One Step Ahead, Audrey Walker [best book club books of all time TXT] 📗

she picked out the notes the killer had left and put them with the corresponding crime scene where they were found. Now, all she needs to do was work out the clue. She was sure all of these papers had a hidden message, but what could it be? She had already tried the heat method, and it hadn’t worked. What could the killer have done now? The clue must be in the notes. He must have given her a hint somewhere. But what? He expected her to solve it, so he must have given her a key.

She tried the Caesar cipher, but it didn’t seem to work. She moved onto skip code, but once again, she found no answers. Her head was throbbing even more so than before, and she found it hard to concentrate. The words danced in front of her eyes, and she felt numb. She closed her eyes and tried to think, but the grinning face of the Butcher was all she saw. Could she be wrong? Maybe the Captain was right; this was all too much for Robin. Had she been so wrong? There was no clue here. No message. Perhaps if she just let the team solve it, it would be better for everyone.

“Think!” She shouted into the empty room. “Think!”

She gazed over all the messages, reading them off.

Wait. Remember. That was the scene of the most recent crime scene. Robin hadn’t bothered paying attention to the most recent note, but now she thought it was suspicious. It triggered something in her memory, and she tried to figure out what. A second later, it hit her. It was a small murder story she had read as a child. It had been her favorite, and she had read it so often growing up. It was written by her father, who was a lover of everything mystery. He had given it to her as a birthday present, and she had always held it close.

She ran off to her cupboard, pulling out everything. Where had she kept it? She ran off to the chest of drawers, trying to find it, but there was nothing there. Where? Where was it? Robin looked around widely, and then her eyes fell on something. A single rose lay in the center of her table, and under it was the story. It hadn’t been there before, and Robin had no doubt that the killer had put it there. With trembling hands, she took the book and opened it up. It was written in her father’s handwriting, and for a minute, she just stared at it lovingly. And as she read it, it all started to come back.

The detective in the story had used a unique solution to uncover the invisible message and then used a particular cipher to decode it. Robin wondered if it was possible, and she ran around her apartment, mixing the things she needed. The detective used a very simple solution made of lemon juice and other acids. Could it be that the killer had read the story? How did he know about it? He knew how important it was to her. He must have used it to hide his messages. After all, everything was personalized to her, wasn’t it?

She poured drops of the solution, and the message started to appear before her. She jotted down the message as it came, her heart thumping in her chest. It was all working. It was finally working.

Robin opened her book, saw the cipher her father used, and slowly started to decrypt the message. It took her over half an hour, but soon she had the message in her hand.

“The final puzzle,” it read, and an address followed it. Robin paled as she read it. Of course. It all made sense. Why hadn’t she thought about it before?

She picked up her phone, and she called the first person she could think of.

“Kyle?” She said as he picked up the phone. “Kyle, I have something!”

“Robin, you are supposed to be off the case!” he said.

“I am not giving up,” she said. “And I may have something –”

“I am not going to enable you in this,” he said, cutting her off. “You are buckling under the stress. You have to let go, Robin. Just forget about it.”

“Kyle, listen to me,” Robin said. “I think I have a lead. I think I may be able to –”

“Robin,” he said sternly. “You are off the case. I know you took all the case files. The Captain is furious. You have to return them, and you have to stop this. It’s for your own good.”

He cut off the call as Robin protested, and the phone fell from her hands. She was going to have to do this alone. It was on her to stop this man. Soon, she will have all the answers in her hand. She knew where the killer might be right now, and she had no time to lose. It all made perfect sense now. The final piece of the puzzle was where it all started.

The basement.

Chapter Fifteen

Robin shivered as she looked at the house in front of her. The very terrors she had gone through in this very building flashed through her mind. Her memories were coming back to her now, and they were clearer than before. Gaps still remained, and there were parts she couldn’t remember no matter how hard she tried. Robin looked around, her mind flashing back to the time when she escaped. She remembered running up the basement stairs and through the living room. Reaching the front door, Robin had found it locked. Her memories told her she grabbed a chair and used it to slam the door open. She could still hear the thudding sound that echoed through the house. Why hadn’t the Butcher heard it? Why hadn’t he stopped her?

Robin remembered running through these streets barefoot, her clothes tattered, and she was limping because of the injuries he had inflicted on her. She was bleeding, and the