Flash Point (17 page)

Jenna ignored Dodd and twisted in her seat to look at Porter. ‘They didn't hide it in a letter for cops. They hid it in one for a reporter. One known for getting to the bottom of things and not necessarily working with authorities to do it. Besides, the person at the head of this is most likely a narcissist. They'd believe no one would find it anyway.'

‘Or,' Dodd said without looking at them, ‘they designed it so that only someone they considered
worthy
could find it. Hid it like only they would, a test for someone who might be looking.'

Jenna smirked as the orchid of elitism flashed in
. Not a bad theory at all.
‘They consider themselves the intellectually elite, gave a reporter the chance to land a huge scoop if she was one of them. Thought she might be because of her past.'

Jenna scoured the letter in her lap once more. She had a good idea what they needed to look for within it, but since that would mean handing it off, first she needed to figure out what to do with the information once they located it.

Toward the end of the letter, her eyes landed on a single passage:

After all, in this World we live in, we find only strength in numbers. United we stand in those, and divided, we perish.

Canary yellow flashed in her mind.

Jenna wasn't sure what, but numbers had something to do with it. She just knew.

She sucked in a hard breath. This could go well, or it could be a nightmare. But she didn't have a choice.
They
didn't. If the bank terrorists had left a clue to their next attack, they needed to get to it, and fast.

Jenna twisted again to look into the backseat, this time at Grey, who was still whistling a tuneless composition of her own making and staring out the window. ‘Grey?'

Grey's whistling continued, though she did turn her head.

‘I need you to look at this letter. It contains – I think – literary references. I need to know what they are,' Jenna said, passing the paper back. Remembering the strange, randomly capitalized words and the deliberate indigo that had flashed in when she'd read them, she added, ‘Make sure to look at everything, but especially at the words capitalized in the middles of sentences.'

Still tweeting the shrill notes like she was some sort of kooky bird, Grey held out a hand and took the paper from Jenna.

‘And Grey?' Jenna said.

Grey looked up, eyes inquisitive, mouth still bleating.

‘The references have something to do with numbers. If you know what those are – or have any idea what numbers any of them could possibly be associated with,' she clarified, realizing that asking Grey to tell them what she
knew
would be a mistake that might cost them hearing any of her more unsure thoughts that could lead them in a meaningful direction, ‘I need you to tell me those ideas, too.'

Grey nodded and looked back down at the paper, still whistling away.

After what seemed like hours – even though it could've only been minutes from the moment Grey had stopped whistling long enough to request a pen – Grey's scribbling paused. ‘I think the bank man has Ayn Rand by his toilet.'

Jenna forced back a grimace. Maybe if Grey hadn't just defaced the heck out of a piece of evidence, it'd be easier. She poised a pen at a scrap of paper she'd dug out of the SUV glove box. ‘Whatcha got?'

‘The last lines of paragraph three,' Grey said, and without looking, Jenna could tell she was sucking on the end of her pen, ‘“
Each helps our very own current culture of UNSPOKEN WORDS to masquerade as liberty.
”
Unspoken Words
is capitalized, drawing attention to it. The unspoken word in
Anthem
by Ayn Rand was “ego.”'

‘OK,' Jenna said, scribbling notes impatiently. ‘Does that have anything to do with a number?'

Grey clicked her tongue. ‘
… masquerade as liberty …
Yes. In the book, the main character falls in love with The Golden One, which he considers her real name. But her actual name was Liberty 5-3000.'

Jenna jotted it down. ‘And that's the first reference?'

‘Don't bounce your deductions,' Grey said.

Porter stared at her, wide-eyed, then looked to Jenna and blinked, confused. ‘What the heck does that mean?'

‘She means don't jump to conclusions,' Jenna said quickly, not wanting to lose Grey's attention or train of thought. For whatever reason, Grey wasn't giving her the references in order, but either way, they needed to get them. ‘What's before that, then, Grey?'

‘If he was in love with the Golden One, couldn't the number be
One
? Especially if Liberty was masquerading as it—'

‘Shut up!' Jenna snapped at Porter, then turned back to Grey.

Grey glared at Porter. After a long second, she spoke, still staring awkwardly at Porter. ‘That makes the fifth reference – the capitalized
Unequal
in paragraph five – an arrow pointing to the main character in the same book,
Anthem
. Equality 7-2521.'

In the same way Grey's odd speech patterns had come to make sense to Jenna, the explanation for how the numbers associated with the literary references seemed to fit. Despite the fact that they were all over the place in the order she was looking at them. Hopefully Jenna could question Grey later to make sure her reasoning was sound, but then again, when was Grey's reasoning ever going to be?

‘OK,' Jenna said as she wrote the last two digits of the most recent number. ‘What next?'

‘Go down in that same sentence grouping—'

‘Paragraph,' Jenna muttered out the side of her mouth to translate for Dodd and Porter.

‘You see, “
Ignore those too cowardly to speak the truth alone
”?'

‘Yes,' Jenna replied, scrolling down on the picture she'd snapped of the letter on her phone.

‘Another
Anthem
toilet moment,' Grey said, laughing at her own little joke.

‘OK, and what's the number?'

‘In the story, a certain character who runs things says no one is allowed to think himself smarter than anyone else—'

‘That's a heck of a note, considering the elitist pricks doing this,' Porter snorted.

Grey shot him a look, continuing, ‘And no one can claim to have the keys to the truth by themselves.'

‘Keys?' This time, Porter kept his bewilderment to a desperate, barely-there whisper beside Jenna. Grey didn't even notice him, thankfully, and she kept going.

‘Collective 0-0009.'

Jenna scratched the reference down. ‘Next.'

‘Go back two streaks up in the same word pile—'

‘Two lines up, same paragraph,' Jenna translated fast.

‘Why did we skip over it in the first place?' Porter mumbled angrily.

Grey's mouth twitched as though she wanted to frown deeper, but it couldn't go any farther. ‘
The tunnel
to
stow away and write
is there. That's referred to on the very first page of Anthem, so I'm guessing number one.'

‘The tunnel comes up again, doesn't it?' Jenna said, highlighter yellow, the color of repetition, flashing in as she heard the word.

‘Yes,' Grey replied. ‘Getting there. Go down to the second word group of the eighth word group—'

‘The second paragraph of the eighth paragraph?' Porter cut in, now genuinely trying to pick up on Grey's lingo.

‘The second sentence of the eighth paragraph,' Jenna said, still focusing intently on Grey.
Please don't get mad and stop on us.

Grey turned slowly back to the paper, pausing to cut her eyes at Porter once more, but he was oblivious, scrolling madly through his own copy of the photo Jenna had sent him and Dodd, trying to catch up. ‘This time, it says “
if
we
find that tunnel.
” The time before that said only to
look for
a tunnel and then the word
you
parades on,' Grey explained.

Grey had such a sharp grasp on the written word.
You might've made a really good profiler if you had the same grasp on the spoken ones.

‘I take it you were able to figure something out based on that?' Jenna said.

‘The
we
in regards to the tunnel. The
we find
, in particular. In
Anthem
, Equality 7-2521 uses the tunnel to be alone, but in the story, the narrative has him referring to himself as
we
. That's on page one.'

‘She can remember the word “narrative” but can't remember jump to conclusions?' Porter whispered.

‘This second time the letter talks about the tunnel, I think the writer used
we
instead of a singular pronoun—'

‘Singular pronoun!' Porter whispered, louder this time.

‘
Forget it!
' Grey abruptly snapped, her voice spiking to full volume in the closed SUV cab. In the ensuing stunned silence, she leaned forward and snatched the pen and paper out of Jenna's hands. ‘I'll do it myself.'

Jenna shot Porter as much venom as she could muster in a single glare.

Grey cast her eyes back down on the letter and began scribbling as she worked. It wasn't long before the whistling resumed.

The silence continued for some time, with Grey never slowing down. Predictably, it was Dodd who finally ventured to speak. ‘Are we close to finishing up, Ms Hechinger, or …'

Carnation pink flashed in. Both her own
and
Dodd's impatience.

‘Done with the quotes from
Lord of the Flies
,
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
,
Crime and Punishment
,
Diary of a Young Girl
, and
The Iceman Cometh
. Only one story left,' Grey said, looking up, her rapid blinking in contrast to the serene look of composure on her face. Her mouth set, she stared at Porter. ‘If you're not too busy assessing my mental capacity, Agent, I'd like to continue with the analysis of the evidence.'

Jenna almost snorted and clapped her hand over her mouth. Beside her, Dodd's own mouth hung open as he laughed long, hard chuckles, and Porter sat dumbfounded in the backseat.

‘Skip to after the question mark and start with the word
know
.'

Grey stopped talking and began whistling as she looked away from them and out the window as if to say, ‘Go ahead. I'll wait.' So, Jenna scanned the passage she was referring to:

So, what's it going to be then, eh, Ms McClendon? It's your decision, and if we find that tunnel in which to think and hide and write, know that you can be one of the few people who still respects that at all costs and all turns, we must be allowed to make our own choices. You can truly ask yourself whether you believe in making
your
own moral choices. Most people do not have the luxury and are simply told the answer. You still have the ability to make choices—and the ability to remind others over and over again that if they do not ask themselves the same question, and often, they may end up without the option.

Jenna looked up to see Dodd and Porter had both finished reading, too, but Grey was still politely giving them time. Jenna cleared her throat. ‘Finished.'

Grey stopped whistling, turned back to them. ‘That whole group of words is
about
the book.
About
the question,' she said, her eyes lighting up.

This was the most excited Jenna had seen Grey yet, but she wasn't following her former patient. She hated to burst that enthusiastic bubble since Grey was staring at them like she was waiting for them to praise her for how clever she was or nod enthusiastically, having seen the exciting possibility she had, too. But time …

‘How do you mean, Grey?' Jenna asked.

Grey's bright expression turned crestfallen. She folded her lips in to her mouth. ‘Well, it's one of the story's themes, isn't it? The ability of humanity to make its own moral choices?'

Jenna nodded, pretending to follow. Damn, it had been so long since she'd read that book in college ‘OK, right. And the main character …' Hopefully, it would prompt Grey into giving them a refresher since the two guys seemed lost, too.

‘Alex, right,' Grey nodded, seeming reinvigorated that
someone
was back with her. ‘Part One has him able to make a choice between good and evil.'

‘Before he and his friends go out and commit crimes,' Dodd filled in.

Jenna could've high-fived him as Grey nodded excitedly.

‘Yes! Part Two, it's like the passage. He can't ask himself the question. Doesn't have the
luxury
,' Grey said, emphasizing the word from the letter. ‘He's convicted.'

‘So the State has taken on the role of making decisions about his moral behavior for him, in a way. He doesn't have a choice of committing more crimes in jail,' Dodd said.

‘Tell that to half the criminals we've put in the penitentiary,' Porter grumbled.

‘But he really doesn't have the option in the book. He's conditioned,' Jenna said, finally remembering parts of the plotline.

Grey smiled. ‘Yes. Which is why Part Three's question about what it's going to be ties shoelaces into the book. It's dragging a big, fat yellow highlighter across the way the moral choices have evolution monkey-ed over the pages. The conditioning has given him no options. He doesn't have an identity to be stolen. Just to be used.'

Dodd nodded. ‘I think what Ms Hechinger means is that without the option to choose morality, he's like a machine. In the book, it's apparent he can now be used as a tool for people in power to get what they want. His only choice is to give it to them or commit suicide. He tries suicide.'

Grey pointed at Dodd, a reward. ‘But it doesn't work. Eventually, the government undoes the conditioning—'

‘Making the final chapter's question about whether or not he'll choose to be evil now that he has the chance to make his own moral choices again,' Jenna filled in, still not sure why this told Grey anything about the reference in the letter or where to find the corresponding number the writer had intended.