Twelve dollhouse books. Twelve numbers. A code. Gigi’s brain raced like a hyperactive greyhound. A substitution cipher? Numbers for letters? The digits ranged from fifteen to one hundred sixty-two, with no repeats. Coordinates? Some kind of combination?
“Dewey decimal system?” Brady murmured beside her.
Knox crossed to the shelves and began examining row after row of books. “No numbers on the spines, no way to look them up.”
Gigi picked up one of the tiny plastic dollhouse books and turned it in her hand. She spotted what might have been teeny tiny writing on the spine. A jolt of energy shot through her veins like eight cups of coffee—or a single mimosa.
“The magnifying glass!” Gigi ran to grab it. The ornate silver and gold handle was cool to the touch. Angling the glass toward the miniature book in her hand, Gigi was able to read the title. “David Copperfield.”
Brady crouched to gather the rest of the books, then joined her, cradling all eleven of the remaining dollhouse books in his hands. Gigi took one of them from him, her fingers brushing his outstretched palm.
“Rebecca,” Gigi read. And on it went: Coraline, Anna Karenina, Carrie, Peter Pan. Matilda and Jane Eyre and Robinson Crusoe.
“King Lear,” Gigi said, and she wondered if she was imagining the way Brady’s gaze lingered on her face. On her lips.
“They’re all names.” That was Knox. He wasn’t looking at Gigi. He was
looking at Brady. Hard.
Gigi focused on the books. The pattern held for the last two: Oliver Twist and Emma.
Twelve books. Twelve titles. All names. And numbers.
Gigi bounced lightly on her toes, thinking. “Why would they give us the titles?” She looked up—at the shelves overhead and all around them. “We’re in the library.” Her eyes widened. “Books and books. Little ones, big ones.” She bounded for the shelf she’d searched earlier. “I think I remember seeing Emma.”
“Emma,” Brady murmured. “Number on the back is fifteen.”
Gigi’s brain took off like a rocket, and the second she found the real copy of Emma, she flipped to page fifteen.
And there it was.
Knox crossed the room to stand directly behind her and read over her shoulder. “Underlined words,” he said. “Three of them.”
“Less, let, and looks,” Gigi read. She stated the obvious: “They all start with L.” It took her five minutes to find another book from the list. “Jane Eyre.”
“Thirty-four,” Brady said without even having to look.
On page thirty-four of Jane Eyre, Gigi found five underlined words. “Scarlet, china, candle, crib, scarecrow,” she reported.
“C.” Brady’s voice was low in volume, calm, sure. Gigi looked back at him.
“The only letter that appears in all of those words,” Brady Daniels, recognizer of patterns said, “is C.”
“I’ve got Rebecca,” Knox said from the other side of the room. “What’s the page number?”
Brady answered, his voice clipped. “Seventy-two.”
And so it went, book after book. The moment they decoded the last one, Gigi closed her eyes, pulling up the entire sequence in her mind.
L, C, R, E, E, T, I, H, B, P, O, M.
“Start by pulling the T, the H, and the E,” Gigi said automatically. The.
That left nine letters: L, C, R, E, I, B, P, O, and M. “Prime?” Knox muttered. “Or primo?”
“Rope,” Brady tried.
“Rope,” Gigi repeated, opening her eyes to find his on her. “That leaves
five letters.” L, C, I, B, M. “Climb,” she said.
Knox beat Brady to putting the phrase together. “Climb the rope.”
The instant the words were spoken out loud, a stained-glass panel on the ceiling swung down like a trapdoor, creating an opening overhead.
And down fell a rope.
