine whose father required regular visits to the therapist,” he retorted. “I’m very well-adjusted and have appropriate platitudes to offer for every occasion.” He kissed her forehead. “It’s my party trick.”
She placed her cheek on his shoulder, her arms around his waist. “It’s not the worst party trick I’ve ever heard of.”
Her words held the echo of his own thoughts from months ago when he’d first heard Elizabeth’s family story over watery coffee and a plate of greasy eggs in Brussels. Now that he knew the whole of it, from Jane’s perspective at least, Richard thought it a great deal worse than he’d realized. The Bennet girls, he comprehended more fully now, were devoted to one another in part because they were survivors of a shared trauma. Jane—and he suspected, Ed and Maddy Gardiner—still carried some guilt over it. It could have pulled them apart, but Elizabeth’s actions in Meryton had held them together. A Marine from the first, he thought, as he held Jane close, his nose in her hair. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and then pushed her away just a bit.
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