The Jefferson Key

WYATT SPOTTED THEIR DESTINATION ABOUT A MILE AWAY. AN

underdeveloped industrial park with a paved lot that spanned out before a couple of dilapidated metal buildings. Two SUVs waited. A single person stood on the asphalt, looking his way.

Andrea Carbonell.

He found the twenty-sixth letter.

An R.

He pressed the tips of his fingers on the far left and far right disks and rotated all twenty-six in unison. He knew that somewhere in the circle, among the twenty-six different arrangements of letters there should be a coherent message that spanned the disks’ length.

A quarter turn later he saw it.

Five words.

He committed them to memory, then rescrambled the disks.

KNOX SAW EDWARD BOLTON LABOR OVER HIS SECOND CHOICE and, for the first time, spotted hesitation as the captain debated the remaining three glasses.

Just watching rattled his nerves.

He never dreamed that he would actually witness a challenge. His father had told him about them, none of which had ever gone this far. But that was the whole point of something so unpredictable, its message clear. Don’t fight. Work it out. Still, no captain had ever wanted to show cowardice, so Edward Bolton held firm, knowing that one of the three remaining glasses would prove fatal.

Hale’s dark eyes, oily and alive, stared unblinking.

Bolton brought a glass to his lips.

Mouth open, he threw the contents to the back of his throat and swallowed.

Five seconds passed.

Nothing.

Surcouf and Cogburn exhaled together.

Bolton grinned, an undisguised hint of relief at the corners of his mouth.

Not bad, Knox thought.

Not bad at all.