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told us before we could leave for school. The Army taught it as well.” Simon looked around the kitchen. “Do you have a pen and paper?”
    Katy pulled out the drawer next to the sink and took out a pen and a legal pad handing them to Simon.
    Quickly he went about writing the message. His brows furrowed. “It’s code but not English.”
    “I knew he wouldn’t make it so simple,” Katy said going back to the computer screen. Thinking out loud, she said, “Evan was a chemist, so instead of another language what if he used coding sequences to spell out words then converted them to Morse code?”
    “What sequencing has an alpha pattern?”
    Katy thought about it. Nothing specific came to mind.
    “What about a periodic table?” Simon suggested.
    Brilliant! “Yes, the elements!” she sat down and looked at the words Simon had written down. “They’re too short.”
    “Maybe he abbreviated?”
    “We used shorthand for all of our written notes! I bet that’s it, Simon, he used the periodic table for his letters, but wrote the words in shorthand then converted them to Morse code!”
    “Genius.”
    Katy smiled smugly and tapped her temple with her index finger. “This is your genius right here, baby. Evan’s IQ is fifteen points below mine.”
    Simon smiled and soundly kissed her. “I’m a total sapiosexual.”
    “Oh, Simon,” she sighed, batting her eyelashes. “You know just the right words to make a girl swoon.”
    They laughed then started when the downstairs door buzzed.
    “Pizza!” Simon said, pushing out of his chair and jogging to the front door to buzz the delivery guy up.
    Two hours later, stuffed from pizza, and brain drained but smug, Katy and Simon toasted. Evan’s texts had been cracked and oh what a plethora of information they held.
    “I can’t believe this, Simon. Evan had us all fooled. I’ll bet this latest transaction of his, selling my research patent, is just the tip of the iceberg.”
    When his face tightened, she blinked. “What’s wrong?”
    “You cannot discuss this with anyone.”
    “I won’t. You can have it all.”
    “Problem is I can’t use any of this.”
    “Now’s a hell of a time to tell me that! Why not?”
    “Because I knowingly abetted you.”
    “No you didn’t!”
    “I didn’t confiscate your subpoenaed laptop, Kat. I should have. In so doing or not doing, for the purpose of using this evidence in a court of law, I can’t.”
    “But I gave it to you of my own free will.”
    “But you used an illegal app to obtain it, an arrestable offense, and then you knowingly and willfully violated a subpoena.”
    “So? I did it, not you, and I’ll take the hit.”
    Simon stood up and began pacing the kitchen.
    “Absolutely not. You’re staying out of this,” he resoundingly said.
    “
What
? Are you crazy? This is my reputation on the line! I’m not going to sit back and wait for it to go away. Why do you think I did what I did in the first place?”
    Simon shook his head, and stopped his pacing to look hard at her. “You have no idea the enormity of something like this, Kat.”
    A harsh chill rent her body. “Wha-what do you mean?”
    “International espionage. Billions of dollars are at stake here. Not to mention national security.” He swiped his hand across his chin. “And innocents like you who know too much are disposed of.”
    “You’re scaring me, Simon.”
    “Good, I want you scared, especially if it keeps you from doing something stupid like spying on Evan.”
    “If I hadn’t done what I did, you wouldn’t know what you know. Now you’re the smart ass cop who’s going to find a way to use this evidence, legally so you can put Evan and his friends away and I can go back to work!”
    “I want you to pack up and stay at my place for a few days.”
    Ignoring his request, Katy’s mind ran with ways Simon could legally use the information she had illegally obtained. “What if I print these texts out and drop them off at HQ? Then you can say