Since Mary.
Somehow, thinking about Mary didn't evoke the same instantaneous pain it always used to. He still felt guilty over her death and had a burning desire to see every last one of the Swarm dead, but Noelle had done something to him that helped ease the searing pain he'd become so familiar with. She was helping him heal.
If he hadn't felt it happening, he wouldn't have thought it possible.
Noelle went completely still. "I did it," she said in a near whisper. "I figured it out."
David crossed die space in three long strides. He stared at the screen, not understanding a word or symbol he saw.
"Are you sure?"
She looked up at him, excitement shining in her green eyes. David wanted to kiss her so bad he could almost taste her mouth. "Yes. I'm one hundred percent positive. Only..."
"Only what?"
She bit her lip as if trying to figure out what to say. "This isn't all of the text."
"Then how do you know you cracked it?"
"I could spend the next twelve hours trying to explain, my solution to you, or you could just take my word."
David had a hard time sitting through an hour-long lecture. "I'll take your word for it."
"Did Monroe give you anything else? Any numbers or instructions?"
"No, nothing."
Noelle sat back and let out a frustrated sigh. "Then what I've got here isn't going to help much."
Disappointment and relief warred within him. It wasn't over yet, which meant she wasn't leaving him yet. "What do you mean?"
"It's kinda hard to explain without those twelve hours, but I'll try. Do you have a map?"
"Of where?"
Noelle shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. I just need it to show you what I mean."
David rummaged through his knapsack and pulled out a map of Colorado. Noelle went into the kitchen, dumped out a box of dried pasta into a bowl and tore the front off the cardboard box. There was a little clear plastic window that displayed the noodles inside the box. On that window, she drew an arrow and labeled it north. Then she drew another arrow pointing down and to the right.
Noelle spread the map out on the counter and placed on top of it the cardboard box front with the plastic window and the arrows she'd drawn. "Okay. The up arrow is north—just a reference—and the second arrow gives us our solution, which are map coordinates. The tip of the arrow is the destination this text was encrypted to hide. It's our target location for the weapons."
David frowned. "But you don't know the destination unless you know where to put the arrow on the map."
"Exactly. I know magnitude—distance in this case— and direction, but not the origin."
Frustration welled up in David's chest. "All this effort and nothing tangible to show for it. Damn, I'm sorry, Noelle."
"It's not a lost cause. There's got to be another piece of text somewhere, like this one, which gives us the origin. If we know that, we'll know where this text was telling us to go. Can't you ask Monroe?"
"I can try, but I'm pretty sure that he would have sent along anything he thought we could use. Is it possible you missed something? I mean, couldn't there be another bit of info in all that gobbledygook?"
Noelle chuckled. "It's not gobbledygook. It's a string of equations that share like variables. The solution to that series of simultaneous equations clearly leads to a fairly simple vector analysis. I made some assumptions along the way, and if I feed my algorithm different values for certain variables, then I will get a solution with a new magnitude and direction—a different vector, but it's all fairly simple now."
David stared at her. He could feel his IQ slipping as her words slaughtered brain cells left and right. "I'm sure it is."
She seemed agitated that she couldn't share this with him, but there wasn't much David could do about that. He just wasn't in her league when it came to this stuff.
"So, what do we do now?" she asked.
"First, you make a backup copy of all that stuff and show me how to use it. I want to get you away from this mess as quickly as possible. My gut tells me that as soon as we figure out the last piece of the puzzle, I'll be going wheels up immediately."
She looked away quickly as if wanting to hide her eyes from him. "So we'll be separating soon then?"
David didn't like the thought of leaving her behind any more than she did, but he knew it was her best chance for survival. At least until all this was over. He couldn't very well drag her into the remaining Swarm stronghold when he went to hunt them down. He needed to know she was safe. "Yeah. We will."
"Will I see you again?" Her voice was so small and vulnerable it made him want to pull her in his arms and promise never to leave her side again. Which was about the stupidest thing he could possibly do.
"You will. We have... unfinished business." David didn't promise. He didn't know if he'd survive this mission or not, but he knew that if he did, he'd hunt her down no matter how deeply they tried to bury her in any of the protection programs. She was his woman and he wasn't letting her go until one of them decided to call it quits. Besides, he might have a child on the way, and he wasn't about to walk away from that while he still drew breath.
She nodded, but he could see in her expression that she didn't believe him. David didn't blame her one bit. He had a hard time believing that he would come out on the other side of this mission alive too. Even though the odds weren't great, they were better than they had ever been before because Noelle had given him a reason to live, which was more than he'd had in a long, long time.