Secret Breakers: The Power of Three Read Online Free

cabinet and slipping the folder inside. When she looked up, her secretary was standing in the doorway.
    ‘It’s true,’ the secretary said purposefully.
    Kerrith’s fingers clutched tighter to the key in her hand. Her heart began to skip a little. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
    ‘Confirmed just now. He’s off to work at Bletchley Park Museum. Some sort of early retirement package.’
    Kerrith stood up, flexing her neck a little like an animal in the wild focusing on its prey before preparing to pounce.
    ‘Perfect,’ she said, her tongue lingering over each syllable. ‘Now at last this department can move out of the shadow of the past.’ She smiled a rather uneven smile. (The work with the orthodontist hadn’t been entirely satisfactory and she was awaiting a follow-up appointment to complete the corrections.) ‘Absolutely perfect. We need to keep an eye on what he does there though. He may be out of sight but after what he did, he’ll never be out of mind.’ There was a sense of venom laced through her words that caused the secretary to leave the room rather quickly.
    Mr Bray snapped on the light. His heart was pressing hard against his ribs. He looked at the bedside clock. Four fifty-two. Less than eight hours left.
    He could change his mind. Tell her he’d thought things through. That he needed her to stay.
    If he said that, she’d never leave.
    He rubbed his chest.
    It was important then, that he said nothing. Despite all the rules and all the risks, surely he had to let Brodie go.

It was a week since Brodie Bray had found the document in the lamppost and there was about an hour to go before the car arrived to take her to Bletchley.
    Her granddad sat down on the edge of the bed and sniffed a little.
    ‘Here,’ he said, after wiping his nose on a rather garishly patterned handkerchief. ‘I want you to have this.’ Brodie thought for a moment he was talking about the handkerchief (a prospect she found a little worrying) but then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small package wrapped in yellowed tissue paper. Brodie held out her hand. ‘It was your mother’s. It was with her things when she died. She was a mighty fine code-breaker, you know. One of the best. I think she’d want you to have it.’
    Brodie unwrapped the tissue paper carefully to reveal a silver locket. Pressed into the centre was a large oval stone that appeared at first to be white and blue. Brodie moved the locket in the light and the stone flashed pink. It hung on a thick twisted chain. She held it up and it swung freely in her hand, catching the light like a bevelled glass. ‘It’s beautiful, Granddad,’ she said. ‘I’ll wear it every day.’
    ‘Here,’ he said, slowing the swing of the locket with his hands. ‘Open it. My fingers can’t manage the catch any more.’
    Brodie rested the locket in the flat of her palm and pressed her fingernail against the seam. The locket sprang open. Inside was a small sketched drawing of what looked like a castle. Brodie peered up at her granddad for an explanation.

    He blew his nose loudly. ‘It’s a picture copied from MS 408,’ he said. ‘The picture fascinated your mother. Your grandmother too. It was as if all the mysterious words and diagrams from the Voynich Manuscript would eventually lead to this place. This hidden place.’
    Brodie traced her finger across the towers of the castle, the ridges of its walls.
    ‘It was always our hope one day to find the castle,’ whispered Granddad.
    Brodie pressed the locket closed and held it tight for a moment.
    Then she hugged him and together they put the chain around her neck and fixed the clasp. The locket was warm against her skin.
    Brodie tried to think of something sensible to say, something important about how she’d carry on the quest and that she’d try her best. But in the end no words came.
    Several hours later, Brodie stopped crying. Her stomach was knotted. She wasn’t sure if this was due to travel