Scout: Devil's Rose #11

Chapter 16: Major Owens

Slasher parks the car in the back lot of headquarters, mumbling something about letting Alpha know that we need gas. I run my fingers through Violet's hair to wake her up gently.

Her hazel eyes blink up at me, tiredness from a chaotic past three hours hitting her like a ton of bricks I'm sure. In such a short period of time, she's had to deal with so much. If I were her, I would be sleeping and relaxing for the next forty-eight hours.

She climbs out of the opposite side of the car, the way the Poison exited, but she's attached back to my side less than a minute later. Our fingers just naturally intertwine, none of it feeling forced.

We are quick to say goodbye to Slasher, Bullet, Poison, Carbon, and even Aurora and Sabrina after I put all of my gear away. I think that Violet and I agree that she needs some time to reflect and relax. There's nothing she needs to do.

The ride back to her apartment is quiet but not awkward. It's just a gentle, comforting silence that allows both Violet and I to think things through.

I am most definitely focusing on that clue that we found. What the fuck could a bunch of shapes stand for? Because there are repeated shapes but not in any order that I can initially tell, my first thought is that each shape stands for a particular letter in the alphabet.

The hard part of that is that I don't know what the note is even trying to say and I have no idea what shape corresponds with what letter. That seems obvious, but there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet.

And even if they do correspond with a letter, the deciphered note could also be written out in code.

Violet uses her key to open the front door and breathes a sigh of relief as we step inside.

Harper isn't home, so she doesn't bombard us with questions, which I think both of us are slightly thankful for. We would have to come up with a lie, and neither of us wants to do that and are too tired to make up a good one.

While she goes and takes a hot bath, I rummage through her pantry and refrigerator to find some food for us to eat.

I give up in five minutes, my exhaustion hitting me, and decide to order us baked potatoes with mac and cheese (vegan for Violet) instead. It's her comfort food, so I figured that was the best decision anyway.

While I'm not as tired as Violet, being in protector/offensive mode does wear me out. My brain is running on overtime, a thousand thoughts running through my head every second, and with Violet around, it's an extra toll.

I'm not asking her not to come. I'm also not complaining about it either. I'm just pointing out, reflecting, that I want her to be safe. I don't want anything to happen to her.

And while I feel the same way about my Devil's Rose brothers, I also know that they have the tools and knowledge to be able to deal with what's to come as well.

We are all protecting each other in that way. Violet is relying on us, on me, to do that for her. I feel grateful that she trusts me to do that, but in already dangerous situations, it's another worry for me.

I care about her a lot, and I would beat myself up over her getting hurt. I'm not alone in protecting her, that I know as well, but she's under my protection at all times. The feelings that I have growing for her are uncontrollable and so is what happens to us out in the field.

There's nothing I can control about what happens, and that freaks me out. It always has. It's just more of a burden to carry with Violet around. One that I can handle of course.

A knock on the door snaps me out of my thoughts. My heart races for a brief minute, my brain wondering who could be out there, but when I look through the peephole in the door, I see that it's just the delivery guy.

After grabbing some for myself, I set the food out on the counter and text Violet that our food is here, not wanting to disrupt her quiet time too much. That way she doesn't feel forced to come out and eat now if she's not ready.

I pull out my computer and get the image of the paper that we found in Kai Madison's apartment. Sitting on her couch, I work away at the code, trying to decipher what is written.

Basing my own code after my initial hypothesis that each shape corresponds with a letter of the English twenty-six-letter alphabet, I run about a hundred tests in a minute as I try to decode the message.

I hear noises coming from Violet's bedroom and have to take deep breaths to focus on the work that I'm doing. I hear her humming as she rummages through her dresser, her door wide open so I can hear what's going on.

Her steps are light as she walks into her living room, and she waves at me when we catch her eyes. She darts toward the food on the counter and gets a plate for herself before coming to sit next to me.

"What are you doing?" she asks, curious about the process.

"I'm running a code that I created to try and figure out what the message says. I already had the base of it written, so I just had to change it around for this particular written message."

"So, you just run it until you get a hit?"

"Pretty much, but since we know so little about the code, my code could be completely wrong."

"And you would be running tests for nothing."

"Correct," I agree with her, watching as she reaches for the TV remote.

"Well then. There's nothing you can do right now except just let the program run."

I nod my head in agreement again, but I'm unsure where she's going with this.

She presses the on button on the remote and makes her way to Netflix. She pulls up The Good Place, removes my laptop from my lap, and throws a blanket over the both of us while curling into my side.

I smile down at her, shaking my head, and getting the full picture of what she wants.

We chat somewhat as the show begins to play about things unrelated to what happened today, mostly about her new book, but other than that, we focus our attention on the screen as a way to decompress after a hectic day.

Well, she mostly pays attention to the screen while I can't stop thinking about the fact that we are relaxing on the couch together and her warm, soft body is pressed to my side.

At some point, though I'm unsure when, Violet falls asleep in my lap, her chest rising and falling slowly. I press pause on the tv before shutting it off and returning back to the test runs of code that play out on my computer.

In total, I've run about six hundred tests which is not enough for the combinations that could be written with such few shapes.

Because maybe the shapes don't correspond to a single letter, but depending on the pattern in which it was written, each shape can correspond to multiple.

We know that Kai isn't entirely stupid. I'm hoping that the person who wrote him this note is. Or the person who created the code since they could be two different people.

I don't think anyone else was supposed to see this note, so I'm also trying to figure out why Kai didn't destroy it after getting the message. That was one mistake that he made. Meaning, that he can make another.

He's only human.

And his mistake-making might be the one thing that lets me get him.