Code(26)

The image of a stopwatch formed. Began counting down from ten.

A hollow feeling welled in my gut.

Nine. Eight. Seven . . .

“Guys,” I whispered, “I don’t think this is a joke.”

I held up the iPad.

Six. Five. Four . . .

Hi paled. Shelton swallowed. Ben clenched his fists.

The Gamemaster’s warning flashed in my mind.

Accept my challenge and complete The Game, or innocents will die.

“We have no choice,” I said quietly.

The boys nodded.

Three. Two . . .

Feeling helpless, I pressed the white button.

The display cycled through a series of colors before fading to white. Trumpets sounded. Then a snarling clown face filled the screen.

Black letters appeared in the now-familiar script: Clues to Follow!

I wanted to scream in frustration.

Whoever this Gamemaster was, he was toying with us. Shoving us around like his personal playthings.

The clown glared up at me. Sneering. Taunting.

We’d become pawns in a madman’s game.





PART TWO:

CLUES





CHAPTER 14





I leaned against one of Bolton’s granite lions.

Across the courtyard, a crowd of students lounged on wooden benches lining the central walk. The morning was sunny, a balmy sixty-five. No one was in a hurry to trudge inside.

The boys were bunched beside me, tapping their phones, searching for coverage of last night’s explosion on The Battery.

I left the legwork to them. I just wanted answers.

“No one was hurt!” Relief was evident in Hi’s voice. “But the wedding gazebo went up like a Roman candle.”

“Lucky.” Shelton pushed his glasses back into place. “Usually that thing is crawling with people. It’s practically a landmark.”

“Someone could’ve been killed,” I said. “The Gamemaster clearly didn’t care.”

Ben frowned. “Do the police know what happened?”

“It was a bomb all right.” Hi scrolled his iPhone. “This story calls the blast an act of terrorism.”

Terrorism. Great. We’re entangled with a freaking fanatic.

“So what now?” Hi glanced at his watch. First bell would ring any minute.

“Cops?” Shelton suggested.

I shook my head. “Against the rules, remember?”

“We care about that?” Shelton snorted. “Hi just blew up Battery Park.”

“Accident!” Hi protested. “I didn’t know what would happen! You see a button, you push it. That’s practically a law of nature.”

Level stares.

Hi waved away our skepticism. “The Gamemaster would’ve set it off anyway.”

On that point, I agreed. “The bomb was a warning: Play the game or people die.”

“Okay, no police,” Ben said firmly. “And no talking to anyone else, either.”

“Maybe.” I’d been thinking about that. “Maybe not.”

“The rules were clear,” Ben argued.

“We can’t go to the cops, reveal the clue, or talk about the game.” Ticking fingers as I spoke. “But we don’t have to be led around by our noses.”

Shelton sighed. “Meaning what?”

“We turn the tables.” I thumped my bag, which contained both the Gamemaster’s iPad and what remained of the second cache.

Yesterday, watching the smoke rise, I’d made a decision. We needed a way to fight back. An edge our adversary didn’t expect. That meant evidence.

Swift as thought, I’d slipped back inside Castle Pinckney. The boys hadn’t been quick enough to stop me. A risky move, but worth it—I’d retrieved the scorched container and escaped unscathed. I’d even smiled through the berating they’d delivered back on the beach.

“The rules say we can’t talk about—” I made air quotes, “—‘The Game,’ but they don’t mention the Gamemaster himself. We’ll use his own materials to track him down.”

“How?” Ben’s face was unreadable. “All we’ve got are the puzzle box, the two-page letter, and a blown-up cache.”

“Don’t forget the iPad.” I pulled the tablet from my backpack. “Right now it only shows the clue that appeared last night, but we might eventually unlock more.”

At midnight the night before, a pictogram had suddenly filled the iPad’s screen. I’d spent an hour trying to make sense of it before giving up, snapping a pic, and forwarding it to the boys. Daylight wasn’t providing additional inspiration.

“The image is incomprehensible.” Hi examined the display with dubious eyes. “I stared at this all morning, and it’s still nonsense. We’ll never crack it in time.”

Hi wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t even fathom a guess.

The picture was deceptively simple—the number 18, encircled by a long string of characters: CH3OHHBRCH3BRH2O. Surrounding that arrangement was a solid black circle, which, in turn, was surrounded by a larger blue one. A capital K crowned it all.



Beneath the image was a digital stopwatch. Sixty-four hours, counting down.