Infected (8 page)

And with that she put the key in the lock and turned it.

The door didn’t open.

She twisted the knob, jimmying the key, but after a second Tanner put his hand on her arm. “Wait,” he said quietly. “Look at this.”

In the center of the door the edge of the offset square Carina had felt with her fingertips was now visible. As she watched, the almost-invisible gap widened to an eighth of an inch, then a quarter, accompanied by a faint electronic whine. A panel that had been painted to match the door was slowly sliding back, disappearing into the wood. Whatever was underneath the hollowed-out section faintly glowed.

“It’s a touch-screen panel,” Tanner muttered. As the section that had covered it slid the rest of the way into the door, it revealed a screen that was black except for a single sentence in the center:

The Count of Harewood bids you CHOOSE wisely
.

“Oh wow,” Carina exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hand. “It really was him. Walter did this.”

“
The Count of Harewood?
Who the heck is that?”

“Not
who
, but
what
. It’s a classic cryptanalysis problem,” Carina said. “A variation on the multi-alphabet Beaufort cipher. Walter taught it to me when I was in grade school. When he came over for Thanksgiving one year, he taught
me how to solve it while we waited for the turkey to be ready.”

“Huh … most people would have probably settled for a game of Chutes and Ladders.”

“Yeah, well … not my family. It was the same Thanksgiving my mom put the turkey in the oven while it was still frozen. After four hours there was still ice in the middle. She was totally stressed. We ended up eating Bagel Bites.” Solving the Beaufort cipher that day had been the first time Carina understood how much she loved deciphering puzzles, but she didn’t tell Tanner that because a lump was forming in her throat and this was not the time to lose her composure. Her mother had stayed in the kitchen most of that afternoon, on the phone with the Butterball hotline, insisting there had to be
something
they could suggest to fix her ruined meal. She had invited a few interns who worked with her and Walter, and they drank Bloody Marys and polished off an entire cheese tray from the grocery store, watching football on TV and gossiping about people they knew from work. Only Walter had paid any attention to Carina, who had worn her favorite brown corduroy jumper and a turtleneck printed with pumpkins for the occasion.

Even then, she’d longed for a normal family. She wasn’t entirely sure what it would look like, but from her friends’ lives she gathered that moms cooked for days leading up to the celebration and dads threw footballs around in the backyard with their kids before standing at the head of the table carving the turkey and saying grace.

It wasn’t that she wanted any of those things—she
wouldn’t know how to play football and she wasn’t particularly religious—but her friends, even those who complained about their strict parents and annoying siblings, all seemed to know that they
belonged
. That they were a part of something bigger than just themselves. And Carina hadn’t felt that way for as long as she could remember. Yes, she was a daughter, a niece, and she knew that her mother and uncle loved her. But it was as if they were all planets whose orbits never touched, and Carina would have gladly given up some of the autonomy her friends envied to have someone to go home to, to eat her meals with, even to bicker with.

“So, he wants you to translate the word
choose
, I take it?” Tanner said, bringing her back to the moment. “Do you remember how?”

“Of course I do,” Carina said. “Now hush.”

Tanner was silent while she worked it out in her head. It was complicated, and she had to close her eyes and envision the grid, counting down and across in her imagination to translate each letter, taking into account the one that followed. As she figured out each one, she typed it into the keypad, forcing herself not to rush, hoping the screen wouldn’t time out. There was no telling what would happen if she guessed wrong; Walter might have programmed a lockout in the event of missed guesses.

As she typed the last letter, holding her breath, the screen went blank and there was a faint mechanical click as the door opened of its own accord.

“Damn.” Tanner whistled softly through his teeth.

“Impressive, right?” Carina couldn’t help feeling pleased
with herself, as well as relieved. The door had opened only an inch or two, not far enough to see into the room, but Carina was no longer as leery, knowing that Walter had left the puzzle in the door for her alone. The panel was already closing, sliding back into its camouflage, and Carina slipped the key out of the lock and put it back in her pocket.

“Let me go in first,” Tanner said, stepping in front of her.

Carina knew he was trying to protect her, but she was the one who had dragged him into this mess and if something dangerous waited for them, she wasn’t about to let him face it alone. She followed close behind as he pushed the door open and entered the room.

It was a small space, illuminated only by the lights from the street that penetrated the thin drapes, neon flashes blinking into the gloom of a tiny studio apartment. It was too dark to make out any details. Carina felt around on the wall for a light switch, and seconds later the room glowed from the light of a single lamp sitting on a battered dresser.

They were alone. A tiny bathroom opened off one wall, but there was no shower curtain, and thankfully no one lurking behind the door. A twin bed frame held a narrow mattress and a neatly folded stack of linens; Carina crouched down and peered underneath just to make sure, but no one hid there. A cheap-looking bookcase held bottled water and packaged nonperishable food.

Tanner shut the door behind them and stood in the middle of the room, hands behind his back, as though worried about disturbing anything.

“Your uncle’s home away from home?” he said dubiously. “Doesn’t really seem like his style.”

Carina laughed. It felt good to let out some of the tension. “Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to remodeling yet.”

The house she’d shared with Walter had been a grown-up geek bachelor’s wonderland: lots of minimalist furniture and expensive electronics, a few houseplants and prints of bridges and skyscrapers. It was obsessively clean and uncluttered. This room was also free of clutter, containing only the bed, dresser, bookcase, and a small desk with a chair, but it was so austere as to be almost jail-like. Whatever Walter had intended the room for, it wasn’t comfort.

But he had left his mark in other ways.

The door, for instance. It had closed behind them with barely a sound, gliding shut on some unseen mechanism. Walter had not only fitted the door with the device hidden inside, but also replaced the hinges so it wouldn’t slam and draw attention.

The interior of the room also looked unremarkable, but as Carina looked around more carefully, she noticed a few other things.

The windows were barred—from the
inside
, with a grid that looked too lightweight to do the job—until she spotted the wires leading into the wall. A note taped above read
DON
’
T TOUCH
.

Carina had to turn away from the familiar handwriting, which made Walter’s presence in the room achingly real. Why hadn’t he told her about this place? Why hadn’t he trusted her with his fears?

There were two items on the desk: a small disposable phone and a black backpack. The phone was brand-new and the backpack was sleek and expensive-looking. Carina
put her hand on the backpack, giving it an experimental shove.

“So, you don’t think if I open this thing, it’ll make the room explode or something?” Carina joked nervously.

“Not if your uncle left it for you. I mean … seems like he went to a lot of trouble to make sure you were the only person who could get in here. So I’m guessing that’s for you.”

Carina bit her lip and nodded. Yet again it seemed like she only had one course of action, and it didn’t involve caution. She picked up the backpack and carried it to the bed, sitting cross-legged with her back against the headboard. Unzipping the main compartment, she pulled out a laptop, which she set down carefully in front of her. In an outer pocket was an envelope with her name on it in Walter’s handwriting, identical to the envelope that had contained the key.

Tanner sat down next to her. “You okay to open that?” he asked softly.

Carina only nodded. She tore open the envelope and upended it on the bed.
Another
key, taped to a piece of paper that was filled with nonsensical text.

And an enormous stack of cash secured with a rubber band.

“How much
is
that?” Tanner asked as Carina flipped through the stack of twenties and hundreds.

“I don’t know—a lot. More than we need for anything I can think of.”

She handed it to Tanner and picked up the paper. The key was small, the numeral
47
stamped on its orange plastic barrel-shaped head.

“This looks like a locker key. Like the ones used at airports.”

Carina stared at the text on the paper. The first line contained only a single word:
AKIYAMA
. Below it was the phrase
Softie’s favorite flavor
, followed by a sentence composed of more nonsense words.

“ ‘Softie’s favorite flavor,’ ” Tanner muttered, reading over her shoulder. “Please tell me this isn’t a hallucination.”

“No, it’s just … Akiyama’s a simple columnar transposition with an offset.”

“A
what
?”

“It’s a kind of code where you take the letters of the message and offset them by a particular interval in the alphabet, and then put them in a specific sequence in a table, where the other table elements are random.”

“Oh. Well, that clarifies things, thanks,” Tanner said, rolling his eyes. “And
Softie
 …?”

“Softie was my teddy bear when I was little. Now be quiet so I can concentrate.”

She stared at the table of letters while Tanner counted the stack of bills. Something was nagging at her brain, a faint memory involving Uncle Walter and the much-loved, ragged bear she’d dragged around with her until she was six.

Solving an Akiyama code was easy if you knew the key word, but Carina couldn’t figure out Walter’s hint. She wasn’t surprised he’d used Softie, since the bear had been her constant companion for so long and Walter had pretended to talk to it, asking the stuffed animal if he’d had a good day at bear school, if he thought he should wear shoes in the house, if he’d like a snack—

“Barbecue!”
Carina exclaimed.

“Uh …”

“Softie. His favorite flavor was barbecue. Whenever Uncle Walter babysat me, he always had potato chips at his house, and he let me choose what kind, except he pretended to ask Softie and …”

Her voice trailed off as she found a pen in the little drawer of the desk. “I think I know how to solve this.”

“Good. You go ahead and do that. I’m not feeling great. I’m about to die from starvation. You translate and I’ll just fan myself with this stack of two thousand dollars and eat one of these.” He picked up a small white package from the shelf. “ ‘Datrex Emergency Food Ration Bar. High energy value. Non-thirst-provoking.’ Yum.”

Carina glanced up. “Did you say two
thousand
?”

“Yeah.” Tanner grinned. “Any chance you want to go to Vegas?”

“Uh … considering our luck so far today, I think I’ll pass.”

As Tanner tore the foil off the bar and took a bite, Carina wrote out the grid on the bottom of the piece of paper.

“Hmm,” he said, chewing. “This tastes like wood shavings.”

Carina ignored him and began translating the characters, one at a time. In moments she had the answer: “It says Civic Center BART. This key must be to a locker in the station.”

Tanner looked disappointed. “Seriously? Why not just put whatever he wanted you to have in this room? Since he made sure you were the only person who’d be able to get into it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe … an extra level of precaution. I mean, it’s obvious he thinks this is worth the effort.”

“I guess. Listen … I was thinking, I’m starving, and here we are in the middle of, like, fifty restaurants in a few square blocks. And whatever’s in that locker, it’s still going to be
there in an hour or two, right? So why don’t I go out and get us something to eat. That okay with you?”

Carina hesitated. Now that she’d found the next step in Walter’s trail of clues, she wanted to move on to it. But she too was ravenous, and the low-level jitteriness was getting worse, probably because she hadn’t eaten. Or maybe it was some lingering effect from whatever was in the dart; her heart seemed to be beating more quickly than usual, and she had the urge to get up and pace or stretch, anything to move her body. Food might settle that feeling as well, and
real
food sounded a lot more appetizing than the square cube that Tanner had eaten.

“I guess we could eat, only maybe I should go. You’re better with computers—could you stay here and see what’s on the laptop?”