"Oh Lily, what now?" Cassie exclaimed. "We don't even have the actual text, what do we do?"
"We don't need to have it," Lily replied, "We just need to find Grace before ten."
Lily was angry now. They had broken into her home, bypassing her security system, and tried intimidating her into paying ransom for her friend. They were stealing from the best woman she knew, and trying to profit off a clever idea probably twice their age. Lily wouldn't stand for it. She and Cassie would make them sorry they had tried.
But they needed to be careful.
"Are we still going through with it?" Cassie asked.
"Absolutely!" Lily replied. "Think about it Cassie, they've broken in here to give us an ultimatum - 'deliver the goods, or else,' but we don't actually have the goods. What's more, we know where they are. They probably don't know that. Everything about this seems to favor us, and if we move quickly and are careful, I think we will be able to find and rescue Grace while taking care of the people behind this."
"What if Grace isn't there? What if they move her?" Cassie said.
Lily was finding it hard to concentrate and reassure Cassie at the same time, but she couldn't let her friend's concerns overcome her. So she took a deep breath, assured herself there was plenty of time to decide what to do and still act on it, and focused her attention on Cassie.
"Cassie, it's going to work out," Lily began, trying to speak slowly and calmly without coming off as snarky or belittling. "We can locate Grace's phone, remember. If she's been able to keep it on her up to now, I think she'll find a way to keep it with her for the rest of the night. It's one of the few things we have telling us how to find Grace, and we need to trust that it will do just that.
"And another thing, we know this is valid, because Grace told us to do it. She's using this as a homing beacon for us. She's pulling us to her with this. We can try to rescue her before nine, and the phone should let us know if she is where we believe she is. If not, we'll fall back and meet them at Tanner's Corner just like they asked."
"That's right, I'd forgotten about the phone," Cassie admitted. "Do you think it was the two men we saw in Appleton?"
This got Lily back to where she wanted to go at the moment, considering who they were dealing with, and how best to manage the situation.
"From Grace's message, I think the secretary working with Denning is the person behind this." Lily was speaking slowly, trying to fit things together in her mind as she spoke. "I'm guessing he sent two accomplices here to look for Grace's puzzles, planning to meet them later.
"The timing is all interesting," Lily mused. "He must have been interested in the treasure for some time, but it was the letter from Grace that told him all the pieces to finding it were real. Any plan he concocted to recover it must have stemmed from that time. That means it would have been rushed. He had them break into her house to look for it, so he must have expected it to be there."
"But there wasn't anything there to find, right?" Cassie asked.
"No, and they turned the place over pretty good, like professionals really." Lily sat up, lost in thought momentarily. "That's actually an interesting point, they broke into her house and they broke in here, both times bypassing an alarm system... they aren't just buddies of this guy, they're professional burglars. I find that very interesting. What kind of person is able to just hire professional burglars?"
"Someone who is already a criminal, I'd imagine," Cassie said. "But if they are professionals, should we be confronting them?"
"That's a good question," Lily admitted. "But so far, he's stayed in the background. He sent them in to burgle her place, stake out that house in Appleton, and burgle here. Is he some evil mastermind, or just wants to keep his hands clean?"
