Chapter 12
Their office had to be in the basement. Stairs at night weren’t exactly the quietest. One set was difficult enough to sneak about on; two was pushing her luck. Every pressure point had its own creak or crack, each trying to outdo its predecessor. As long as her parents were actually asleep, it was fine. If either were awake, she’d be caught red-handed.
Clara inhaled deeply, pausing. The mental image of a backup plan wasn’t forming as she’d hoped. This was the first time she’d done anything so reckless. If worse came to worst, she could always tell the truth. It was their fault, after all: her parents. All they needed to do was tell her what was going on from the start. A smile twitched its way onto her face. Blaming them was an escape route, probably a bad one, but an escape route nonetheless.
A green glow caught her attention at the bottom of the stairs: a security pad. There shouldn’t have been enough time to have one installed; yet it was new. That in itself was worrisome. What was going on behind closed doors that warranted such secrecy?
Watching movies and television shows was a given for anyone who travelled about a lot. She’d seen her share of spy shows to know there was no way she was pulling off some super strange way of figuring out the secret code. There were no supplies to support prying sets of fingerprints from the pad; she certainly wasn’t going to make a mess using flour or other baking materials from the kitchen trying; and slicing off one of her parents’ fingers was going a tad bit too far.
Instead, she needed to play to her own strengths. A genius she wasn’t, but when it came to strategy she won every time. Entering that room was the same as any other board game she’d played over the years. All she needed was to figure out the code, after all. The glowing numbers stared back at her, begging her to try. No one in their right mind would pass up a challenge that strong.
Clara blinked, her mind already studying rational facts. Admitting one parent was stronger than the other never came easy, but her mother won hands down. There was no way Jenny Fawn was letting anyone handle the security but herself. That also meant setting all the codes. What few people knew about her mother was deep down she was sentimental. Of course, Jenny would never admit it, or show it. Being that way was, after all, a form of weakness—the sort that could be exploited.
Hiding deep-rooted emotions meant expressing them in some unusual ways. It was an undeniable truth that, no matter what, they always managed to surface in someway. That was where the numerical codes came in. The combination would never be anything simple, of course. Using the birthdays of a beloved husband or daughter would have been too easy to guess. The same went for spelling out short names. Clara huffed, rubbing her neck. The combo was bound to be much more difficult to figure out.
Her fingers wiggled, hovering slightly above the keys. There would also be a second line of defence. If she couldn’t come up with the correct formula, an alarm was bound to be programmed to sound. Knowing how her mother’s inner thoughts worked, the guilty party could expect to end up covered in ink or locked in a cage after that. How many chances there were was anyone’s guess. It was definitely more than one attempt, but less than three. That made two the optimum number of times to try educated guesses without consequence.
Lungs filled to capacity, preparing for the moment. Concentration remained steady. The code could be broken. Of that she was certain. Confidence, however, was easily swayed in the face of reality. Her best guess was a combination of her great-grandparents’ birth dates. They were the relatives Jenny Fawn mentioned the most, after all. They were the ones her mother had the fondest memories of.
Zero—seven—one—eight. The pad beeped alternating colours before going silent again. The first attempt failed. There was only one more chance, even that was risky if she was wrong. One—eight. Her fingers paused after the day her grandmother was born. Zero—five. The day of her grandfather’s birth. Silence filled the air around her. Every second felt like an eternity; her breath held. The door buzzed, coming slightly ajar.
Clara exhaled, bending over to grab her knees. She’d manage to figure the code out correctly. That didn’t mean it was the last obstacle she’d find. Beyond the door was a complete unknown for her. There were bound to be more booby traps the closer she came to finding out the truth.
Chapter 13
There’d never been any reason to question her parents about what their jobs actually entailed. Government secrets weren’t disclosed to the masses for a reason. While it was doubtful the pair were international spies, they were undoubtedly involved in something unusual.
The Fawns always referred to the rooms they worked in as offices. Now her own eyes actually saw one, she knew the truth. There was no fancy desk—no personalized stationary. A standard office it wasn’t. She was standing in a laboratory, containing strange experiments and coded notes. These secret languages weren’t going to be solved by a simple numerical combination, either. Clara frowned, grabbing a series of papers. Without translation they were useless. They weren’t going to give her even the smallest piece of information. The wall map, on the other hand, she didn’t need to
