6 HOURS, 17 MIN, 9 SEC…
It was getting to the point where I didn’t even need to look at the time. I just knew. We weren’t getting anywhere. I tried to clear my head, but fresh air didn’t help. Giving money anonymously to people who needed it didn’t help.
When I went back inside, I arrived in the circular library just in time to hear Xander’s phone go off. He was the only person I knew who used the first twelve digits of pi as a ringtone. After an uncharacteristically muted conversation, he brought the phone to me.
“Max,” he mouthed.
I took the phone. “Let me guess,” I said, holding it to my ear. “You’ve seen the news?”
“What makes you think that?” Max responded. “I was just calling to catch you up on my bodyguard situation. Piotr stubbornly refuses to choose a theme song, but otherwise, our bodyguard-and-bodyguard-ee relationship is working out quite well.”
Leave it to Max to make light of needing security. Because of me. I couldn’t help feeling responsible, any more than I could help feeling like Eve had been outed to the world only because she’d made the poor choice of coming to me for help.
My name was the one on the envelopes, the one on the box. I was the one in Luke’s sights, but anyone close to me could end up in the crosshairs.
“I’m sorry,” I told Max.
“I know,” my best friend replied. “But don’t worry. I’ll choose a theme song for him.” She paused. “Xander said something about… a cannon?”
The whole story burst out, like water demolishing a broken dam: the package delivery, the box, the phone, the call with “Luke”—and his ultimatum.
“You sound like a person who needs to think out loud,” Max opined. “Proceed.”
I did. I just kept talking and talking, hoping my brain would find something different to say this time. I got to the event in the calendar and said, “We thought Niv might be a reference to an SEC form, N-four. We’ve spent hours trying to track down Tobias Hawthorne’s filings. I guess Niv could be a name, or initials, but—”
“Niv,” Max repeated. “Spelled N-I-V?”
“Yes.”
“N-I-V,” she repeated. “As in New International Version?”
I tilted my head to the side. “New international version of what?”
“The B-I-B-L-E—and now, I am officially going to have Sunday school songs running on a loop all night.”
“The Bible,” I repeated, and suddenly, it clicked. “Luke.”
“My second-favorite Gospel,” Max noted. “I’ll always be a John girl at heart.”
I barely heard her. My brain was going too fast, images flashing through my mind, slices of memory piling up one after the other. “The numbers.”
The combination might be just a combination, Jameson had said. But there’s also the possibility that the numbers themselves are a clue.
My heart beat viciously against my rib cage. “Fifteen, eleven, thirty-two.”
“Are you faxing kidding me?” Max was delighted. “Am I about to solve a Hawthorne riddle?”
“Max!”
“The book of Luke,” she said, “chapter fifteen, verses eleven through thirty-two. It’s a parable.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The parable of the prodigal son.”