The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (44 page)

“But that’s it, Mom! That’s the
piece we’re missing! We keep telling each other this is the strangest
encryption we’ve ever seen, but we haven’t stopped to think about
why
it
is so strange. We should have realized that it makes absolutely no sense to
have a constantly changing encryption code on a device like a phone whose very
purpose is to
share data
with others.”

“I’m not terribly interested in
Renata’s motivations, Jill.”

“But we should be! Don’t you get
it, Mom? We are talking about
a phone
, a device of communication! If the
encryption string is always changing, you can’t communicate with anyone! Every
voicemail you send, every text, every email—it would all be encrypted with a
string the other party wouldn’t have. They wouldn’t be able to decode it. No
one would ever hear what you’re trying to say to them!”

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s the
case. Unless somehow they were sharing the software that creates the
encryption. But I’ve looked for that already. Renata’s phone isn’t sending
those kinds of strings to anyone.”

“She doesn’t have to send them.
She and Falkon are
meeting online
and creating the encryption codes
together.”

“Meeting? What are you talking
about Jill? Where are they meeting?”

“The activity log for Renata’s
phone,” Jill said. “Not the encrypted part, but the decoy. What kind of stuff
is she doing on the decoy phone she set up to fool us?”

“She’s doing all the normal
things you do with your phone,” said Carolyn. “I’ve looked through all of this,
Jill. There is nothing suspicious. She sends texts and emails. She has phone
conversations. She plays games.”

“What kind of games, Mom?”

“She seems to prefer chess.”

“The other night you told me
that only a few capital letters were ever appearing in the encryption. What
were they again?”

“B, R, N, Q, and K,” Carolyn
rattled off.

“Bishop, rook, knight, queen,
and king,” Jill said.

“What? But the other letters.
The numbers?”

“Come with me, Mom.”

Jill grabbed her mom by the hand
and dragged her down the hall.

“Where are you taking me?”
Carolyn shrieked.

“To your bedroom. I want you to
have a look at your quilt.”

“At my quilt?”

“Yes, Mom,” Jill said as they
arrived in the bedroom. Jill left her mom at the foot of the bed and walked
around the side. “Imagine this is a chessboard,” she said. “If you wanted to
record the moves of a game, say, if you were a computer program that needed to
keep track of who moved which pieces where, how would you do it?”

“Well, I’d turn the board into a
grid, I suppose,” said Carolyn. “You could assign a unique identity to each square
based on its row and column…”

And then it clicked. Jill saw it
in her eyes.

“A through H, one through
eight,” Carolyn whispered.

Jill ran her fingers along the
top of the quilt. “If you moved your queen to the square in row E, column eight--”

“The computer would record
Q-e-8,” Carolyn said.

“And if you needed to share a
constantly evolving encryption string with someone else--”

“You would meet them online and
play chess,” said Carolyn. “Let’s get to work.”

For all the weeks of constant
annoyance she provided Jill, for all the nagging, the strange hours, the rude,
exhausting diatribes about focus and discipline, for all the utterly strange
behavior that was the hallmark of Carolyn Wentworth not only since Tarin freed
her mind, but for as long as Jill had known her, it was still an absolute joy
for Jill to watch her mother work.

Once Carolyn knew exactly what
it was she had to do, there was no one better. Carolyn’s fingers soared across
the keyboard so fast Jill could hardly read the code as she composed it
onscreen. Layers of complex algorithms, nested one atop another, and never once
did Carolyn make a mistake, or even a typo.

In less than an hour, she had
written a program that followed Renata’s chess game online, wrote down the
moves of the pieces in a constantly evolving log of letters and numbers, and
used that log to decode the hidden partition in Renata’s phone.

Carolyn loaded her program onto
the laptop, ran it, and they were in. The sound of Renata’s voice came
streaming through the speakers on the laptop. On the screen were the words
Phone
Call With Falkon Dillinger
.

So you’re telling me the girl
erased everything?
came Renata’s voice
.

“Everything,” said Falkon.
“Sergio let her out, she broke into the computer stack--”

“How the hell did she break into
the computer stack?”

“She knew the code. I don’t know
how she could possibly know the code, but then again, I don’t know how she knew
to do any of what she did. She was completely ready for us.”

“Almost like they planned it,”
Renata said. “Do you think she and Sergio planned it?”

“If they did, it would be the
boldest, strangest plan I’ve ever heard of.”

“So what now? How do we get the
data back?”

“We don’t,” said Falkon. “The
way she erased it cut to the core of our operation. She didn’t just erase our
data, she wiped out the entire computer system.”

“She needs to bring it back,”
Renata said. “Make her talk and get her to bring it back!”

“I’ve tried! She cannot do it!
The routine she ran is irreversible.”

“So what are you telling me?
We’re just screwed? We have to start over at square one?”

“We have the research file you
found on the Farm,” Falkon said. “It was the data from that research, compiled
on top of the genetic sequence we had already mapped, that would have built us
an immortal. Dr. Weiss had the computers at work on that very project when
Nicky destroyed them!”

“So you still have the file?”

“Yes, what we need is the
genetic sequence. Nicky destroyed the copy we made here. But there should be
another copy at the Evans home in Rio de Janeiro.”

“The other thumb drive!” Renata
said. “The necklace!”

“It will be stored in their
safe,” Falkon said. “I’m certain it’s still there. Melissa wouldn’t have known
to look for it.”

“You’re telling me I’m going to
Rio.”

“I would do it myself, but Sergio
is still lurking out in the woods,” said Falkon. “I can sense him out there. I
need to go take care of him before he causes me more trouble.”

Jill’s hands were shaking with
excitement as she listened. “Sergio?” she whispered. “I need to be writing this
down.” She reached for a pad of paper and a pencil.

“I still can’t believe he had
the gall to show up,” said Renata.

“He is a very sensitive creature,”
Falkon said. “He was drawn here because he cares about Nicky.”

“And where is Nicky? You didn’t
kill her, did you? In order to get the money--”

“I understand how your precious
Rose Ransom game works,” Falkon said. “Believe me, it is only the promise of
that money that is keeping Nicky alive after what she’s done. I’ve put her to
sleep and locked her up. I cannot wait for the moment when I can put her on a
plane and get her out of my house!”

“I’ll get the plane ready and
leave for Rio tonight,” Renata said. “Call me when you’ve killed Sergio. I
can’t wait to hear that he’s dead.”

“Expect to hear from me soon,”
Falkon said.

The call ended and the phone
went silent. Jill and her mother looked at each other, hardly able to believe
what had just happened.

“That was good, wasn’t it?”
Carolyn said. “That was the sort of conversation she was trying to hide,
right?”

“Yes,” said Jill. “That was big.
That told us a lot.”

“What do we do now?”

“First I need to get in touch
with Annika. She needs to know that Renata’s coming to Rio.”

“And what about Tarin? When do
we get to show him what we’ve done?”

Exhausted and emotionally drained,
Jill found enough energy to smile at her mother. It was cute that she wanted
Tarin’s approval.

“There’s no telling when we’ll
see Tarin next, Mom. For now, we’re on our own.”

“Frankie, I need you!”

Her voice, once so pleasant to
his ears, now had overtones that grated on Frankie. He came to her not because
he wanted to, but only because he had to.

“Yes, Master. What may I do for
you?” he said.

“I have urgent business to tend
to overseas,” said Renata. “Please make arrangements for my immediate departure
to Rio de Janeiro. I want my jet in the air before sunup.”

“Yes, Master.”

Frankie rushed off to speak to
the scheduler, who in turn made arrangements at the airport. Frankie packed a
suitcase for Renata with all her usual amenities, and he chose four ripe slaves
to go on the trip so she would have plenty to eat.

It pained Frankie, the real
Frankie, to do all this. It pained him because he wasn’t in control. It was
Frankie the slave who did everything Renata asked. The real Frankie, the one
who tasted freedom that night in the forest, was trapped inside his own body
once again.

I must kill everyone before
they kill me
—that had been the rallying cry of the Frankie who nearly got
out that night. That, and the new command he placed there himself:
I look
out for Nicky and she looks out for me.

Something marvelous happened
that night in the woods, something Frankie wished would happen again. For a
very short time, just long enough to know it was real, Frankie was free. As he
ran through the forest, hatchet in hand and half a dozen people trying to kill
him, he was making his own decisions. He was choosing where to go, what to do,
and how to do it.

Then Renata said his name and
Frankie the slave came back. But when Frankie the slave returned, he found
himself more crowded for space. For years, the real Frankie had been pushed
down so deep he had no choice but to observe while Frankie the slave ran the
show. After that night in the woods, the real Frankie was closer to the
surface.

One time he even broke out.

They were in Renata’s gallery on
the night of the party. Renata asked him to go to the closet and fetch her
shoes. One of the party guests was hiding in that closet. A girl. She looked
nice. She had her back pressed against the wall and was begging Frankie with
her eyes not to give her away.

Frankie the slave knew that girl
wasn’t supposed to be there. Frankie the slave wanted to tell Renata
immediately about what he found.

But the real Frankie saw the
look in that girl’s eyes and felt for her. The real Frankie took pity on her. Even
as Frankie the slave screamed that Renata must know about this, the real
Frankie seized control and he stepped away from the closet saying nothing. 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been
able to win control ever since. Frankie the slave was too powerful. 

“There’s a stack of paperwork on
my desk,” Renata told him. “Get that too, will you Frankie? I want to look at
it while I’m on the plane.”

“Yes, Master.”

“And the mail! Grab all the mail
so I can go through it. There’s a pile I brought home from Thorndike on the
mantle. Don’t forget it!”

An hour later, Frankie parked
the car on the runway and loaded Renata’s luggage on the plane. He saw her off,
then drove the car out of the airport. At the airport exit, he had a choice to
make. A left turn took him back to Renata’s mansion. That’s where Frankie the
slave wanted to go. A right turn took him to the house in Bethesda where he saw
pictures of Nicky on the wall. The real Frankie wondered if he could seize
control of his body and make the car go that way.

I look out for Nicky and she
looks out for me
.

He turned left. Frankie the
slave won this battle. Today wasn’t the day he was meant to break free. He’d
try again another time.

*****

“I’m in the air,” Renata said.
“Thirteen hours and I’ll be in Rio.”

“Wow, that was fast,” said
Falkon.

“I want to get this done so I
can get back to work. I’ve got a party to plan. Speaking of, can we talk about
the transfer of our two little prisoners? I’d like for Nicky and Ryan to arrive
at my mansion the night before my party so I have some time to make them ready
for their big reveal.”

“That will be fine,” Falkon
said. “I want nothing more than to get them out of here. What are you going to
do with them when you have them? You need to be careful. Nicky is a crafty
one.”

“I’m putting them where the
Ransom clue says they’ll be, of course,” said Renata.

“You’re not putting them
someplace where a student could find them, are you?”

“Don’t be silly. The third clue
leads to a place where no humans have ever been allowed. The clue is impossible
for them to solve.”

“All these hoops to jump through
to get our hands on a little money,” Falkon said.

“Don’t speak of it like it’s
some chore you don’t wish to do! This year’s Ransom has been a thing of beauty!
The party, my performance, the clues—with this Ransom, I am creating a piece of
art that will be admired and remembered for generations. You should see the
dress I have for Nicky to wear!”

“I’m sure it’s lovely, Renata.”

“It’s the same style of dress I
wore for the very first Rose Ransom performance! I am bringing the entire event
full circle! And I will kill Nicky with the same knife I used in the first
play.”

“It all sounds very
symmetrical.”

“It’s brilliant is what it is!
Falkon, I need you to appreciate the beauty of what I’m doing. When we have our
new clan, I want them to understand and admire the masterpiece I am creating
here.”

“I apologize if I’m not properly
enthused. Right now, my mind is otherwise occupied. Sergio is somewhere in
these mountains.”