Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
W
illow looked across Rafe’s office at a brisk knock on the door. A second later, his assistant opened it, giving them an apologetic smile. “Sheriff, sorry to interrupt, but there’s another gentleman here who says he needs to see you urgently.”
“He won’t mind, trust me.”
Willow swiveled around in her chair as Blaine strode past the woman into the room.
“Hey, man.” Rafe stood and held out his hand, a big grin on his face. “You get your deal done?”
Blaine nodded but didn’t say anything, waiting until the assistant shut the door behind her before speaking. “Got something for you.”
“Maddy came through?”
“She did.”
Rafe banged his palm on his desk. “Yeah, thatta girl. What’d she say?”
Blaine bent over between her and Tripp and put his phone on the center of the desk for everyone to see. He smelled amazing. Was hella good-looking and charming.
But he still didn’t hold a candle to Tripp. No one could as far as she was concerned, and that was the problem. Because for some stupid reason he seemed set on keeping them firmly within the friend zone. Exasperating, soul-crushingly sexy man.
“She ran it through whatever terrifying things she uses on her scary custom laptop, and cracked it fast. She said we were looking at it all wrong.”
“Wrong how?” Willow asked.
“They’re not letters. They’re numbers.” Blaine swiped to the next screenshot, showing the list of code translated into columns of numbers.
She leaned closer, fascinated and disappointed. “Ah, hell, why didn’t I think of that?”
“You would’ve eventually,” Tripp said. His confidence in her was heartening. “We asked Maddy because we’re in a hurry.”
“So what do they mean?” She still couldn’t make sense of any of them.
The numbers in the first column were slightly shorter than the ones in the column beside it.
The numbers in the second column all began with the same few digits.
“Are they code for letters?” Maybe whoever had dreamed this up had added an extra layer to help protect the code.
“Mads doesn’t think so. She said she’d take another look when she got back to her rental later, but that won’t be for at least another few hours,” Blaine said.
They were all silent for a few minutes as they tried to puzzle it out. Willow mentally tried different letters for each number, trying to see if anything formed words. “I’m not having any luck with letters. Anyone else?”
“Nope,” Tripp said, and the others shook their heads.
Okay, so maybe they were making this more complex than it actually was. Back to numbers themselves, looking for something more basic. “Could that first column be dates?”
“Damn, yeah,” Rafe said, bracing both hands on the desk to look at the phone. “It’s so obvious now. Starting a couple months ago. Do they correspond to the dates the book was checked in and out of the library?”
“I can find out.” Willow called the library and asked Beth to pull up the information so they could double check.
“No,” she said when she got off the phone, pushing the written list she’d just jotted down on a piece of paper into the middle for everyone to see.
“They don’t match. But the numbers listed are in between the check-in and check-out dates. ”
“Second column could be bank accounts,” Blaine said.
“Maybe,” Rafe said, but he didn’t look or sound convinced.
Tripp had his phone out, busy typing something into it. “They’re coordinates.”
Everyone looked at him. “You sure?” Rafe asked.
“Positive.” He turned his phone around, showing a map. “The red dot corresponds to the first number of the second column. I only did the first three, but they all came up as locations on the island.”
Rafe quickly pulled up a digital map on his computer and angled the screen for them to see. “Read ’em out, and I’ll mark them on here.”
Blaine took his phone back and began reading them out. One by one, red dots began populating the map on Rafe’s screen. More than two dozen locations, scattered across the island.
When they were done, Rafe enlarged the map to zoom in on a series of dots clustered around a particular area. “This is a forested area off the main highway leading up into the hills.” He zoomed back out, shifted the map down. Zoomed in again. “And this one...”
“Is in the woods behind my house,” Willow said, shock ripping through her. “So these are all potential weapons cache locations?” That was...alarming.
“Could be.”
“If that’s true, there could be more to this,” Blaine said in a grim tone. “A local councilman mentioned a possible locally organized militia operating on the island. If it’s true, maybe this is linked to them.”
“Yeah, that’s news to me.” Rafe whipped up his phone and dialed someone. “Who’s the head librarian?” he asked her.
“Beth,” she answered, struggling to process all of this. If they were right, if this was related to the militia... She could be in more danger than she’d imagined.
“This is Sheriff Torres. I need to speak to Beth, please.” He waited. “Hi, Beth. I’m at the station with Willow right now, working on an investigation. I’m going to need all the information you have for everyone who’s checked out that book she asked you about for the past six months.”
Willow glanced at Tripp, who was still studying the marked map with Blaine. This was worse than she could have imagined. A rogue militia here on Skelly? Packing that kind of firepower? If those locations marked the site of more caches, it was like they were preparing for war.
“About eighty-percent of the locations are inland,” Tripp murmured, “but the few near the coast are close to private property. Isn’t this one near the edge of the parcel you just closed on?” he asked Blaine, pointing to a dot on the western coast not far from Shipwreck Cove.
Blaine reached out and hit some keys to zoom in closer, expression grim. “Not near it. Inside it.”
Rafe ended the call. “She’s going to pull everything up and email it to me. What’ve you got?” he asked them.
“This location is near the marine research station,” Blaine said. “It’s part of the parcel we just closed on.”
“I’ll head over and check it out.” He got on his radio to one of his deputies.
“I’ll go with you,” Blaine said.
“Keep Willow with you until I know what’s going on,” Rafe said to Tripp.
“Won’t let her out of my sight.” Tripp wrapped a solid arm around her shoulders and guided her out of the office after them.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he escorted her to his truck.
“Home. Where I know you’ll be safe until we find out what the hell’s going on.”