Free The Hundred Year Wait by Amelia Price

stomach rumbled to let her know she hadn't eaten anything
but a few snacks since breakfast and it was now past her usual time
for an evening meal. She grabbed her handbag off the floor and
headed for the canteen. Hopefully they served dinner as well as
breakfast.
    Relief flooded
through her when she found the room open and several other hotel
guests sitting in there eating. It wouldn't have been good to miss
out on another meal in so short a space of time when it was likely
she wouldn't eat much the following day either.
    Her meal passed in
peace, although she scanned the canteen several times for signs of
Myron. As she pulled her purse from her handbag to pay, her fingers
brushed up against something she wasn't expecting. When she glanced
at it she realised she had an envelope with her name and address
on. She gasped as she pulled it out, momentarily forgetting about
the cashier waiting for her to pay. He coughed, dragging her eyes
from the unexpected communication.
    As soon as she
could get away she rushed back to her own room and tore the
envelope open. A piece of card with her name on fell out with a
much shorter message than the previous time written on it. She
stared at it for several minutes, knowing it was going to be
significantly harder to work out than the first letter.
    Realising she
needed to learn more about ciphers and how to use them, Amelia
fetched her laptop from her small suitcase and curled up on the bed
with it to do research. An hour later she stopped trawling through
the search information on classic cyphers and re-focused on the
letter.
    Based on the
previous letter she was sure it began and ended in a similar manner
with 'Miss Jones' being before the comma and 'Regards, Your Tutor'
finishing the letter off. As she wrote these in underneath she
realised not all of the letters had been changed. The M in 'Miss'
and the ON in her surname were still part of the coded message.
Also the GA in 'regards', OU in 'your', and the last OR were all
the same and each pair of identical letters had exactly four in
between.
    In pencil she
wrote these pairs underneath to help form the basis of her
translation so far.
     
    Miss Jones,
    --th---- I w----n't
----al-- --re- -- - ch---- in ----s I ----gn--- -ou- ---nt -- --in-
- --ns---- on-. -- -uc- - --al- ---nt ---- re----t. I ---- no----
yo- -- - ch---- to ---- ou- ---an----nt. ---- th-- --al ---- yo- --
-it--?
    Regards, Your Tutor
     
    Based on the
information she'd just learnt on cyphers that were encrypted
differently for each letter, she knew there needed to be a codeword
that would match the pattern she'd already noticed. Given the
pattern she also knew it must begin and end with the same letter or
number and be six figures long. She'd worked out the affect the
first and last had on the coded message, so she just needed to work
out the others.
    After scanning
through what she had a couple more times she noticed the third word
was likely to be 'wouldn't' and that the A needed to become an O.
The process to get between these letters also needed to match up
with the I in 'Miss' coming from the U and getting from a Q to an E
six letters later. As soon as she wrote them out she realised they
were all 14 letters apart if the alphabet started again when it
finished. She then repeated the same logic on the next three
letters. When she'd finished she realised she had a sort of reverse
keyword to get from the encrypted letter to what it originally said
using the numbers 0,14,4,11,8, & 0 and then repeating them
throughout the message. She quickly worked her way through the rest
of the letter filling in all the blanks.
     
    Miss Jones,
    Although I wouldn't
normally agree to a change in rules I recognise your point as being
a sensible one. As such I shall grant your request. I will notify
you if I choose to stop our arrangement. Does this deal make you my
bitch?
    Regards, Your
Tutor.
     
    Amelia almost
dropped the paper in shock at Myron's closing sentence. He'd been
so prim and