“Why Charlotte?”
Samira looked out the window—atthe window. The glass was so foggy they could be parked in a cloud. “Maybe they needed her security expertise—though to be frank, I’m more experienced at this kind of stuff. Or maybe her access. Damn him.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh God, that’s the wrong thing to say about a dead person.”
Jamie rubbed her shoulder. “When you say ‘communicating’... How?”
“You can leave clues and notes for each other. It’s a big part of the game—encrypting and hiding messages.” The phone had switched to screen saver. She swiped it. “Charlotte’s picture... I need to get into that world...”
“Then do it. Just...don’t forget to breathe.”
She forced herself to slowly inhale and exhale as the world loaded. She pointed to the screen—hills, fields, flowers, house. “Does that look familiar?”
“Honestly, I didn’t look too closely at the picture.”
“Charlotte added this house three days ago.” She swiped the screen and flew through the door. “I hate playing this game on a phone. There, look.”
He shuffled closer, his thigh touching hers. Against one wall sat a wooden treasure chest. A silver-haired man in a suit stood guard, flashing a big smile. “Doeshelook familiar?”
“Hyland? Is that the—what do you call it—avatarof Erebus?”
“No, he’s a guardian of treasure. He’s not a player in the game. Charlotte has created him.”
“Treasure? As in a place to hide damning intel? Could she have hidden the documents inside?”
Samira frowned. “You can’t upload files to the game but something must be in there that Charlotte wants me to find—and only me.” She checked the page history again. “Erebus has been in here but hasn’t opened the vault.”
“Something?The something Charlotte brought you to London for?”
“Charlotte was last on here fourteen minutes before she posted the picture on social media.”
“So maybe she knew Hyland’s people were coming for her and quickly left a message.”
“Then hurriedly drew the picture and posted it, to direct me here.”
“Can we get into this treasure chest?”
She clicked on it. “It’s asking for a username and password.”
“The suspense is killing me.”
“There’s writing on it.” She zoomed in. “Two strings of characters.”
“The username and password?” Jamie said, hope lifting his voice.
“Possibly, but it’s in a code we devised when we were at university. A simple keyword cipher. Each letter is swapped for another, basically.”
“Was that for a paper?”
“Just for fun. Told you I was wild back then.”
She decoded it and keyed in the solution. A metallic clunk, and the chest squealed open, revealing a basement. Samira’s breath stalled as she dived in and did a three-sixty.
“It’s empty,” Jamie said. “Maybe she ran out of time.”
“She had time enough to build the house and do some interior decoration. If she was in a hurry, we have to assume that everything in here is relevant. She’s just being cautious.”
“No kidding.”
Samira zoomed in on a picture hanging on the wall—a mountain peeping above a cloud, in an elaborate gold frame. “The cloud—maybe these documents are on a cloud server. And the mountain...” She smiled as she figured it out. “Huh.”
