Page 30 of Crosscurrent

Wade and Tom exchanged a quick look. Cara could guess the rest. So could Gabe, judging from the glare he shot their computer expert. Tom grinned sheepishly, then ignored him.

Agent materialized from somewhere within thirty seconds of Owen sitting down, stepped directly onto his lap, and arranged himself with the serene confidence of a cat who had decided he was worth gracing with his presence.

Owen sneezed. Agent didn’t even startle.

"This is Agent," Cara said. "He chooses people. It's not optional."

Owen looked down at the cat with the expression of a man recalibrating several things at once. He reached for the bottle.

Across the room, Skye was on the workbench with a paper bag of dry oats, eating them with a spoon and reading something on Tom's secondary monitor. She'd been there when Cara came down. She'd probably been there for hours. She had a yoga mat rolled against the wall behind her that told its own story about the night. Cara had offered to share her queen-sized bed, but Skye had been quick to refuse. So it had been her, Owen, and Gabe on the couch in the living room last night.

Owen reached into his jacket pocket and produced an apple. He held it out toward Skye without preamble.

Skye looked at the apple. Then she took it and put it in her own pocket.

Owen blinked. Tom, who had not looked up from the rig, said, "That's actually progress."

Cara was refilling her coffee when she heard Gabe's phone buzz.

She raised her eyebrows, a fraction.

He grimaced. “David and Sophie’ll be getting in this afternoon.”

Cara turned back to her coffee. Gabe wouldn’t like his brother heading back into the line of fire, but David was extraordinary at what he did. So was Sophie, his podcast producer and assistant. And they were coming in with their eyes open. Having been kidnapped during his last investigation, David knew exactly how ruthless Neptune’s operatives could be.

That was both useful and the problem. More help, but also two more people to put into possible danger.

The steel evidence sleeve had been sitting on Tom's secondary station since the night before, combination lock intact. Tom had spent an unspecified portion of the night trying to open it and had reached an impasse he hadn't admitted to yet, but that Cara could read in the specific angle of his shoulders.

"Can I try something?" Owen asked.

Tom swiveled his chair and looked at him.

"The lock," Owen said. "My uncle used the same combination system for everything. I know how he built them."

“Absolutely. Have at it.” Tom pushed the sleeve across the table.

Owen set down his mug. He picked up the sleeve, held it level, and turned the combination dial — left, then right, then left again — with the unhurried concentration of someone doing something from the fingers, not the brain. Three moves. The lock released.

Tom clapped. “Cool.”

"Uncle Ray taught me cryptography through crossword puzzles," Owen said. "Starting when I was about twelve. I thought it was just — I thought it was how he was. He liked puzzles." He set the sleeve down carefully. "I don't think it was a hobby."

Skye stopped chewing. "No. It was not."

Owen opened the notebook.

It was hand-coded — Ray's cramped writing, but the words weren't words. Strings of letters and numbers in groups, occasionally interspersed with what looked like regular text but wasn't. Tom leaned forward and photographed three pages before Owen had finished his first pass.

"It's layered," Owen said. "The outer bit looks like nonsense. The inside piece looks like correspondence. But the actual content is in a third pass." He turned a page. "He used a different anchor key for each section. I'd need some time."

"How much time?" Gabe asked.

"Depends on how clever he decided to get." Owen turned back to the beginning and scanned the opening page. His expression shifted.

"What?" Tom said.

"Give me a minute." Owen set the notebook flat on the table and worked through it quietly, his finger moving along the lines. Nobody talked. Agent sneezed, which Owen ignored.