Page 86 of Level With Me
Suddenly, I remembered Dad’s words from that call.Anyone who spends time in that room… something always goes terribly wrong.
It was ridiculous, but Dad said it was why the last owners had plastered over the door.
How long had we been in here?
“It sounded like it came from over there,” Blake said, his voice soft. He was looking at the hole in the wall that led to the adjoining room.
Blood rushed in my ears, my heartbeat so loud I could feel it shaking me. I gripped Blake’s hand, not caring what my brothers might think.
We held our breath as another creak sounded.
Then a face appeared.
We all jumped, hollering.
Except for Griff, who looked unphased.
But the face had jumped too—that’s when I saw it was Seamus, his eyes round, dark hair mussed as if it had gotten scared too.
My heart was still skipping at an elevated speed. “Holy hell, Seamus!” I exclaimed, my voice shrill. “What are you doing here?”
“You scared the shit out of us!” Jude said, his eyes wild.
“You guys scared the shit out of me!” Seamus said.
I let go of Blake’s hand, conscious I was probably crushing his knuckles.
Griff waved him in. “I asked Seamus to come do a walk-through with me. To see if Reilly and Sons might be up for the reno.”
“Griff,” I whispered. We hadn’t even finalized the plans for the wing, let alone started soliciting bids from interested contractors.
“Relax,” Griff said. “It’s just preliminary.”
I gaped, but Seamus was already crawling through the hole and thumping across the floor in his work boots, looking around at the space.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“It’s Eleanor Cleary’s room,” Jude said.
Seamus bunched his brows, then angled his head sideways to look at the book in Jude’s hand. “Why did Eleanor have a cipher?”
19
BLAKE
“I still can’t getover it,” Cassandra said. “A code. An actual secret code.”
We’d met at sundown for dinner at this tiny cafe Cass said was patronized strictly by tourists, given its location—adjacent to the locals’ favorite hamburger joint. She’d scanned the place as we walked in, and even though she saw no one she recognized, I’d asked for a table in the far corner, tucked behind a pony wall.
We sat side-by-side, and with the wall and the tablecloth keeping things private, I was working hard to relax, as best I could, into my last night with Cassandra Kelly.
“It’s wild,” I agreed. It really was incredible what we’d found today. But as fascinating as the coded journal was, the excitement I’d felt in that room hadn’t lasted even through the rest of the tour of the wing. The only thing that mattered was the fact that I was leaving.
Still, I kept up as happy a face as I could. So did Cassandra.
Luckily, we had a lot to talk about—and talking to Cass was easy. Over dinner, we speculated about the diary, trying to guess who JEQ was, and most of all, what the book might say. As it turns out, Seamus had a thing for codes and puzzles, and he’d offered to take the book home to crack it, but Jude had refused, saying he wanted to try first.
“Jude’s a competitive baby,” Cass said. “Of course he wants to be the one to figure it out.” She’d rolled her eyes, but I could see the indulgent love for her brother on her face too.
