Salem's Cipher (10 page)

25

Salem, Massachusetts

“S
top! You're not supposed to be up there.” The man's face was flushed with anger. He stood in the doorway of the old one-room church, his hand on the unlatched door. His blazer marked him as a Peabody Essex Museum employee, and his named badge tagged him as a “Guy.” “We need to preserve this building. You can't get all up in everything.”

Salem hopped off the stool. She gulped three deep breaths to calm herself.

“I'm so sorry!” Bel tossed Salem a glance as she made her way toward the worker.
I've got this,
it said.
Get back to work.
“Someone told us Nathaniel Hawthorne had carved his initials into this post, and we wanted a photo.”

Guy, who appeared to be in his mid twenties and was built like a linebacker, shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “That'd be pretty cool if it was true, but it isn't. Hawthorne lived here during a totally different time.”

Bel tipped her head. “But you do have some Hawthorne artifacts here. Right?”

“Sure, in Plummer Hall,” he said, shoving his ear over his shoulder. “You must have walked through it to get back here.”

They had. They'd walked through the entire building, out the back door, down the stairs, and up to this itsy bitsy, single-room church that had, if Salem's research was accurate, been a meeting house, and then the First Church of Salem, and then a storage shed before it was found, restored, and relocated behind the Plummer House about 100 years ago. It was a pointy little red thing, shaped like a Monopoly house, with windows on each side and a blistered old door with a metal loop for a knob.

“Can you point me toward the Hawthorne artifacts?”

Guy appeared doubtful. While Salem thought it would've helped if Bel had been more specific about what sort of Nathaniel Hawthorne “artifacts” she was interested in, she was impressed that her friend had not only recalled Hawthorne's name from their taxi ride, but also pulled it out of her ass when they needed it the most.

“That's okay,” Bel said, strolling past Guy when he didn't answer. “I'm sure they can help me inside.”

Guy either didn't want to let Bel slip through his hands, didn't want to be known as the king of bad customer service, or both, because after a laughable second hooking his glance between Bel and Salem, he decided to follow Bel.

“Go get 'em, tiger,” Salem said under her breath, referring to Bel. She loved everything about her best friend, but right now she particularly loved her quick thinking. She leapt back onto the stool, alone in the whitewashed space.

As she was knocking, exploring, and pressing, she thought, not for the first time, how grateful she was for the Internet. No way would she have known there were four First Churches without it. She would have just ended up at 316 Essex Street, where the current First Church stood, and then what?

She liked thinking this. The small victory made standing on a stool, pounding on an old chunk of wood embedded in a ceiling, and injecting her fingers with some of the oldest splinters in America feel less like a snipe hunt. It also made her feel not so exposed this far from Minnesota. That train of thought helped until she reached nearly all the way to the other end of the beam, her knuckles scuffed, her fingernail beds porcupine-pierced with wood. She had less than a foot of the beam left to explore, and she'd discovered nothing, not even an old piece of chewing gum stuck up in there.

Through one of the latticed windows, she spotted Bel emerging from the back of the Plummer House. Guy was with her. Salem's heartbeat picked up. She was almost out of time.

She redoubled her efforts. She refused to let herself think about what it meant if they didn't find anything, if they'd completely misread her mom's message, if the seconds were ticking away on her and Gracie's lives.

Salem had to locate
something
.

Nervously, she glanced out the window, her hands busy. Bel and Guy had stopped. They appeared to be arguing.

They both glanced toward one-room church.

They resumed walking toward it, Guy in the lead. Bel put her arm out to slow him. He shook it off.

Salem's breathing grew shallow. She had the last four inches of the beam to search. Guy would not be pleased to see her up here. She tapped frantically.

She thought she heard something, finally, something different than she'd heard in the hundreds of square inches she'd already tapped. Her breathing was too loud. She tried to compose herself.

She tapped again, on the far side of the beam, the section facing the pulpit.

The results were inconclusive.

She was sure Guy was almost upon her. There wasn't time, but she had to get a better angle. She jumped off her stool and pulled it four inches toward the front of the church. She risked a peek outside.

Guy and Bel were 25 feet away and closing in.

She leapt back on the stool. She tapped, finding the hollow spot again immediately. This section looked like it used to be a dove-tailed woodworking joint that had been sawed and capped. Pressing her fingers into the sweet spot, she felt the softness of the wood.

Even though every inch of her fought it, yelled at her to run, she closed her eyes so she could better hear the wood.

She tapped, knocking as lightly as a fairy.

A drawer released.

She yelped. There it was!

The front door of the church whipped open. Sunlight rained in, outlining Guy's massive shape.

There was no time for delicacy. Salem shoved her hand in the drawer. She felt paper. She tugged it out, as gently as she could, and curled it into her pocket.

She bumped the drawer closed.

She hopped off the stool

It was too late. Guy was furious.

“Get. Out.”

“Not a problem,” she said, slipping past him. Bel fell in beside her. A quick nod from Salem told Bel all she needed to know. Bel grinned triumphantly and they hurried toward Plummer Hall, ignoring the back door in favor of a side path that would guarantee they wouldn't face any more museum employees. They were giggling as they scurried away from Guy, their heads together.

They were teenagers all over again.

The laughter lasted until they broke out onto Essex Street.

An uncannily beautiful man was exiting a white sedan. His light brown hair was loose, long, and moved like Medusa's snakes in the chill fall wind. His build was slight, androgynous, his walk almost feminine as he strode toward Plummer Hall.

He paused, turned, glanced toward both women.

Clouds skidded over the sun, casting Essex Street in abrupt shadows. The atmosphere was lit like a supercharged black-and-white photograph, explosive and static.

Salem's eyes connected with his.

She didn't know him, but he clearly recognized her.

The calculating expression in his eyes, the peculiar, delicate putty of his face, the bulge in his jacket—they all filled her with terror beyond words.

Bel saw the same thing she did.

Both women froze in place, a primal beat pounding their blood.

And then they took off running through the pen-and-ink air.

26

Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC

“
Y
ou're really going through with this?”

Gina Hayes rubbed her face. Senate Majority Leader James McCoy had asked her this question a dozen times in the past year. As he sat across from her in her DC office, it was clear that what had started out as a joke between old friends had evolved into something else. He was worried.

The two of them had been born into opposite parties, but James McCoy was an old-school Republican: a fiscal conservative who happened to believe that small government, strong schools, safe streets, and healthy citizens was the best way to govern. He'd always kept his vote out of people's bedrooms, doctor's offices, and churches, and he never played favorites, even after forty-five years in the Senate. He was a dying breed, if there had ever been more than one of him. Hayes had learned more from the man about ethics and conduct than from anyone, her father included.

“It'd look a little silly to back out now, wouldn't it, Jim?” She attempted a smile. “You know what the media would say about that.”

He held up his hands, spreading them apart to unfurl an invisible banner. “
Gina Hayes Runs Back to the Kitchen, Encourages Other Women to Follow
.”

Her smile was genuine this time. “Something like that. You didn't drop by today to talk me out of running, did you?”

“Drop by
today
? I've been trying to track you down for a week. Matthew finally caved and told me you'd be in your office for a few hours. You spend too much time campaigning, Gina, and not enough doing the actual job you were elected to do.”

She sat forward in her seat, her smile erased. This was a familiar and favorite debate of theirs. “I agree. If you'd sign off on my bipartisan campaign finance reform bill, politicians would have more time for the real work they were elected to do.”

He waved her away, not up for the game. “You know that dog has no teeth. Not as long as that scandalous Citizens United stands.”

She leaned back, nodding, her eyes sharp. “I could change things. If elected, I would.”

Any good cheer dropped off him like a coat. He suddenly looked all his seventy-four years, scalp pink and speckled through his thin hair, hands quavering with the slightest tremble. There'd been talk that he would retire this year. She wondered if it was true.

“Here's why I stopped by, Gina. People are saying that you've met with the Israelis.”

She made a mental note to tighten her inner circle. “You know the Israelis have a rule to never meet with candidates, only elected officials.”

“Even when those candidates are sitting senators and likely future presidents of the United States of America?” The tremble in his hand increased. How long had he had that?

“I'm worried about you,” he continued. “And that's honest to God why I'm here. This isn't going to end well, and your father would say the same thing if he were still alive. No one knows better than this old horse how dark politics can get, especially at the top. You have no idea how many forces you're working against.”

He coughed, the sound dry and red. “The truth is I want the other guy to win—I'm too old to change parties—but I want it fair and square. At least back off and let the Afghanistan mineral rights bill pass.”

Hayes stood. She loved Jim McCoy, but she was too busy to humor his fears. “I appreciate your concern, Jim. You know I do. But it's misplaced. And you know I can't back off of Afghanistan. I'm not willing to risk our troops to line the pockets of a few already-rich.” She helped him to stand. “Now, do you want to go with me to my press conference or not? We'd give the world a treat by appearing together.”

In lieu of an answer, he hugged her, grabbed his cane, and limped out through the back door and past her Secret Service detail without another word.

His silence frightened Gina Hayes more than anything he could have said.

27

Salem, Massachusetts

S
alem and Bel found themselves on Brown Street, huffing from exertion. There was light pedestrian traffic, not enough to conceal them. Salem glanced over her shoulder. The man was still following them, a hundred or so yards behind, the look on his face beyond intense. It reminded her of the cyborg in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
The thought was so ridiculous, every second of the last thirty-six hours so unbelievably ludicrous, that she laughed.

It was a horrible sound.

Bel whipped to look at her. “We have to hide.”

Salem hysteria-giggled a little more, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “In there?”

At the end of the block, in a triangle at the intersection of Brown and Washington, a bronze Puritan statue stood on an enormous rock. Behind the rock, a huge Gothic revival church rose into the sky. It resembled an old castle with battlements, its lanced windows set with red glass. The sign below the central window declared it the
Salem Witch Museum.

Underneath the sign, a line of people snaked out the door and around the block, a tour bus behind them. It was the only visible crowd in either direction.

“Yup.” Bel grabbed Salem and shoved her toward the crowd. “In there.”

Bel pushed through the milling tourists, earning her and Salem a barrage of angry stares. Salem was reminded of the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert Bel had dragged her to during her senior year of high school. Bel was already graduated, living in Chicago. She dressed edgy in ripped jeans and a cropped leather jacket. Salem had felt like a thumb in the mom jeans and
t-shirt that had dominated her wardrobe. Somehow, Bel had threaded them from the nosebleed seats almost to the stage. Those fans, while furious at Salem and Bel's passing, had seemed more easy-going than the crowd outside the Salem Witch Museum.

“Hey, line's back there!” It was a dad, three crabby kids under seven in tow. The people around him picked up the grumbling.

“Sorry!” Bel called over her shoulder.

Salem made the mistake of glancing behind her. The man from the white sedan was closing in, just on the other side of the statue. Something odd was happening to his face. Salem shook her head, and the twitch in his cheeks was gone. It must have been a trick of the light.

Bel yanked her inside.

In what must have been the original church's foyer, an older man with a crewcut sold tickets behind a desk on the left. To their right, a tall wooden organizer was stacked with Local Attractions pamphlets.

“Hey, get to the back of the line!” This time it was an elderly woman.

“Sorry.” It was Salem's turn to apologize.

Bel marched forward, head down, toward the closed doors just ahead.

“You can't go in there!” the man behind the counter yelled. “They're about to start the presentation.”

Salem wanted to stop so badly, to at least pay to go in, but she'd spotted the top of the head of the man who was following them at the back of the crowd. She had no choice. She followed Bel through the pneumatic doors, into the presentation.

The doors swung closed behind them.

They fell into a darkness so complete, Salem couldn't see her own hands. They were trapped.