Verity

Perched on porch swing outside her mother's front door, Flora picked at a loose thread on the swing's cushion while scowling at Alek, who stood a few feet away. "How can you trust anything he says, Verity?"

"Did I say I trusted him?" This exchange came at the tail end of me laying out for her what Alek had told me: contrary to what we'd grown up believing, her mom and mine had known each other prior to the Aurum Venari experiments. Val had at least been somewhat aware of what they were doing in those experiments, and now, it was Alek's belief that a freaking treasure hunt, of all things, would lead us to where Val was staying.

"To where she's being kept prisoner, you mean," she'd said to me, taking issue with how I phrased things.

"She may not be a prisoner," Alek interjected, proving tact was not his forte in times of high stress. "You may have to come to terms with the fact that she's been a willing participant all along."

"Shut your piehole," Flora responded, and in the name of all that's holy, he'd listened to her.

I spent the next ten minutes trying to convince her that going on a treasure hunt was our best move. It was hard to convince someone with Flora's understandable doubts considering how stupid the whole thing sounded when I said it out loud. Luckily, Flora's other avenues for rescuing her mom weren't exactly promising, a fact I couldn't help but remind her of.

"Have the police been any help?"

She hung her head. "None. They seem convinced she left of her own accord."

Which she probably did. Alek delivered his opinion directly to my brain.

I don't need to hear your opinion, Alek, not out loud and especially not in my head. I put up my barrier to keep any further attempts at intrusion at bay.

Taking a seat next to Flora, I slid an arm around her. "If the police won't help, then let us try again. What have you got to lose?"

She raised her chin and gave Alek another sour look. "Just our freedom. Probably our lives."

"Maybe," I said. "It's not like I trust him either, but if we are walking into a trap, we can handle ourselves."

"You mean you can. But me?" She let out a long sigh. "I'm out of other options, though, so I might as well do the stupidest, most desperate thing I can think of, which is to go with you guys."

I let out a little squeal and gave her a hug.

Flora hugged me back, then gently pushed me away. "Let's get to it. What's our first clue?"

Now the official holder of the treasure hunt sheet, I took it out of my coat pocket and we studied it together.

"Sept.." Flora placed a finger under the long word at the at the top of the sheet that was listed as clue number one. "Septentrionalis 134227. What does that mean?"

"It's Latin," Alek said. "We're supposed to go North."

"Really? Are we supposed to just take your word for it?" she asked him.

"No, it's true," I said. "I looked it up."

"Okay, fine. So, we go North. North from where? This house? Verity's apartment? How far north? 134227 miles?"

"North from the Aurum Venari Treasure Adventures headquarters. Norvin assumed I'd remember what this clue meant. There are four lockboxes that he keeps around the city, each in a different cardinal direction from that center point. So, that first clue indicates that we were to go to the lockbox located north of the Adventure headquarters."

"And I take it you know where that box is kept, and what 134227 signifies?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But what then?" Flora said, waving the treasure hunt page at us. "And what does IGTHEN ISME OBTAIL mean?"

IGTHEN ISME OBTAIL—the second clue. "It's an encrypted message," he told us.

"Do you know how to decode it?" I asked him.

"No. But I will once we find the cypher."

"The cypher?" asked Flora.

"That's what's in the lockbox, isn't it?" I examined the three-word code, but no amount of staring would make it make sense.

Flora's eyes began to water. "Why is he doing this? Why can't he just tell us where to go and be done with it?"

"It's a psychological tactic," Alek asked. "He wants to exhaust us before we get to him. Don't give in."

Given what I knew of Norvin, that wasn't implausible. Flora rubbed at her eyes and stood up. "Let's do this dumb thing and find my mom."

#

Half an hour later, Alek pulled up to a hole-in-the-wall diner in a Glendale strip mall.

"The food any good here?" asked Flora.

"Only if you like your burger with a side of salmonella." He got out of the car, but instead of heading left towards the building's entrance, he motioned us in the opposite direction, towards the alley. There, wedged between a rusty dumpster reeking of rotting fish and the brick surface of the diner, was a metal box with a padlock. Alek reached for it, but I pushed his hand away.

"I can do this part," I said, shoving myself into the narrow space next to the box. "13 42 27. It's the combination for the lock, right?"

Grinning, he nodded and let me have the satisfaction of twisting the padlock until it clicked open. I lifted the lid up and used my phone's flashlight to look inside. My heart sunk. "It's empty."

"That can't be." Alek pressed nearer to have a look. The combined scents of dead flesh and cedar made me dizzy.

"See?" Sticking my hand in to prove it to him, I ran my fingers over the sides of the box, then the bottom, stopping when smooth metal gave way to a thin strip of fiber. "Wait a minute."

I pulled out a small strip of paper with two lines of letters, the first from A to Z and the second beginning with an N. "NORALUISTPYCDQHXBMEWGVZJF."

Flora peered at it over my shoulder. "So, N stands for A, O stands for B, and so on and so forth."

Alek nodded. "It's a mono-alphabetic substitution. Line it up with the second clue and let's see what we've got."

It took all of a minute for us to decipher it. I read the results aloud. "Gaviota ghost bridge." My throat threatened to close. This couldn't be a coincidence.

"As in the train trestle in Gaviota State Park?" Flora's shoulders slumped. "Holy shit."

"I've been there," I said. "First with my mom when I was little—it was one of her favorite places. Then, later on, my father and I began going once a year around the anniversary of her death. We'd sit on the beach, watch the waves, and wait for the train to come by. I used to think for sure that the bridge couldn't possibly hold up a train, that we'd watch it crash hundreds of feet onto a bunch of campers. But it always did."

"I went with you once, remember? We must have been about ten." Coughing, Flora eyed the smelly garbage bin with disdain, and started to lead us back to the car. "Let's get going. That park is like, over two hours away. Are they forcing my mom to camp? She hates camping."

If only this clue would lead us right to Val, but I doubted it would be that simple. It also made me doubt Val herself: she knew that park had significance to my mother, and now we were being led right to it. Maybe Alek was right; maybe she wasn't the victim Flora believed her to be.

"I doubt your mom is at the park, Flora." Alek and I trailed her back to the parking lot. "Didn't you see clue three?"

Looking at the clue again, I reread it to be sure I understood it properly: "A message in a bottle from a long lost one. Find it, and don't say no."

I climbed into the front passenger seat more convinced than ever that this whole dog and pony show Norvin was leading us on was meant to torture me for the crime of being my mother's daughter.

A message from a long lost one. I had to give Norvin props for how he'd composed that clue. He knew damn well that if the message in a bottle felt even the slightest like it was my mother reaching out to me from beyond the grave and it asked me if I'd enter hell for her, I would not say no.

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Author's Note: What they will find at the state park? How many of Norvin's clues will they have to chase before they reach the end of the hunt? And what will be waiting for them?

Thanks for reading! We are on the homestretch now!

XOXOXO