Page 90 of Coordinates of Death

I KNOW YOUR SECRET.

Aurora’s grip tightened on the flashlight. “What does that mean? What secret, Kord?”

“No idea.” His whispered words betrayed his state of mind.

“What are you hiding, Kord?” She should talk, but right now it was about his secret. Not hers.

“We need to find Candace. Open your envelope. It has to be the clue to finding her.” His matter-of-fact command boomed in the empty home, his message clear. He didn’t want to discuss the matter.

Aurora contained her thoughts and opened the envelope, pulling out a matching white card. She read the message.

“What does it say?” Kordell shifted closer. “That’s a jumbled mess of letters. What could it possibly mean?”

Aurora examined the unique sequence of letters, recognizing it within moments. “It’s a cryptogram.”

“How do you know that? Just looks like a bunch of letters to me.”

Aurora fished out a pen and notebook from her backpack. “My dad and I used to create them to leave messages for each other when we didn’t want Mom hearing. I know, I know. Bit deceitful, but her mind was so fragile, and she often eavesdropped on our conversations, so we resorted to this. It was our secret code.” She tapped her pen. “Yikes. I haven’t decoded one in years. I need to sit down for this. It may take a while.”

Kordell lifted the white covering from a chair, the dust swirling in the air.

They sneezed.

“Sorry.” Kordell tossed the sheet to the side and brought the chair to the table. “Sit and explain.”

She obeyed, setting the card and her notebook side by side. She analyzed the letters and spacing. “There are five words. It appears to be a monoalphabetic cipher, and he probably used a Caesar substitution, which means it’s the same shift for each letter. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, so twenty-six possibilities.”

“Yikes. You’re right. This is gonna take a minute—or two.”

“You might want to sit.” Over the next twenty minutes, Aurora went through each letter, shifting them, but no message appeared. Just a garbled mess.

“Ugh!” She stood and paced, massaging her right shoulder. “This is a waste of time.”

“I have to believe he allowed for this in his sixteen-hour time frame.” Kordell walked to the grandfather clock and traced his hand over the wood. “I wish I could help, but I have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I’m on alphabet letter twenty. Six left to go.” She sat back down and continued to work, then raised her hand. “That’s it!”

Kordell hurried to her side. “Show me.”

She tapped the card. “See how the first letter is E?”

“Yes.”

“So E plus twenty equals the letter Y. I figured out the first word. It’s your.”

“Cool. Keep going.”

Now that Aurora knew the shift, she quickly went through the other four words. Five minutes later, she had it deciphered. “That’s it.” She spelled it out.

YOUR KEY WORD IS BASEMENT.

“Does that mean we need to go to the basement?” Kordell’s tone revealed his annoyance at the thought.

Within seconds, a click sounded behind them.

Kordell pivoted and proceeded forward.

Aurora followed.