“Nothing.” I swallowed, picking dirt from under my nail. “I’m just not sure what I can help you with. I can’t draw. I can’t read their language. I should probably go and let you do your job.”
“No. Stay,” he said with so much urgency that it was almost comical. It made me smile.
“Why?”
“Because I need your help.”
“You’ll be fine on your own. I didn’t go to school for all this.”
“You don’t have to go to school to do what I do. You have a great talent for memorization, and your attention to detail is astounding.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Yeah. It’s got me so far in my life.”
“Why are you insisting on putting yourself down? You’re the one who pointed out that Augustine used different handwriting in his letters to his sons. And using this cipher now we can read what messages he sent. You discovered the map. And you saw that there was something special about the sketches.”
“Again. Pure luck.”
“It wasn’t pure luck,” Andrew said, his word firm. He picked up Augustine’s book and the stack of letters. “You can help with these. You don’t need to know Spanish to find words corresponding to the numbers.”
“Okay. I can do that,” I said, trying to hold on to my emotions and not let my voice break, as appreciation and excitement blossomed inside of me, not because I could be more helpful, but because Andrew had stood up for me against my judgmental bully, against my worse critic—me.
Andrew took a pencil, then tore the middle pages from his notebook and handed them to me.
“Do you know how an Arnold Cipher works?” he asked.
I leaned back against the foot of the bed, pulled the book closer, and unfolded the first letter, which resembled merchant trade records with one column containing strings of digits separated by periods, and the other column having words separated by commas. “My wild guess is the first number is the page, the second is the line, and the third number is the word in that line.”
Andrew grinned. “You got it.”
An hour later, I was done with my task, but Andrew was still working with letters he’d copied from the sheets, rearranging them and turning dials, then dragging a line across the words and trying again.
“What should I do next?”
He bit his inner check, thinking, then he gave me his iPad. “Thirty-one zero one. Could you research any palaces or ruins of large mansions in Colombia? We need to find where Augustine was building it.”
When I unlocked the iPad, I wasn’t surprised to see a picture of Lulu as his background. She was grinning, one baby tooth missing, face covered in chocolate ice cream. A longing I never imagined I could feel pulled at my heartstrings. “How old is she here?”
Andrew glanced, and his lips turned up. “Five. It was the first time Charlotte had ever left me to look after Lulu on my own. I have never been more nervous in my life than I was on that day. Of course, she’d lived with me since her birth, but Charlotte had always been there. I took Lulu to spend a day in London. We visited the Natural History Museum and then a playground in Kensington Gardens.”
“I’m sure you did just fine. She looks like she had the best day of her life.”
I could only imagine how many women clutched their hearts while watching handsome Andrew playing with a little girl, giving her rides on his broad shoulders in the park.
“We had a good time.” He returned his attention to the page in his hands.
I wondered if he wanted to have a family and kids of his own. He would be a great father, and most likely a perfect husband. I wouldn’t mind one day settling with a decent man, but as for kids, I didn’t want them. Each time I thought of becoming a parent I pictured my own mother. What if I didn’t have what it took to be a mother? My grandparents abandoned her, and she deserted William and me. Seemed to me that the neglecting gene ran in our family. I didn’t want to take a risk. I wouldn’t forgive myself for ruining my kid’s childhood. The iPad went dark. I unlocked it again and tapped on the Safari app.Focus.
Colombia had several palaces, but none of them resembled the sketch. I searched for ruins of historical buildings, and only found two, but the footprint wasn’t large.
Andrew absentmindedly pinched his bottom lip as he stared at his notes. He exhaled sharply, let go of his gorgeous mouth, and scribbled something on the paper.
“Breakthrough?” I asked.
“The earliest message says, ‘The twin bracelet is done.’ The next one is a year later and says, ‘The requested trunk from the Ángel Hermosa has arrived.’ This one says, ‘Vault is ready.’ And the last one says, ‘Stop construction. Pay the agreed price in full. Everyone needs to leave.’ It’s dated a day after Maria died.” He dropped the notebook and groaned, stretching his arms above his head.
“Does this mean there is no palace?”
“I guess not.”
