“I promise I won’t. Come on, Derrick, I need Bridget’s help.” It wasn’t even a lie. Bob did need Bridget. To save him. “I can’t finish without her.” He spoke around a mouthful of food. “There’s no way I can write thousands of words tying up all the loose ends from the six previous books without having access to her. Plus she’s got all these reference works about medieval royalty and feasting and child-rearing practices. Do you want a book larded with mistakes? I need her.”

“Is that why those chapters you showed me yesterday didn’t seem as good as some of the other books?”

Feeling a twist of offense, Bob made himself nod. “Right. Because I could only rely on my memory.”

“All right.” Derrick sighed. “Type up the questions you want me to send her.”

“Thank you,” Bob said as he scraped up the last of the gummy food from the plastic box. “I’ll get my thoughts organized.”

Lying in bed that night, Bob tried to figure out how to alert Bridget.

His first idea was to refer to Princess Elspeth, King Tristan’s daughter. In Darkest Heart she’d been kidnapped by Maulty Minglehouse, forced to marry him in front of a drunken, bribed priest. A nobleman fallen on hard times, Maulty had erroneously thought that the marriage might make King Tristan elevate him to a higher position. Instead, the king, believing his own daughter had defied him, and fearing that marked her as the murderer foretold by the blind seer, had sent assassins after them.

But invoking Elspeth seemed too big a clue. While Bridget knew the books better than anyone, Derrick was nearly as familiar. Any mention of Elspeth, and Bob’s email wouldn’t get sent. Any mention of Elspeth, and Derrick might tell his mother, at which point Joanne might decide it was time to make Bob disappear.

He had to choose his words carefully, the exact opposite of the technique that had allowed him to write two books and nearly finish one.

Whatever he wrote would be turned into ones and zeros on a computer. That meant he couldn’t write in lemon juice (which he didn’t have) or urine (which he did, unfortunately, thanks to the chamber pot) in the hopes Bridget would hold the paper over a candle flame to reveal its secrets.

And of course Derrick wouldn’t transmit anything that was clearly a code, such as a nonsense string of numbers, letters, or words.

Bridget was Bob’s only hope, but getting her to understand he was in trouble seemed nearly impossible. The only thing in Bob’s favor was that she was so smart. So watchful. And so surprisingly brave. He would never forget her facing down the crowd at Powell’s.