Chapter 53

Ryan paces outside the petrol station off the M11. He stretches his legs, which have been cramping from being folded into the Mini Cooper. It’s already late afternoon. It took forever to get processed out of the station house. He’s about twenty miles from Heathrow. This place looks like any rural American freeway exit. There’s a BP station, a Starbucks.

“Do you know if Alison had a favorite book?” the deputy sheriff asks. She has an unusual name—Poppy McGee, like a character from a children’s story.

“A favorite book?”

“Yeah, like a favorite novel or book?” the cop asks from the cracked screen of his iPhone. McGee is a study in contradictions: She’s unusually young to be a deputy, but she has one of those gaps between her front teeth that somehow make her seem worldly. Yet her accent still screams Kansas.

“Why?” Ryan’s tries to catalogue the books on the shelf in Ali’s room. He knew her favorite of all time was a book her father gave her, The Little Prince. French, of course. She was such a Francophile.

The deputy sheriff hesitates. But he can see the decision to disclose on her face. “We found a note in Alison’s car.”

“A note?”

The cop is looking down, like she’s retrieving something. “Yes.”

“How? I thought the car was in the water for years.”

“We got lucky,” she says without elaboration. “Written on the envelope was: ‘If something happens to me.’”

The words grab Ryan by the shirt collar.

“We think the note was for you.”

“Well, what’s it say?” he asks impatiently. What’s with keeping him in fucking suspense?

“That’s just it. We don’t know what it says. It’s written in code.”

Ryan is confused. But then his mind leaps to the prom. The silly prom proposal. The code Ali used.

His memory is confirmed when the cop says, “It’s called a book cipher. We need to know the book she was using to decode the message. We know she made similar messages using a book called The Little Prince, but that wasn’t the book she used for this note. Can you think of a book she might’ve used?”

Ryan’s pulse is ripping. “It’s not a book you’re after.”

“What do you mean?”

“Send me the note and I’ll tell you everything.”

“I’m afraid I can’t—”

“Send me the note or we’re done talking.”