Shadow Borne (30 page)

“
Me?” I gestured to the box. “Where is it? Show me.”

“
Look in the last notebook. The inside of the back
cover.”

I flipped the book over and read the words
near the bottom. “To Baby Bear and Indian summers,” I read aloud.
Shocked, I lifted my eyes to John.

“
Baby bear?”

“
What my family used to call me. Yes.”

“
And Indian summers?”

“
They only meant long summers. We, ah, had a lot of fun,
together on summer break, me and Mike did. Megan was older
and...well, never mind.” I didn’t tell John about the summer Mike
turned ten. I was twelve. We set out for the woods near the end of
the summer, in August. It was burning hot, but Mike insisted that
we were on an adventure. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the
details of that long ago camping trip.

“
Does it mean anything else to you?”

I shook my head, mute.

“
What about the code he used?”

“
Code? Oh.” I noticed now—and wondered briefly how I could have
missed it before—that the words that filled Mike’s notebooks were a
jumbled mess. I looked a little harder, concentrating, and tried
not to smile. The words and many of the actual letters were
backwards. Some of the letters were even upside down, like most of
his ‘A’s and ‘C’s. Throughout the book, I noticed that he had even
simply scrambled many of the words. It was a pain in the butt to
read, but easy enough to figure out if you took the time to do
it.

I coughed and
sipped coffee that was somehow still warm. “You and your gang of
reputed business men couldn’t crack the code, huh?” I couldn’t help
but notice that several of the men didn’t appreciate the
remark.

“
Do you recognize it?” John was impatient now.

“
Yes, I do. Mike developed a secret code recently.” No point in
telling him it was something we had been doing since
childhood.

“
And you are familiar with it, I am assuming.”

“
You assume correctly.” I leaned back and folded my arms across
my still damp chest. “I’m not giving it to you.”

“
Of course you aren’t,” he muttered. “But lucky for you I’m not
asking for the key to the code.”

“
Then what do you want from me?”

“
I
want you to find your brother.”