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Chapter 5
The next morning, Trent cooked himself scrambled eggs for breakfast. He’d been planning on going for a run, but the truth was he didn’t feel like it. Plus, the weather was crap. Not that it was supposed to be beach weather in South Port in December, but he wanted beach weather. The only good thing about watching the inn right now was that no one was here.
He finished the eggs and tossed them onto a plate, half tempted to just eat them out of the pan, but he wanted to take the eggs to the library with him. He put the eggs, half a grapefruit, and some water bottles on a tray, then headed up the stairs.
Last night he’d gone to sleep with the image of Liberty Grey in his mind. Well, she wasn’t “Grey” any longer, was she? It’d broken his heart when she’d told him that her husband and son were dead. He’d seen the pain in her eyes, and it had hurt him too. It hadn’t hurt his feelings when he’d gotten her text with that picture. It also hadn’t hurt his feelings when he and Liberty had spent the next hour texting little snippets to each other. He’d caught her up on what everyone in the beach crew was up to. She’d told him about seeing her brother and the affair. He’d found himself wanting to text more with her or call her, but she’d told him she was going to bed. So that had been that.
There was this zing inside of him when he thought about her. Man, his brother would tease him so badly if he knew. Which, he probably did; Hunter always knew stuff before Trent told him.
Trent got to the third floor and quickly moved down the hallway to the library. He’d been hanging out here for the past couple of days since being back. He put the tray down on the couch that overlooked the floor-to-ceiling windows with a perfect view of the beach. Trent loved this spot in the house as a base camp for all things code.
He had a notebook with all of his findings written down. Two large whiteboards had been set up, and he’d been using them to dissect everything from the beginning. Different clues to Banks. Different possible ciphers. Often, he and Brooks would spend a couple minutes every night going over the numbers, trying to figure out any patterns or racking their brains as to what cipher might be needed to crack the code.
Two days ago, Trey, Marshall, Hunter, and Kensi had kept telling him and Brooks they needed to chill a bit. Give it time. Uh, no. Wasn’t it something worth getting crazy over? His parents had left the treasure to them. Stinking Banks was still out there, doing anything and everything he could do to crack the cipher, so why wouldn’t they be doing the same thing?
It wasn’t just about finding the treasure. No, it was about honoring his parents.
He inhaled deeply and sat on the couch, taking a bite from the plate of eggs. His need to get back at it could no longer be denied, and he set the food down and reached for one of the journals from his father’s stack.
It had taken him and his siblings by surprise when the note found at Bird Island, from his parents had said, “You need to get to know us better.” Of course, to Trent, that answer was clear: read their journals.
Now, he thumbed through his father’s words. Surprisingly, his father had been somewhat of a wordsmith, as Hunter would say; often he’d come up with poetry about their mother. His journals were also detailed logs of the expenses of the inn and what repairs they’d made or what needed to be done.
There were blank pages where his father had written, “Gone on op,” with the dates assigned to it. Trent pulled his notebook over and made another spreadsheet titled “Dates Dad was gone.” He began going through each journal and writing down those dates, looking for patterns, trying to decide if one of those dates meant anything.
After almost a full day of it, he stretched in front of the window and watched a couple walking down the beach. The wind seemed strong enough to knock them over, but the couple wasn’t deterred. They had to be a vacation couple, the kind who would get everything they could out of their beach experience. He grinned at them and wondered if he would ever be part of “that couple.”
His mind turned to Hunter and his ex, Amy. The cheater. Hunter had brought her here a couple times. Maybe he’d hoped she’d become part of the family.
Trent pushed his hands into his jean pockets and rested his forehead against the glass, something that Brooks would not be happy about. Brooks hated coming to the inn and seeing any kind of handprints or “headprints” anywhere. He was nearly as obsessed with handprints or headprints on the glass as he was with helping decipher this code. Ha!
Trent chuckled and moved back to the journals, this time reaching for the stack of his mother’s. He’d studied hers at length as well. They were far less orderly. The dates were random, and the usual reason she put in an entry was to record something one of the kids had done that she found interesting or cute.
Grinning, he turned to the entry from that fateful summer day, the day Liberty claimed she’d left him a note.
His mother had written—
Trent and Hunter had a party with their friends. It makes me a bit sad that our time at the Stone house is almost over for the summer. Of course, Cheryse broke up with Trent and then decided to date Hunter. It’s been rough around here. I think those boys are going to kill each other over that girl. I just hope they never let a girl get between them. The boys may not see it now, but they need each other so much.
Trent stopped reading and picked up his phone. It made him smile to think that Cheryse had been just as smart as their mother, making the call to end things with both of the boys. It had been hard, though, and both he and Hunter had been ticked that she’d told them she could never be with either of them because they had jobs that made them “unsafe.” It smarted to think about, but he could see, especially now, that it had been a gift. That experience had brought him and Hunter closer in so many ways.
He texted Hunter. Sup, bro? I’m reading Mom’s journals. Dude, we have a good mom.
He waited, wondering if Hunter would be in a position to respond. He didn’t have to wait long. You just figure that out, loser?
Trent snickered and sent him a flip-off emoji. That led to Hunter sending a fart noise. For the next ten minutes, they exchanged obnoxious things with each other, and Trent laughed until his stomach hurt.
This was how he and Hunter communicated. It didn’t matter where in the world they were or what op they were on; if they could respond, they would. And they always made each other laugh.
His phone buzzed with a call and he looked down, seeing Brooks’s number.
Quickly, he answered it. “I just made extra prints on the office window to tick you off.”
“The FBI received a tip I thought you might find interesting,” Brooks said, all seriousness.
So it was that type of call. “Lay it on me.”
“There’s a fuzzy clip of Banks in South Port.”
