Sanskrit Cipher: A Marina Alexander Adventure Read online

  Randy chuckled as he drove along, then frowned as he felt a funny sort of shiver from below. Almost like a gentle rocking. Weird.

  He eased up on the gas a little, but the strange shimmying of the tractor didn’t lessen…if anything, it was getting worse.

  Randy knew what it felt like when a tire blew. This definitely wasn’t that sort of lopsided tugging—it was a deep…well, shiver was the only word he could think of.

  No strange noises, though, and the engine seemed fine. He’d be able to hear if there was something haywire under the hood.

  So he pressed on the accelerator again and jabbed his finger at the smartphone to start up the next chapter of the latest Sargent Blue thriller.

  And on he rolled.

  Ten

  Filbert barely got in the door at home before they were all over him.

  “Dad! Look at what Stanley did to my shoe!” cried Matty, thrusting one of his trainers into Filbert’s face.

  “Daddy! You’re home!” squealed six-year-old Rachel as she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his thigh.

  Stanley barked and ran in circles and tried to look innocent next to the shoe that had definite puppy teeth marks all over it and a hole in the heel.

  “You’re home on time,” said Karleen, looking at him from the stove, where she was stirring something that smelled really good. “That means you can eat dinner with the rest of us instead of having to heat up leftovers.” She smiled. “That’ll be nice.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said, examining the chewed-up trainer as he hiked up the waist of his pants—which were sagging alarmingly from the dog jumping on him.

  “Matty, I thought we told you not to leave your shoes out where the dog— Yes, Stanley, I see you,” Filbert said, reaching to pat the black lab who hadn’t stopped writhing in excitement since his master had come through the door. “Matty, you can’t leave your shoes out where Stanley can get them. And we just bought these! Did you see this, Karleen?”

  He started toward her in the kitchen and felt his boot give away. He almost stepped out of it, but instead only stumbled, just catching himself.

  “What the h—” He cut himself off just in time. Karleen had a very strict Swear Jar rule because of the kids, and he’d already put more than ten dollars in it this week because he was trying to fix a leaky pipe in the bathroom.

  When he looked down, he saw that the buckle at the top of his work boot was missing, and so were the little metal hooks that he wound the laces around near the top.

  “What the…?” He didn’t remember catching his boot on anything, and certainly he would have felt whatever had been intense enough to tear a buckle and metal hooks out of their leather moorings.

  “What is it, Fil?” Karleen asked, coming from the kitchen with a spoon dripping with what he thought looked like beef stroganoff. Mmm. It looked and smelled delicious. He couldn’t wait.

  “My boot,” he said, hitching up his pants again as he lifted his foot to show her. “The buckle’s gone, and so are the lace hooks.”

  “Did Stanley chew on your shoe too, Daddy?” asked Rachel, tugging on his pants.

  He felt his chinos slip down alarmingly, and that was when he looked down to check his belt…and it was gone.

  Or, more accurately, the buckle—the big metal buckle with his monogram on it—was not there.

  “What the hell?”

  “Filbert!” Karleen snapped, clapping her hands over Rachel’s ears, heedless of the gravy dripping from the spoon. Stanley dove for the floor and began slurping up the drops, his tail thwacking Fil’s leg enthusiastically. “That jar’s going to be full enough for us to go to Hawaii at the rate—”

  “My belt buckle is gone,” he said, looking down at the leather belt, which was still in the loops on his chinos…but the buckle was missing. “It must have fallen off or something.”

  As soon as he said that, he regretted doing so.

  It would have been much better if he’d just kept to himself the fact that he’d somehow lost his birthday gift after only a week. He’d find it soon enough—it had to be at the warehouse or in his car. He distinctly remembered buckling it when he used the john at the end of his afternoon coffee break.

  “What do you mean, fallen off? Well, I hope you can find it, Filbert Strung,” Karleen said, heading back into the kitchen. “It cost almost as much as Matty’s trainers, getting it all personalized and everything for you. What’s it been, a week? Geez, Fil, this is why we can’t have nice things!” She slammed her spoon down in the kitchen and went about putting the rest of dinner together with a bit more vim and vigor than usual.

  “Daddy, we have lots of nice things, don’t we?” asked Rachel, her brown eyes wide and worried as she pulled his pants down a little more. “Like our house, and Stanley, and my bed with the twinkle lights over it, and—”

  “Yes, honey, we have lots of nice things.” Filbert pulled up his pants, already thinking back over his day to determine when he might have lost the buckle.

  “Then why did Mommy say—”

  “Mommy’s just a little annoyed right now. I’d better go in and help her set the table.”

  But first, he’d run upstairs and put on a different belt.

  Eleven

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  July 8, late night

  A car bomb.

  In Cincinnati.

  In the parking lot of a Methodist church.

  Eli still couldn’t wrap his head around what seemed utterly inconceivable: that one of his students had been killed—murdered—while attending the funeral of another of his students.

  A sickening coincidence, and one that weighed heavily on him. After all, if Eli hadn’t suggested Tina might attend Patty’s funeral, she would still be home safely in Champaign.

  It was his fault. Tina hadn’t known Patty well enough to go to her funeral. Obviously she’d only come along because he was going. Dammit.

  Eli got through the surreality of interviews with the authorities, explaining how he and Tina Janeski had driven from Illinois in her vehicle and how she’d gone outside to pull up the car, which had been parked at a far end of the lot in order to keep it shaded.

  And it was only after several hours, when he’d finished answering countless questions about how well he knew Tina (hardly at all), whether he had any idea of someone who might want to harm her (of course not), and if he’d seen anything suspicious (nothing at all), that Eli realized he’d nearly been killed as well.

  If he’d walked out with Tina instead of her offering to pull up the car to load the box, he’d be dead too.

  Eli had had more than a few close calls in his lifetime of fieldwork, especially since he preferred the more adventurous locales like the Amazon and Indian jungles, but this was so…cold. Cold and lethal. So sudden.

  So random and impersonal.

  Deliberate.

  Now, brooding in his hotel room in Cincinnati—it was far too late to drive back tonight, and he had to wait till morning to get a rental car anyway—Eli sipped tequila from one of the paper cups stocked with the in-room coffee maker.

  His attention fell on the box from the Denkes. Besides the excellent bottle of Don Julio 1942, the box was the only thing he had brought into the room besides a carry-out bag with a burger. His laptop had been blown to kingdom come along with the young, naive, fresh-faced Tina.

  Jesus.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about how one minute Tina had been there, and the next she was lost in a pile of mangled, smoking metal and flames. Just…gone.

  She’d been fresh and enthusiastic, asking him about her plans for classes and future research projects. He hadn’t known her before she delivered the news about Patty, but during the drive he’d learned several random facts—Tina loved IPAs, K-pop, and the Marvel Universe (Ant-Man being her favorite, of course)—and he found it impossible to believe that such a vibrant life had been snuffed out. All because she’d had a harmless crush on Eli.

  Damn.
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  His insides swished and surged, and he considered whether it might be a good idea to ease off on the tequila. Then he lifted the paper cup and sipped.

  Not tonight. Not after today. He deserved it.

  He shook his head, blinking rapidly as he recalled the scene at the church. The poor Denkes had been inconsolable. Imagine, a terrorist attack—it had to be that, right?—on the grounds of your church during your daughter’s funeral the day after your house got broken into.

  The world was insane.

  And Eli was far too wound up to sleep. He hadn’t been able to eat the burger and fries he’d picked up when the cops drove him here. There sat the bag, untouched and adding a layer of grease and salt scent to the natural hotel-room smell. It seemed to grow stronger and heavier, making his stomach turn. He rose from the chair.

  He had to get the smell out of the close, antiseptic room.

  Tense and frustrated, Eli twisted the knob more viciously than necessary and yanked the door open, then stumbled back when he came face to face with a man who’d been standing—no, crouching—right in front of his door.

  “What the—”

  The man seemed as surprised as Eli, and he jolted up and back. Something fell from his hand with a soft thud, and Eli dropped his food bag, his pulse kicking up. He raised his hands, balanced on spread feet and soft knees, and prepared to defend or attack.

  The other man took in the aggressive stance Eli had adopted, then turned and rushed off down the hallway.

  “Hey!” Eli shouted, and nearly went after the man before he realized he’d be locked out of his room as soon as the door swung closed. What in the hell?

  Wrong room?

  If so, why did the man run away? Why didn’t he apologize and explain?

  Prickles lifted the hair on Eli’s arms. Had the man been trying to get in to Eli’s room?

  His pulse still thudding, Eli kicked aside the greasy food bag and was just about to go back into his room when he noticed what the man had dropped.

  A syringe. Eli’s breath turned shallow as he bent to pick it up. On the floor nearby was a plastic hotel keycard and the Do Not Disturb sign he’d hung on the knob, and he gathered them up as well.

  But it was the small needle and liquid-filled syringe that made his blood go cold.

  Something is really, really wrong here.

  He bolted the hotel room door behind him, but that was small relief, as he knew there were ways to get in through the security bolts. He considered calling the police, but he left his smartphone untouched. He was too damned tired of talking to them, and it was late, and he didn’t want to talk anymore.

  He just wanted to think.

  Eli started to examine the syringe, then paused, realizing there might be fingerprints on it as well as on the keycard. His heart rate was still high, but his thoughts—thoughts swamped with a few shots of tequila—were clearing.

  What in the hell is going on here?

  First the car bomb, then a possible break-in in his room. Surely not a coincidence. But why? Why?

  And then suddenly he remembered that the Denkes’ house had been broken into last night. What the—?

  Eli shook his head. “That’s got to be a coincidence.” He said it out loud and still didn’t believe it.

  Really? Three violent events within twenty-four hours, all related to…well, what? The Denkes didn’t know Tina Janeski; no one in Cincinnati knew Tina.

  But Eli had been with her. Riding with her.

  And now someone had just tried to break into his hotel room. With a damned syringe.

  What was the connection?

  Eli looked around the shadowy room, unseeing, as his thoughts scrambled for something that made sense. And then his eyes lighted on the moonlit shipping box.

  All at once, goosebumps rose over his entire body. Patty’s notes? Was it possible?

  What on earth could interest someone about an entomological expedition in India?

  But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.

  If something was in Patty’s notes that someone was trying to get at—but what?—they might have broken into the Denkes’ house looking for them. But the Denkes had already put the papers in their car for Eli and driven to the funeral home, so there was nothing to find.

  And the car bomb…if the papers had been in Tina’s car, they would have been destroyed—along with Eli.

  And tonight, here, the only thing anyone could want in this hotel room was the box of papers and—or—Eli.

  His next thought had Eli surging to his feet with a sharp gasp.

  What if Patty’s death was related to all of this? What if she’d been killed?

  No, no, no… That happened in Ladakh, India. Thousands of miles from here.

  But she had told her parents she’d found something exciting. And she’d told him the same thing in her last status update—about a new species of Apis—when she mentioned changing her thesis project. It might be a game-changer, she’d said.

  Could Patty Denke have been killed over something she found in Ladakh?

  That was seriously crazy. Seriously. She’d been studying the effects of mad honey…and then she’d proposed changing to studying a particular Apis bee. She’d changed her thesis project while she was there.

  Because she found something else?

  Because she found something else.

  And now she was dead.

  Eli sank back onto the bed.

  Why would that be a reason for someone to kill her, kill Tina, and try to destroy Patty’s papers? He looked at the box filled with papers, notes, and whatever else had come back with Patty.

  Seriously crazy.

  But that was the only thing that made sense. And now Eli had to figure out why.

  Twelve

  Western Ohio

  Randy was about four miles past Yatesville on I-71 when he realized something was definitely, really wrong.

  The shimmying and swaying of his vehicle had become more pronounced, and even though the tires rolled on smoothly and the engine growled the way she always did, he could sense something was off.

  He’d have to stop at the next opportunity, but he was in a stretch of pretty much nothing for the next ten miles or so.

  Unfortunately for Randy Ritter, ten miles was too long to wait.

  What had been an increasingly concerning shimmy-shiver suddenly turned into heavy swaying and bouncing, and then, all at once, everything below him gave way.

  Randy had time to think a terrified Holy sh— before he was dumped onto the highway beneath his rig…beneath the sixteen wheels that subsequently rolled off in sixteen different directions as the tractor collapsed on top of him, its momentum flattening and spreading Randy’s body as it screeched and slid across the concrete highway.

  Filbert Strung was awakened just after midnight by his pager. He cursed and reached over in the dark to stop the tinny ring, already predisposed to read the riot act to whoever was disturbing him after one of the best evenings he’d had at home in a couple weeks.

  Dinner with the family, story time with the kids, a little screen time with Karleen and Stanley, and then a little adult time with his wife. That last was a miracle, considering the misplacement of his belt buckle birthday gift, but he’d softened up his wife by getting Rachel in the tub and then putting the kids to bed while Karleen cleaned up the kitchen.

  And now some loony was disturbing his night by calling him in the middle of a perfect sleep.

  “What?” he barked quietly into the phone, expressing his annoyance while trying not to wake Karleen.

  “Fil, we’ve got a big problem.” Despite his grogginess, Fil recognized the voice of Herb Rutsinski, who was Cargath Steel’s warehouse manager. “You need to come in right now.”

  “Right now? In the middle of the night? What the—”

  “It’s awful. Ritter and Maloney and Durowitz are—well, they’re dead.”

  “Dead? What? How? All three of them?” Fil’s feet were on the
floor next to the bed, and he realized his voice had risen enough to cause Karleen to grumble at him to be quiet.

  “Who’s dead?” she said, suddenly sitting up, her eyes wide in the darkness.

  “It’s work, honey,” he said as Rutsinski went on, “Three horrific accidents. I need you in here now, Fil. There’s gonna be a whole lot of safety questions about everything, and our asses are gonna be in the fire if we don’t have answers. Hurry and get in here.”

  Fil disconnected the phone and stared at it unseeingly for a minute. The bright light of the screen burned his eyes in the darkness, and he almost appreciated that visual shock, for it made him numb for a minute.

  “What’s going on?” Karleen turned on the bedside light, and the additional, softer illumination had him snapping out of his stupor.

  “Three of our drivers—they all died in accidents today. I don’t understand how…” He put the phone down and began to dig out clothes.

  “Three of them? How horrible! Were they all in the same place?” she asked, confused. And rightly so.

  “No. Not at all. They were all going in different directions. I just…don’t understand how something like this could have happened. What’re the chances of even one of them…?” He bumped into the dresser as he hopped on one leg while dragging on his pants. He didn’t even want to think about what had happened to the hazmat cargo…

  Oh man, oh man…

  “Who called? What did he want? Surely you don’t have anything to do with it?” Karleen sounded as grumpy as he felt, but there was a layer of worry in her voice.

  “That was Mr. Rutsinski. It’ll be fine—I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Fil told himself that as he drove in the darkest part of night back to the warehouse. The company couldn’t be liable for three different accidents that happened in different areas of the country. They didn’t even own the tractors that had been pulling the loaded trailers…the trailers that were loaded with hazmat materials.