Shattered Pieces (Wattys 2024)

Chapter 14 Code

                                                                              Marks POV

I am shocked by what I have just heard, I hope that it is her for the family's sake and not that bastard who took her messing with them.

I noticed while I was examining the letters that there was something strange about them that had been overlooked.

"Zavier can I have a look at the letters again? Something is not right with them."

"Sure! You do like a good puzzle to solve." He says while handing them all to me.

I opened the same letter as before and noticed a very small line on the bottom right corner of the letter and also on the envelope. The next letter and envelope are the same, they all have different lines on them.

"I think there is a secret code on them," I tell the guys excitedly.

"What do you need to crack it?" Zavier asked me with excitement in his voice for the first time in ages.

"Paper, pens, sticky notes, a map, strings, and tacks, and a big flat surface, for now."

Zavier grabs everything as I call them out, and we pick them up, and head to the conference room.

"We need to find out what order they came in first, there are two letters per year."

Zavier pins the world map on the wall while Conner and I put the letters in their order.

"Conner I want you to put numbers on the sticky notes and attach them to the letters and envelopes and then put them in their chronological piles."

Zavier starts with the first one and marks it on the map where it was sent from using the string to end at our pack and continues with the rest.

There is no alpha, beta, and Gamma at the moment, but three friends trying to find Zinnia.

While they are doing that I place the letter above the top of the envelope to match the lines at the bottom, but it doesn't match, so I try the other way around.

"Guys the envelopes have to be placed on top of the letters at the bottom right corner, to match up the lines."

They both looked impressed and shocked that I was able to crack it so fast.

"Number one and two spell the letter R when number one is up the right way and number two is upside down!" I excitedly tell them.

We managed to crack the code after many hours and a lot of coffee.

"Your dad didn't open the latest letter, you should open it." Conner hands it to Zavier.

Zavier nervously takes the letter from Conner and opens it.

"This one is different guys!"

"It said THIS IS THE ONLY PHOTO YOU WILL SEE OF YOUR DAUGHTER."

We can not believe it, there is a picture of a very beautiful young lady standing in front of a forest, with a massive smile on her face. With amazing long flowing strawberry blond hair and blue eyes, she looks like a female version of Zavier.

I see him get excited when he sees the picture of his sister and then flop down on a chair with a strange look on his face.

We have been there from the beginning when she went missing and saw first-hand how devastated the family was trying to find her and failing all the time. We don't say anything, we don't have to, and we all feel her loss.