“Just tell me that my son is okay.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “Your mother-in-law, however, may not make it through the night. Lucky you, huh?”

August turned to face her. “What have you done?” he whispered.

“I didn’t do anything. Your little boy found a gun and accidentally shot her. She’s alive, but she’s going to need medical attention.”

August leaned in closer. “I’m keeping a tally, and I swear, when all this is done, you’ll pay in triplicate for every person you harm.”

Xandria put a finger on his lips. “We don’t have time for exchanging threats, as fun as it is. There’s too much work to do.” She opened the laptop and double-clicked on a set of three images, each one enlarging to fill the screen.

August had seen them a multitude of times while researching the history of the Gutenberg Bible. They were illuminations, beautifully strange images painted by hand around the borders of the printed text. The illuminations had intrigued August, and his research showed him that there was far more to their meaning than one might realize. “These illuminations are from the Morgan Library’s copy of the Gutenberg.”

“Correct! Glad to see I haven’t gone to all this trouble for nothing,” Xandria said. She passed the laptop to August, who set it on his tray.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” August asked, already fearing the answer.

“I’m going to give you the condensed version,” she said. “During World War II, an Allied forces code-breaking center known as Station X intercepted a message from the Nazis. The Allies had acquired a five-hundred-year-old notebook that supposedly unraveled the Gutenberg mystery. It wasn’t until after the war that Station X figured out what the notebook was: a journal kept by Gutenberg himself, which explained where to find particular images Gutenberg had commissioned for a select number of his Bibles. These images are like a riddle that he used to protect important information from people who wanted to destroy it.”

“What was Station X? Sounds like something from a comic book.”

“You know what they say about truth being stranger than fiction. Station X was the name given to the cipher-hacks working at the Bletchley Park mansion just outside London. Their efforts ended the war three years earlier than it would have without them.”

“And you believe what they claimed about this journal? That Gutenberg was hiding something in the illuminations?”

“Of course I do,” Xandria said. “And you would too if you read it.”

“You’ve read the journal?”

Xandria laughed and rose from her seat. She unlocked the overhead compartment and reached into her bag, pulling out a small box. She tossed it to August. “Go ahead,” she said. “See for yourself.”