Code tb-3 Page 6

  “Why bother?” Ben quipped. But I could tell he was paying attention.

  “The website tracks your stats. How many you’ve found, how many times a cache has been located, stuff like that. It’s cool, noob. Get on board.”

  “Anyone find the Loggerhead box before us?” I asked. “This letter could be old news.”

  “Nobody,” Hi said. “At least, no one’s recorded it online, which almost every player does. It’s a pride point when you crack a new geocache.”

  “So you had to find it.” Shelton wasn’t asking.

  “Um, yeah. In fact …” Hi navigated back to the Loggerhead cache. “I’m claiming first blood right now.”

  “How’d you know the cache would be buried?” I asked.

  “The clue.” Hi grinned. “And I really just wanted to use my metal detector. The coordinates indicated that clearing, so it seemed likely the cache would be underground.”

  “Wait a second.” Shelton’s brow furrowed. “You need a GPS device for this, right? To check the coordinates, make sure you’re on target?”

  Hi nodded.

  Ben leaned forward and gave Hi a hard look. “So when you’re out playing hide-and-seek, you’re being tracked the whole time. That program must know you’re here, right now. In our secret, hidden clubhouse.”

  That got my attention. Bad memories tumbled through my mind. Hi’s game risked revealing the bunker’s location. The thought made me nervous.

  “Not true,” Hi replied. “I log out when I’m not playing, so the GPS isn’t active. Don’t worry, I’m careful.”

  “You’d better be,” Ben warned. “We’ve got too much invested in this place.”

  Uncomfortable with the sudden tension in the room, I glanced at the other piece of paper lying on the table. The smile-like image remained a mystery, but the numbers running beneath it jumped out at me: 32.773645 -00.065437.

  A synapse formed.

  “Guys.” I scooped up the sheet. “If the Gamemaster’s into geocaching, wouldn’t he leave more coordinates to follow?”

  Hi shot from the astro-chair. “Of course! We can plug those numbers into the database.” He made “gimme” hands. I complied.

  Hi punched in the digits and hit search.

  No hits.

  “Shoot.” Hi scratched his temple. “The numbers don’t match a listed cache.”

  Hi blew out his lips, then clicked “display coordinates.” A world map appeared, with a red flag pinpointing the exact location.

  Northern Algeria.

  “Err.” Hi grimaced. “Geeh.”

  Ben snorted. “Should I track down my passport?”

  “I’m not down with hiking the Sahara,” Shelton said. “So unless you know a good place for camel-riding lessons, I think we can rule this out.”

  “But these must be coordinates.” Hi knuckle-rapped the desk in frustration. “It’s the correct number of digits for longitude and latitude. The second set is negative, for Pete’s sake! That can’t be a fluke.”

  “Agreed.” I distrust coincidence. “We’re obviously missing something.”

  “This Gamemaster’s not even playing right,” Hi grumbled. “You’re supposed to list caches separately, not send players from one to the next. That’s a completely different game, and even then you’d put the log in the last box, not the first.”

  “Dude’s playing you,” Shelton said. “It’s a wild-goose chase.”

  “I doubt that.” Hi’s fingers shot through his hair, forming a mohawk. “I mean, why bother? Why put all this together for no reason? Leaving things to be found is the whole point of the game.”

  A second insight occurred to me.

  “The Gamemaster’s message was coded,” I said. “Maybe the numbers are, too.”

  “It’s possible,” Shelton agreed. “I can test some numerical ciphers tonight.”

  “Wait.” Ben glanced from face to face. “We’re actually going to pursue this nonsense? We suddenly care what this fruitcake hid in a box somewhere?”

  Ben’s question caught me off guard. When had I decided to play?

  From the moment you read the letter.

  “I’m in,” I said. “I’ll admit it, I want to solve the puzzle.”

  “Me too,” Hi said quickly. “Let’s take Mr. Creepy Clowns down to Chinatown.”

  Shelton shrugged. “Could be fun. I like breaking codes.”

  Ben shook his head. “Whatever.”

  I looked again at the Gamemaster’s challenge.

  The numerical string. The mysterious picture.

  So we’d passed The Test, and were invited to play The Game?

  Like I could turn that down.

  “Bring it on,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER 10

  A BUZZ IN my pocket startled me.

  Text. Kit. Get my butt home for dinner.

  “Gotta run, guys. Someone scan and email that image. I want to study it tonight.” I looked pointedly at Hi. “And remember to secure the bunker door. We can’t let the humidity get too high in here.”

  “One time,” Hi mumbled, feeding paper into the printer. “I’ll never live it down.”

  “Can you run me back?” I asked Ben, who nodded. Hi and Shelton would have to walk the mile and a half back to our complex.

  “Don’t sweat it, ya’ll.” Shelton flexed his scrawny biceps. “I’ll have this nut cracked by morning.”

  “I have no doubt.” Flashing an exaggerated thumbs-up.

  Coop, Ben, and I crawled outside and descended to the cove. Fifteen minutes later we’d secured Sewee to the Morris Island dock.

  “Later, Tor.” Ben headed for the townhouse he shared with his father. “I’ll take a look at those numbers, too. Shelton’s not the only one with ideas. Stay logged on.”

  “Will do. Thanks for the ride.”

  Patting my side for Coop to follow, I walked to our front door. Paused.

  “What do you think, boy?” I scratched his muzzle. “Will Kit inflict us with her company again tonight?”

  Coop cocked his head. A soft, pink tongue dropped from his mouth.

  “Unfortunately, I agree. Gotta go inside anyway.”

  Our canine instincts were dead-on. Whitney was swishing around the dining room in a yellow sundress, setting the table.

  At least the food will be good.

  “Whitney. Great to see you.” I plopped onto the couch. Cooper curled at my feet. “It’s been, what, twenty-four hours?”

  Whitney smiled, her sarcasm detector broken as usual.

  Kit hadn’t missed it. “Tory, get cleaned up. Now.”

  Eyes rolling, I trudged upstairs. Stopped midway. Turned. Hanging on the wall beside me was a large white canvas depicting an oddly shaped blue dog.

  “What is this?”

  Whitney appeared at the bottom of the steps. “Oh! That, Sweetie, is my favorite painting. It’s a Blue Dog, by Dan Kessler. Don’t you just adore it?”

  Actually, I did like it. But a single question was looping in my head.

  What is it doing here? What is it doing here? What is it doing here?

  I continued up in silence.

  As I washed my face, unpleasant facts coalesced. A painting. The vase. Pink and green pillows. Whitney, alone in the townhouse, unannounced.

  Like mold in a cellar, Kit’s bimbo girlfriend was quietly invading my domain.

  Do. Not. Like.

  I stared into my bathroom mirror. My reflection stared back. Impasse.

  “Tory!” Kit sounded annoyed. “We’re waiting on you!”

  “Blargh.”

  I reached the table just as Whitney unveiled her menu. Crab cakes, corn on the cob, collard greens, peach cobbler.

  Freaking delicious.

  The adults tried to draw me into conversation, but the sneaky buildup of Whitney’s belongings had weirded me out. After scarfing my meal, I bolted for my bedroom and locked the door.

  My Mac was awake, with a new message blinking on-screen. Ben. Requesting videoconference. I boot
ed iFollow and found I was last to arrive.

  Ben filled the top left quadrant of my monitor. As usual, he was lounging in sweats in his father’s rec room, which was an actual wreck. Old magazines, boat parts, camping gear, and fishing tackle were stacked in precarious piles all around him.

  Shelton’s bespectacled face hung to Ben’s right, framed by the two Avatar posters on his bedroom wall. Though barely six o’clock, he was already sporting PJs.

  Hi occupied the frame below Shelton. He was sitting at his desk, wearing a “Wolfman’s Got Nards!” T-shirt, and eating a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. My own image peered back from the final square.

  “She’s here.” Shelton sounded impatient. “Now will you tell us what’s up?”

  “I wasn’t going to repeat myself,” Ben replied, but his dark eyes sparked with eagerness.

  “Then talk,” Hi said. “I’m missing Man v. Food.”

  Ben got right to the point. “I solved the coordinates.”

  “Did not!” Shelton looked shocked, and a little jealous. “How?”

  A thin smile stole across Ben’s face. “For once, I had the flash of brilliance.”

  “Go on.” Ben had my full attention.

  “I was thinking about what Hi said earlier.”

  “Smart,” Hi quipped.

  “Not usually,” Ben continued, “but in this case you were right. The numbers have to be coordinates. Problem is, they don’t make sense.”

  “Not unless we go dune-surfing in Africa,” Shelton joked.

  Ben ignored him. “How much do you guys know about coordinate systems?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “I know that a specific longitude and latitude cross at a single point on a map, but that’s about it.”

  “That’s right,” Ben said. “Coordinates are just sets of numbers used to denote an exact location. The most commonly used system is longitude, latitude, and height.”

  “Latitude runs east-west,” Hi contributed. “Longitude goes north-south, from pole to pole.”

  Ben nodded. “Now, for any system to work, there must be agreed-upon starting points. The reference planes defining latitude and longitude are the equator and the prime meridian.”

  “Everyone knows that.” Shelton wiped and replaced his glasses. “The equator divides north from south. The prime meridian separates east and west.”

  “Doesn’t the PM run through some observatory in England?” Hi asked.

  “Greenwich,” Ben agreed. “That’s zero longitude. How far east or west a location is on a map is measured from that city.”

  “In degrees, right?” I ventured. “East is positive and west is negative.”

  “Gold star,” Ben said. “That’s how you calculate longitude—the number of degrees east or west of Greenwich.”

  “Latitude works the same way,” Hi added. “North is positive, south is negative.”

  “But you have to understand—” Ben leaned forward toward his screen, “—choosing the prime meridian wasn’t scientific. It’s not like the equator, which must be equidistant from the poles, and therefore can only be in one place. For the prime meridian, cartographers simply agreed to use an old English telescope as the universal reference point.”

  “Really?” That surprised me. “When?”

  “The 1880s.” Hi mumbled through a mouthful of Doritos. Of course he knew. “The United States held a conference, and most countries voted for Greenwich. It’s stuck ever since.”

  “The point is,” Ben went on, “the choice was completely arbitrary. Before that conference, mapmakers had used dozens of other places as zero longitude. Rome. Paris. Rio. Mecca. Most countries just picked their own prime meridian.”

  “Is this going somewhere?” Shelton stifled a yawn. “We already tried the digits as coordinates. They pointed to the freakin’ Sahara Desert, remember?”

  “Say these are coordinates.” Ben lifted his copy of the clue. “The first number would be latitude. 32.773645. The second would be longitude. -00.065437.”

  “And the closest town is—” Hi glanced down, face smeared with orange debris, “—Bou Semghoun. An oasis village in the Ghardaia region of southern Algeria. Think they get DirecTV?”

  Ben’s eyes twinkled. “Guess what else is at latitude 32.773645?”

  “What?” I felt goose bumps prickle my skin.

  “Downtown Charleston,” Ben smacked his hands together. “Booyah!”

  “Get out!” Hiram’s eyes widened. “How’d you know that?”

  “Fishing.” Ben wore a smug grin. “If I find a good spot, I bookmark the location in Sewee’s GPS system. I’ve seen latitude 32.77 hundreds of times. I should’ve recognized it as soon as I saw the clue, but the rest of the string threw me.”

  “But we still need a longitude,” Shelton pointed out. “We can’t find anything without both numbers.”

  Ben’s smile widened. “Got that, too.”

  “Spill it,” I demanded.

  “That’s why I brought up the prime meridian,” Ben said. “Zero degrees longitude doesn’t have to be fixed to Greenwich. Not like zero latitude, which is always fixed to the equator and can’t move.”

  I saw were Ben was going. “So this longitudinal coordinate could rely upon some other prime meridian. A totally different starting point!”

  Ben leaned back, hands behind his head. “Bingo.”

  “But that could be anywhere,” Shelton whined. “Literally any point on earth.”

  “Wait, wait!” In his excitement, Hi spilled nacho chips onto his keyboard. “This clue was hidden inside the geocache. On Loggerhead! And that’s the only fixed location the Gamemaster gave us.”

  “Hi figured it out,” Ben grumbled. “Sometimes I hate how smart you guys are.”

  Alone in his bedroom, Hi raised the roof.

  “So we use the first number as a normal latitude.” Dots were connecting for me. “Then we assume the second coordinate is for longitude, but with the Loggerhead cache location as the prime meridian.”

  Ben nodded. “That’s our new zero longitude.”

  “Ben, that’s brilliant!”

  Suddenly, the boy was all blushes. “No big deal. Easy, really.”

  “So where does—” I scanned quickly, “—longitude -00.065437 lead now?”

  “You’ve got mail.” Ben tapped his mouse.

  The message arrived almost instantly. I opened the lone attachment and loaded a JPEG onto my desktop.

  And knew.

  CHAPTER 11

  “CASTLE PINCKNEY?” SHELTON’S voice was skeptical. “It’s abandoned, has been for years.”

  “These coordinates are dead-on,” Ben said firmly. “No way that’s by accident.”

  “But there’s nothing out there.” Shelton frowned into his webcam. “Just a beat-up pile of old rocks.”

  “Part of the building still stands.” Hi’s gut filled a quarter of my screen as he searched above his desk. “I’ve got a book here, somewhere.”

  “Sounds like a good spot to hide something.” I pulled up images as I spoke. “What do we know about the castle?”

  “Hold on a sec,” Hi called from off camera. “Must be in my closet.”

  My search results were not inviting.

  Castle Pinckney was definitely deserted, and the neglect showed. A gnarly tumble of broken masonry and chest-high weeds, the dilapidated fort occupied a tiny atoll in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

  The main building was circular, with a high curtain wall facing the harbor mouth. Scrub forest grew close, like a wild, tangled beard. Dark vines covered the crumbling gray stone, locking the fortress in a choking, shadowy embrace.

  Though the isle sat a mere thousand feet from the downtown peninsula, the ruined battlements seemed lost in time. No one ever went there.

  “At first, the British hanged pirates out there.” Hi was back on camera, skimming some sort of military encyclopedia. “Then, in 1781, George Washington ordered the construction of a fort.” Page flip. “The Confederate Arm
y used Castle Pinckney as a POW camp. After that, the island became an artillery position, eventually a lighthouse.”

  “Now, mothballs.” Shelton made a wipe-away gesture. “Ghost town.”

  “I’ve cruised by there dozens of times,” Ben said. “Dumpsville.”

  “The perfect hiding place.” Hi clicked his tongue. “Well played, Señor Gamemaster.”

  “Fine.” Shelton sighed from the depths of his toes. “Put a visit on our to-do list.”

  My eyes drifted back to the images on my screen. Castle Pinckney had a brooding, ominous feel. Lonely. Foreboding.

  I was hooked.

  Watch check: six fifteen p.m. Plenty of daylight left.

  “Meet me at the dock in ten,” I said.

  “Done!” Hi swiveled his chair, propped a foot, and started lacing his Adidas.

  “Wait! What?” Shelton raised both hands. “Tonight? Why?”

  “We’ve got over an hour before dark.” I yanked my hair into a ponytail. “Let’s show Mr. Gamemaster how quickly Virals solve puzzles.”

  Ben took a moment to consider, then shrugged. “I’ll get Sewee ready.”

  “We’ve got to work on our decision-making process.” Shelton was shaking his head. “Right now, we just follow Tory over every cliff.”

  “Oh, boohoo,” I mocked. “Get moving.”

  “You’re going down, clown!” Hi slapped his hands together. “Tory, don’t forget the clue. We still don’t know how that image factors.”

  “Got it.”

  Three faces winked out as I slapped my laptop shut.

  “I’m taking Coop for a walk!”

  Kit’s head popped from the kitchen. “Now?”

  I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask more questions.

  Kit didn’t disappoint. “Okay, but be back before dark. It’s a school night.”

  “Promise, bye!”

  Coop and I shot down the front stairs and beelined to the dock. I heard another door open, turned to see Shelton hurrying from his unit.

  “I’m serious, Brennan.” Shelton had changed into white Nike gym shorts and a black Walking Dead hoodie. “My foot’s coming down. No more last-minute hijacks of my evenings.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Believe that.” He let the matter drop.