friends are going to see him as a traitor to their cause. They'll kill him unless we protect him. Hopefully, that will be enough to turn him into an asset and blow this case wide open, because my cover may be blown at the club. I was with Maya last night, and if the arsonist saw us together, it would be easy for him to report back. There's a good chance they might think that I've been working with Maya all along. I doubt they'll suspect I'm onto the car ring. But once Sylvia gets wind of my relationship to Maya, I'll be done."
"You're probably right."
"There was also a man at the club last night, one of the original founders, Daniel Bragin. He kept telling me we'd met before. It turns out he thinks I'm the spitting image of my father, Andrei Markov. Apparently, my dad beat him in a chess match thirty years ago, and he still remembers him. Of course, I denied any knowledge, but I'm not sure Bragin won't keep digging. I'm not that concerned about him tying me to my dad, but if he goes deep enough, he'll find out I'm with the bureau."
"Then we better start moving fast."
"Yes," he agreed. "I have to go. Maya is on her way out."
"Does she know who you are?"
"Not yet."
"That sounds like you're thinking of telling her."
"I am. I can trust her, Flynn. She won't get in the way if she knows, but she might get in the way if she doesn't."
"Your call. Keep in touch."
He set down his phone as Maya got into the car with a relieved expression in her eyes.
"I got the books." She reached into her bag and pulled out three red journals and a black one. "The red ones are her personal diaries. I've marked them one, two, three, in chronological order of her life. The first one begins when she's a teenager. She writes randomly through the next twenty years of her life. Sometimes, she skips years at a time. But the last entry is a few days before her death."
He nodded, skimming through the first book, noting the sweeping cursive and the little hearts she liked to draw and color in. Not wanting to take the time to read yet, he set down the red journals and moved to the black book. "This is the one you think she was using for a story draft?"
"Yes."
He opened it and flipped through the first few pages. There were random words and sentences that didn't seem to make much sense. There were also rough illustrations of a house, a tree, a post-office box, a grave and then a series of numbers underneath. An uneasy feeling grew within him. Some of the sentences were words children used when they were learning to read. The dog jumped over the fence. The cat needed milk. The farmer's wife went to the market. "Is this for a kid's book?"
"It feels like it might be a picture book, but Natasha didn't appear to have tremendous artistic talent. And there are lots of numbers," she added, as he flipped the page. "Is that like a number search game?"
He shook his head as he stared at the grid of numbers. He didn't think that's what it was at all. And then it hit him. "My God," he murmured. "This isn't a picture book; it's a cypher."
Maya's gaze widened as her eyes locked with his. "A cypher? What is that?"
"It's code."
"Why would my grandmother be writing in code?"
"Because she had something to hide. Now I know why someone is so worried about these books, or this book in particular."
She stared back at him in bewilderment. "Important to hide? It's all gibberish, Jax."
His uneasy feeling deepened. "It's not gibberish. It's encrypted information. You may have stumbled onto something big, Maya."
"Like what?"
He met her gaze. "Your grandmother was Russian. She hung out with a lot of wealthy, influential people at the Russia House."
"Are you suggesting my grandmother was a spy?"
"That's exactly what I'm suggesting."
"That's ridiculous," she said, but there was doubt in her eyes. "Just because she was Russian doesn't make her a spy."
"No, but this cypher might. We need to figure out the code."
"Should we take it to the police?"
He immediately shook his head. The last thing he wanted was for the police to get involved in any of this.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because you'll lose track of it. They'll take all of her journals into custody and you'll never get the truth."