Revealed [UNDERGOING EDITING]

Chapter 4

Des stood there, staring at the letter, with a far away look in her eyes.

I respected her silence and waited a whole five seconds before snapping my fingers in her face.

She shook herself out of the memory and shot me a dirty look, which I ignored.

"Can you please explain it?"

"Lie."

"What do you mean lie?" I asked, thinking I had heard her wrong.

"L-I-E," Des spelt.

She caught the confusion on my face and carried on talking.

"It's how to decode the letter. 'L' means look as in look at the last sentence of the letter. That sentence is the key to finding out the message. Usually it is related to some obvious feature in the letter." 

Well?" I asked.

"This is  pretty simple code. I would never make it this obvious. Anyone could crack this, even a kid."

 Ouch

"Okay. The next step is 'I' which stands for irregularities. This means you scan the letter for anything irregular that can be also related to the last sentence," Des continued.

"Carry on," I urged.

"Finally, you expand, 'E'."

Des grabbed a piece of paper and pen from my table and wrote down a sentence.

 She dropped the pen back on the desk and passed the piece of paper to me.

"Well?" she said.

I looked at the piece of paper.

Trust Her Follow Destiny.

*****
So I decided to follow her. The decision was rash and probably dangerous but at that moment, I didn't care. That message for the last piece of my mother and the only lead I had about what happened to her.

"I'll go with you but I can't just disappear. People I actually care about will worry," I said.

"Okay, I get where you're coming from but frankly I don't care," Des replied.

"In that case, you probably don't mind the fact that a load of cameras caught you breaking in tonight," I said,  casually inspecting my nails.

"Nice try princess but I already got that covered. I cut the surveillance power an hour ago," Des said smiling smugly.

"Did you account for the backup system my father installed? If you thought about that you would know that it runs on solar power. You want to see?" I walked over to my laptop and pulling up the camera footage.

The screen showed me walking into the house just before the party. A little while after,  it went black.

"I told you," Des said smugly.

"Hold on," I said motioning for her to face the screen.

The screen made a buzzing noise before flashing back on. Des' face filled the screen as she threw away a pair of pliers into the shrubs.

We watched her run across the lawn and climb up a tree, jumping onto my balcony and opening the doors.

I stopped the video and turned back to Des whose face had an expression that was a cross between surprise and annoyance.

"So, here's what's going to happen," I started,"I'm going to go downstairs and play birthday girl. Then I'll go into the control room and get rid of the video of you. You're going to get out of here and go wherever it is that you're staying."