“How very clear of you, Vasily,” I tell him dryly. “Please, be as vague as you possibly can, it thrills me.”
Vas grunts his amusement, his eyes shining. “Could it be another cypher?”
“If it is, then it isn’t with this book.” I gesture to the battered and bloodied copy ofThe Hobbiton my desk. “There aren’t thirteen paragraphs on page nine, and she wouldn’t have mixed up the cipher.”
The man before me taps his chin lightly as he contemplates what to say next. “What if it is a date?” he wonders aloud. “What if the numbers are mixed up. Instead of September of 2022, what if it’s September of 2013?”
“We’d have to assume that whatever it was took place in Seattle,” I point out. “There would be too much data to go through if we included every event that happened that year worldwide.”
Silence falls over us.
One would think that the six digits are a passcode of sorts. Or a password. However, a password for a bank account wouldn’t be simply numbers. It would need to contain letters as well. The passcode theory is applicable, but only if it’s for verification. If she’s pointing me to a lock box then she would have needed to lead me to a key, not a bank code.
What is Libby up to?
“Here.” Vas’s deep voice interrupts my thoughts. When I look up from where my eyes are glued to my desk, he’s standing in front of it, holding out a whiskey-filled tumbler. Not my favorite, but I’ll take it.
“Thanks,” I murmur, taking the glass from him. The ice clinks around in the glass, sounding heavy in the enclosed space.
“I love how you redecorated,” Vas drawls as he looks around. “It’s really you.” The teasing smile he holds at the edge of his lips is infectious. His bright eyes light up when I smile at him from behind my glass.
“Couldn’t really bring myself to touch anything,” I admit. “There’s this…gut feeling I have that says he’ll be back. Stupid, I know, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to change anything.”
“Ava—” Vas begins hesitantly.
“Pfft.” I wave him off. “I know it’s stupid. Just humor me, okay? I’ll get around to changing it sooner or later, but right now…right now—” I let out an inaudible sigh and shrug. “I just like how it makes me feel.”
“And how is that?”
“Like at any moment he’ll walk through that door.”
Except he won’t.
He’s dead.
Vas sighs. It’s deep and sad. Leaning back in his chair, his ankle crosses over his opposite knee as he says, “I know what you mean. I’ve been going through the reports on his laptop and feel like I’m snooping.”
“What reports?” I ask curiously.
“We keep all of our dealings on an encrypted black box that’s nestled just inside the laptop,” Vas explains. “Unless someone takes the laptop apart piece by piece, no one would ever know it’s there. Plus, it’s linked directly into a program. So as long as youinsert the right username and passcode, it leads you to the box. Any other combination takes you through the dummy program. It allows the operation to keep everything off paper as well as making sure there isn’t any electronic trace either.”
That has me stunned. It’s pretty advanced thinking for the mafia. Not even Hollywood movies have come up with that.
“When you say dealings,” I question, leaning forward in my seat. “Do you mean like the Bratva’s black book?” Vas nods.
Snapping my fingers excitedly, I stand, the chair rolling out from beneath me and hitting the shelves at my back. “That’s it,” I exclaim, rushing from the room.
“What’s it?” Vas trails behind me, hot on my tail.
“Libby mentioned snagging a few of Elias’s black books from his office when you took her back for some of her things,” I tell him, pushing the door to Libby’s old room open. “I went through her room, and I never found anything.”
“I can sense a but coming,” Vas sighs.
“But—” I keep going, ignoring his snide remark. “If you all managed to think about having everything electronically, so would Libby. She was nothing like Mark, but Libby knew her way around a computer. What if she translated everything electronically and locked it up.”
The lightbulb goes off in Vas’s brain. His shoulders straighten and a feral smile crawls across his face. “Damn, she was smart.”
“No doubt.”
