Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Gavin set them in a row, and they all stared down at them in silence. “What flag is this?” he murmured. Neither Sienna nor Mirabelle answered.
“Isn’t Texas the Lone Star State?” Mirabelle asked, looking down at the red, white, and blue flag with a white star in the center of the blue portion.
“Okay. Yeah. It is,” Gavin said. Not being a Texan, Sienna couldn’t picture their flag, but that seemed logical. Then again, lots of places had stars on their flags, even internationally.
She had the urge to laugh, but as much as she knew if she cried she wouldn’t stop, she knew the same would be true if she gave in to laughter.
“What about this?” he asked, picking up the china doll. It had dark-red hair and fine porcelain skin.
Sienna took it from him, studying it, and tried to rub the small red smudge off its forehead with her thumb, unsuccessfully. Whatever had stained the doll’s skin was permanent, and likely purposeful. She frowned down at it before setting it back on the table.
For a minute they were all quiet as they tried to puzzle out the contents of the box. “Why don’t we do a more thorough search,” Gavin suggested. “Maybe there’s more that goes along with this. I’ll check the undersides of the counters.”
They split up, each searching over and under and behind, looking at the walls and the floor but not finding anything. Sienna rubbed her head. Something was niggling at her about the mark on that doll’s head. That doll . . . “Dolly,” she breathed.
Gavin turned, joining her as she walked back toward the box and its contents. “The girl he threw the checkers at,” Sienna said. Mirabelle approached, looking at her with confusion. “It’s from one of his writings,” she explained. He’d thrown checkers at her head. He’d left a mark.
“Okay,” Gavin said. “So the—maybe—Texas flag and a girl from his story named Dolly. And this?” He held up the pin, turning it over. It was one of those pins you might buy for the birthday boy or girl, but the blue ribbon made her think of a first-place winner, especially considering the ten had been turned into a one. “Number one,” Gavin said, setting it back down. “So the number one has to be part of the code, right? Maybe each of these items represents the other four numbers. What number state is Texas in the Union?”
Sienna let out a sound of frustration. “Does anyone know that kind of thing off the top of their head?”
“Maybe a Texan.”
Sienna let out a small chuff.
“It has to be somewhere near the middle, though, right?” he said. “All the states on the East Coast were founded first. We could try everything between twenty-five and thirty-five,” he suggested. Which sounded sort of hopeless, but what else did they have? Nothing.
“Okay, so the ten numbers between twenty-five and thirty-five, the number one, and then whatever this might represent,” he said, picking the doll up. “Can you think of a number the person named Dolly from his writings might represent?”
Sienna took her bottom lip between her teeth, looking down as she attempted to recall everything about Dolly, the drunk, large-breasted coworker. What had they been drinking? Beer . . . some sort of shots. Sienna shook her head. “Unless you can think of a number that goes along with checkers? I don’t recall him mentioning a number.”
“There are two colors, two players,” Gavin said. “Maybe the number two.”
“Possible.” But she could tell that he heard the tone in her voice saying that didn’t feel quite right. Anything could have pointed to the number two. He’d put Dolly in there for a specific reason.
Mirabelle looked back and forth between the two of them, clearly at a loss. She was at a disadvantage, though. She hadn’t read any of Danny’s letters. A mercy for her but one that did not help them now. Gavin stared down at the items again, clearly frustrated.
Sienna picked up the star and the doll. “Maybe a word combination,” she said, attempting to work some out aloud. “Star Checker Winner. Texas Winner Doll. Dolly Star—”
“Texas Dolly,” Gavin said. He raised his head, his eyes opening wider. “Texas Dolly.”
“What does that mean?” Sienna asked.
“It’s a poker hand. No, I mean . . .” He ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it. “Okay, no, I mean yes, but . . .” He took in a breath and blew it out. “Doyle Brunson, otherwise known as Texas Dolly, won the World Series of Poker in the seventies. He had a starting Texas Hold’em hand named after him.”
“What is it?”
“The 10-2. It’s a trash hand, but it worked out for him twice.”
“Ten, two?” Mirabelle repeated. “If you break each of those numbers into two digits, it’s . . . one zero, zero two,” she said, picking up the number one pin. “But even then, it’s still one digit short.”