Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-three
The ciphertext, a string of symbols and numbers,
decodes to the cleartext
When I’ve solved it, I let out a whoop and sit back in the small dining chair at Xhan and Luca’s table in the apartment.
“Nicely done,” Dane says, beaming that wide, full smile that makes every cell in my body take notice.
He’s been sitting with me the whole time, not pushing, just passing me water or fresh slips of paper.
And I’m thrilled. It was a tricky one, and my dad would have whooped and danced, an exuberant reaction he saved only for puzzle solving—and especially when I solved them.
“I’m just glad it wasn’t a polyalphabetic cipher using multiple substitutions with different rules.” I sigh, feeling the strain in my shoulders and eyes.
“Right.” There’s laughter in his voice. “Whatever that means. And that it was in English, not French.”
I worried about that too, but the text over the rabbit, A TEST OF YOUR SAGACITY, was in English, so I was fairly confident the solution would be too.
His hand runs over my upper back, kneading the tight muscles there.
I lean back into it. It’s just us in the small apartment.
It’s the first time we’ve been alone since the kiss.
I’m trying to think how to bring it up, if I should at all.
That kiss is like a coating on everything we say and do.
For me, anyway. But Dane moves his hand and the moment passes.
He gets up and goes into the small kitchen to rinse glasses.
I stretch my exhausted muscles. I gingerly press my wrist brace to ease the throbbing.
“You should lie down for a bit,” Dane says. “Xhan and Luca won’t be back for a while, so take advantage of the quiet.”
I nod. “I think I will.”
He says nothing as I head into the small bedroom and close the door behind me. Was part of me hoping he’d come with me? Yes, if I’m admitting things to myself. I close my eyes, but as usual, sleep doesn’t come.
After tossing and turning for what feels like an eternity, I pull out my phone and check email instead.
I’m unsurprised to find a message from Eric, sent yesterday, asking about my well-being and offering help if I need it, and requesting that I please reply and tell him where I am so he can rest easily.
The fact that he thinks these words could possibly fool me is absurd.
I’m so glad I’m done with him romantically and professionally.
I keep thinking about his behavior—not just in Madrid but everywhere, always.
Even on our flight from San Francisco, he was obnoxious to the flight attendants.
I feel a lightness at the fact that it’s all behind me. I delete his email.
I hear voices in the other room—Luca and Xhan are back. They’re excited, animated. I get up and open the door.
Xhan’s face explodes into a smile when she sees me. “Oh, see!” She shoves Dane. “Zoe, I was trying to tell Dane to wake you up!”
Dane has a fixed set to his jaw that suggests he was resisting this order.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I wasn’t able to sleep.”
“Want some wine? Water? A snack? Drugs?” Luca asks me.
“Stop fussing,” Xhan tells him. She looks at me. “You’re going to Edinburgh, Scotland.”
“What?” I ignore a pang of hurt that I was excluded from that decision. Up until now I’ve actively been involved in the puzzle solutions.
“Dane told us the text you decoded,” Xhan says. “It’s Arthur’s Seat. The solution to the puzzle. Arthur’s Seat is a mountain in Edinburgh. We’re not yet sure what ‘OSBM’ is, but we’re pretty sure it’s a trig point.”
“A trig point?”
“Triangulation stations,” Luca says. “They’re old, predating GPS and satellite mapping. Usually in the form of a physical marker of some sort. There aren’t many left and mostly only noted by people into such things. We like to include them on our maps at Swisstopo.” He grins.
“Like geocaching?” I ask, darting a look at Dane. He’s watching me, arms folded.
“Yes, but without a treasure or notes,” Luca says. “People just like to ‘bag’ the markers, or post somewhere that they found them. Finding the marker is the game for them.”
“Except our game does feature treasure, so maybe this one has it.” I look at Dane, who is still watching me. Could we be close to the finish? We’ll exit this horrible game, get the prize, and go home.
Go our separate ways.
I find that part of me wants to keep going with Dane.
“Whatever you find at the trig point will be the fifth and final puzzle,” Luca says. “It’s always the most challenging.”
“What about the ‘Sunshine on Leith’ part?” I ask.
“According to the internet, Sunshine on Leith is a movie, and also an old Proclaimers song,” Xhan says. “We’re not yet sure how that fits, except that Leith is an area in Edinburgh.”
I sigh and sit down. I look at Dane. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know yet,” he says. “I don’t know what it means. But we’re booked on the first flight tomorrow morning to Scotland.”
“So tonight’s your last night in Paris, and you have time to relax,” Xhan says.
“Let’s go to the little restaurant in Montmartre.
” She looks at Luca. “The chef there loves him. No one will expect us, and anyway I’ve already parked the car farther down on Rue Lepic.
” She looks at Luca. “See? Told you it was a good idea to leave it there. We can take a long route to the restaurant and do the Uber, bus, train thing again to avoid any tracking.”
Dane shakes his head, but Xhan punches his biceps. “Come on. It’s our last night.”
“I think it’ll be okay,” Luca says. “Nothing happened to us in the park today. No one has come here.”
Dane nods, relenting. I have to admit I’m pleased at the idea of a Parisian dinner out with them.
Xhan has us take a circuitous series of transportation until finally we walk down a gorgeously narrow street where the shops have quaint window displays. Dane is quiet as we go.
I let Luca and Xhan pull ahead a bit and ask him, “What are you thinking? Are you worried about the tracking?”
“That, and other things.”
I nod. There have been many things to constantly worry about as we’ve progressed through the challenge.
“But I’m relieved you figured out the puzzle,” he adds. “And I’m glad we’ve gotten this far. Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I’m not okay. I want to kiss him again. I want to stop in this street and kiss him exactly like we did in the Louvre.
“I thought you seemed a little out of sorts earlier, when Xhan and Luca came back to the apartment. I thought you might be upset that we figured out the Scotland part without you.”
I’m touched that he picked up on that. That he’s tuned into me enough to know. “It’s okay. I like them. I like…working together.”
“Good,” he says, and there’s weight in the word. Relief. Maybe satisfaction. And I get it: He’s shared who he loves with me, and I like them back.
The night air is warm, and the lights cast a romantic glow over the cobblestones as we walk up a hill, then stop at a little restaurant on a small side street.
Rich smells float out, pulling us in. Luca and Xhan know the restaurant’s owner, Frédéric-Paul, who comes out to greet us with a stream of delighted-sounding French and then gestures for us to sit at what I gather is the best table by the way he insists on it to his waiter.
Moments after we’re seated, wine arrives.
It’s a Lalande-de-Pomerol, which Luca says is his favorite and that Frédéric-Paul always remembers.
“He adores you,” Xhan says.
“What’s not to adore?” Dane says, taking a sip of the silky red. Despite his earlier admission of being worried, the lines of strain on his face have disappeared. I sneak little glances, pleased that he’s able to relax. “Luca is the best of us.”
“Oh yes,” Luca laughs, his warm guffaw filling the small restaurant. “Frédéric-Paul tried to marry me off to his daughter until he realized I belong to Xhan.”
“His daughter is a ballerina,” Xhan tells me. “It was a tempting offer.”
“She was probably quite flexible,” Luca says, leaning over to kiss Xhan’s neck.
“You should have taken him up on it.” She laughs.
The food is ridiculously good and easily the best meal I’ve had in ages, even counting the tapas in Barcelona.
I have épaule de cochon du Perche, cidre et pommes, which is an impossibly tender pork shoulder in an apple-cider glaze, and Dane offers me a bite of his b?uf bourguignon au lard fumé, a heavenly beef stew with smoked bacon.
Luca keeps us laughing with stories of how he’s made friends with all the restaurant owners in the eighteenth.
We go through another bottle of wine, this time a gamay Beaujolais red with a fresh, fruity aftertaste that goes beautifully with the meat.
It’s easy to forget that people are following us, easy to forget the stakes of this game if we fail.
Forgetting is a luxury, and I’m bathing in it right now.
By the end of the meal two hours later, our table is a mess and Dane’s arm is stretched across the back of our chairs behind me.
It takes effort not to lean into him. I’m not drunk, but I’m full.
We depart the restaurant with profuse thanks to Frédéric-Paul and heartfelt promises to return as soon as possible.
We amble down the little lane, and when I trip on a cobblestone, Dane takes my arm.
He keeps his hand on mine long after I’m steady.
I’m happy. Content. It’s the pleasure of a good meal and excellent company that does it, but it’s also something more, something we’re not going to talk about.
This thing between us is growing every moment, but we’re moving so quickly through the days and there’s no time for reflection.
We make our way to where Xhan preparked her car on a narrow street, laughing at something Luca says, past little brightly colored shops with beautiful window arrangements, and I can’t help but think that this is pretty wonderful.