NINETY-ONE

4.30 P.M.

‘Bloody hell, just when I think I’m getting somewhere, the paperwork changes to something else,’ Stacey said.

She’d taken a cursory look through all four boxes supplied by Seekers to see if she could discern any kind of organisation at all. She’d found the exact opposite. It seemed like Ryan Douglas had printed everything he could find, thrown it all into the air and then put it all back into boxes.

Out of all this data, she wanted only one thing. The payment details of the account named Jester674.

She gave her tired eyes a brief rest and glanced over at Penn. ‘Anything from those Scrabble pieces?’

‘Not yet,’ he said, rearranging the tiles. She’d never been any good at board games, so it hadn’t been too difficult to decide who was doing what job.

He had the tiles laid out in a line across the length of his desk.

She stretched her legs and went to go look over his shoulder.

She counted twenty-seven letters: LCTEYGMHNCTOLISMVUEAUNIUBKR.

‘No chance,’ she said, quickly taking herself back to her chair. It was worse than any conundrum she’d ever seen on Countdown, and she’d never been very good at those.

‘Doesn’t help that I don’t know what I’m looking for. There are a lot of letters there for a place, so is it an instruction? Is it another twisted clue?’

‘Penn, I honestly wish I had something useful to offer.’

‘Story of my life with this case,’ he muttered under his breath.

She knew he was beating himself up for not getting the clues as quickly as he would have liked. Hiccup had died, and now the stakes were even higher. Not because Hiccup had been homeless, but because they now had two lives on the line.

She wished she had the time to reassure him, but this case seemed to have made them all feel inadequate. She was fighting the frustration of not being able to put her hands on the one piece of information she needed.

Every minute that passed put the life of a little girl in greater danger, and she just needed that one piece of paper that would break this case.

‘Oh, shit,’ she cried, picking up a single sheet and staring at it to make sure she wasn’t mistaken.

‘I’ve got it,’ she said, waving the page at Penn. ‘I have the identity of Jester674.’