“Drugs?” Serena pushed away from the desk. “That’s it. The symbols—the first part anyway—correspond to some sort of equation.” She ran into the first case room, her tennis shoes squeaking.

Dana followed, her hand pressed against her left eye. This headache had better not turn into a migraine.

Serena moved to the taped-up notes. “That’s it. Right there.” She looked frantically around and then picked up a chewed pencil that Dana had forced Roscoe to drop earlier. “The code is quite elegant. Every symbol corresponds to a number, which corresponds to a letter minus three.” She rapidly began deciphering the notes, jotting down letters beneath the symbols. “Smart woman.”

Wolfe leaned back in his chair and kicked his massive boots up on the conference table, nudging thick case files to the side. Lines of stress cut into the sides of his mouth. “What is happening?”

Dana dropped her hand and waited for her aching eye to focus. Serena formed words beneath the symbols and letters.

Serena finished with one page and turned. “I have phrases in note form but no story. The phrases indicate a problem with Theresa Rhodes and her company.”

Dana nodded. “I figured we’d find notes that she’d turn into a story when she was ready. That’s how many of us write.” She moved closer. “Did Candy find corruption at Rhodes’s sports company? Maybe embezzlement or tax evasion or something like that?”

Serena frowned. “Well, kind of.”

Dana read more. “Any other CEO’s mentioned?”

“No,” Serena said.

Dana leaned in closer. “The word ‘heroin’ is everywhere in Candy’s notes.”

Wolfe’s boots dropped to the floor with a loud thunk.

Dana read out loud. “Heroin from Afghanistan?”

Wolfe stood to read over her shoulder. “More than ninety percent of illicit heroin is from Afghanistan’s opium poppy harvest.”

She glanced sideways. “Really?”

He nodded. “Yeah. What do you think I was doing in Afghanistan for so long?”

Her skin prickled. “How the heck should I know? You don’t tell me anything.”

“Fair enough.” Apparently, Wolfe had returned to being reasonable. He leaned closer to read the deciphered page and then stiffened. “We need to find this CEO Theresa Rhodes.”

“Yes.” Serena leaned back and studied the entire wall. “I have a feeling this page is kind of a table of contents, so I’m assuming one of these other pages corresponds to her.”

Wolfe rolled his neck. “What does a CEO of a sports company have to do with heroin?”

Dana looked at the many pages. “Well, let’s decode them.”

Serena grinned. “Ah, wouldn’t that be nice? But, no. Your friend used a different code for each page. Now that I understand this one, I’ll be able to extrapolate and crack the others, but it’ll take me a little time. She was impressive—I wish I could’ve met her.”