Page 11 of Once Silenced

The sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs announced the arrival of April and Jilly, their faces alight with curiosity.“What’s going on, Mom?”April asked, her hazel eyes reflecting the same inquisitive spirit as Riley’s.

“I need your help with a case,” Riley said, watching as a ripple of eager anticipation passed between the girls.

“Awesome!”Jilly exclaimed.

April, who had sometimes expressed interest in joining the FBI herself, looked excited.

They sat down at the table, and Riley slid copies of the quiz sheets across to each of them.“These are part of an ongoing investigation,” she explained.“Can you work through these equations for me?”

Her daughters’ enthusiasm deflated, their expressions souring at the sight of the algebra problems laid out before them.

“It’s just math?”April’s voice quivered with a touch of betrayal.

“Seriously, Mom?This is what you dragged us here for?”Jilly chimed in, her pencil tapping an impatient staccato.

“I know it doesn’t look exciting, girls, but trust me, it’s important,” Riley coaxed.“These equations are part of a real case.I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious.And you’ve worked problems like this a lot more recently than I have.”

She didn’t want to tell them that this wasn’t just about algebra; these numbers were potential clues to the mind of a killer.

Reluctantly, April and Jilly picked up their pencils and began to work through the problems.Riley observed them, noting April’s methodical precision and Jilly’s quicker, more intuitive approach that led to more erasures.

As the scratching of lead filled the room, Riley’s thoughts drifted unbidden to her class earlier that day.She was glad that Leo Dillard hadn’t bothered her either before or after class, offering no more than a short stare from across the room—a welcome reprieve.

Gabriela arrived with sliced apples and orange sections arranged on a plate.Peering over their shoulders, she asked.“Esos números deben significar algo, ¿verdad?”

“These numbers must mean something, yes,” Riley echoed.

Or at least she hoped so.She couldn’t shake her hunch that it was a code of sorts, surely.But what did it unlock?

“Done,” April announced, dropping her pencil onto the table with a sense of finality.

Jilly soon mirrored the action, a little less dramatically.

“Your rewards,” Gabriela said, setting down the tray of fruit.

“Thank you,” they all chimed, and with a pleased smile Gabriela returned to the kitchen.

“Good work, girls,” Riley said.

“Mom, this is weird,” Jilly said as she reached for a slice of apple.“All the answers I got are whole numbers...except for one.”She pointed at the paper where ‘x = 38.517’ was neatly written.“Why would one of them be so different?”

“Let me see,” Riley murmured, leaning forward to glance at the sheet.

“Same here,” April chimed in, her hazel eyes—so much like Riley’s own—reflecting curiosity.“Except my outlier is a negative: -78.4368.That’s even stranger.”

Riley took her computer pad out of her bag and stood looking at it for a moment, wondering how to enter those numbers.The odd digits felt familiar somehow, a forgotten language resurfacing from the depths of memory.With a snap of clarity, she remembered a conversation just the night before.

“Remember how Mrs.Whitfield made learning an adventure?”Tracy had laughed.They’d reminisced about an algebra assignment that had turned into a treasure hunt, a series of equations leading them to a physical location and a hidden prize.

“Girls,” Riley said, “I think you’re onto something big here.”She watched April and Jilly lean in, their young faces showing curiosity and anticipation.

“Like what, Mom?”April asked, tilting her head, pencil still poised between her fingers.

“Let me show you,” Riley replied as she tapped on the computer pad, bringing up Google Maps.The app responded instantly, a digital globe spinning to her command, zooming in on a landscape that could hold the key to a mystery far beyond their cozy kitchen.

“Check this out,” she continued, typing in the first set of numbers—38.517—into the latitude field, then entering -78.4368 for longitude.

The map changed, coalescing around a single point in the sprawling greenery of Virginia.The Blue Ridge Wilderness Park materialized on the screen, the coordinates pinpointing an area within its vast expanse.

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