My husband went on a business trip to another city for a month, and I decided to move his favorite potted cactus to another location, but I accidentally broke it while carrying it. My hair stood on end when I saw what I saw inside…(8/9)

If the criminals track John down, they can get you too. To use it as leverage or simply for revenge. So now we have to hide for the rest of our lives? asked Sarah bitterly.

“Not for the rest of our lives,” Mary shook her head. “John left you a path to salvation. Emily, you mentioned a note with coordinates and numbers.”

I nodded and took the folded sheet of paper I found in the safe’s hiding place out of my pocket. “Here, read it yourself.” Mary took the note and studied it carefully.

I thought so, she nodded. “These are the instructions John prepared for you on how to find shelter and money. The coordinates point to a place in the Pennsylvania woods.

There’s probably some hiding place with documents or keys. The mention of the tooth… It’s about John.”

He really does have a cavity in his tooth with a microchip. It contains the encryption key to access the server with additional documents. And the access code to the account.

Apparently, this is for the bank account that holds the money for a new life. But how will this help us? I asked. John disappeared; the encryption key is with him. How can we access these documents and the account? Mary thought.

Maybe there’s a copy of the key. John was forward-thinking; he probably made a backup. Maybe it’s in the cache, at the specified coordinates? So we have to go there? Sarah clarified.

“I’m afraid so,” Mary agreed. “But it’s risky. They could follow you.”

I remembered the strange men in black suits who searched Sarah’s cabin. Were they criminals looking for John? Or perhaps special services agents, John’s colleagues, trying to find him or protect his family? And you can’t help? I asked Mary. If you’re his curator, you should have resources, connections.

The old woman shook her head. “I’ve been retired for three years. Officially, I have no connection to John’s operation.

I can advise, provide temporary shelter, but nothing more. Besides, the situation is complicated. John has been acting on his own responsibility lately, without always informing the leadership.”

So I’m not even sure who I can trust. So we’re on our own, Sarah summarized. Only we can help each other.

Silence fell. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts. The situation seemed hopeless.

Danger threatened us, John disappeared, and the only way out was a mysterious hiding place somewhere in the Pennsylvania woods. “I think we should go to these coordinates,” I finally said. “What do we have to lose? If there really is something there to help us start a new life, the risk is justified.”

Sarah nodded. Okay. But how will we get there? We don’t have a car, and public transportation won’t take us to a remote forest.

“I have a car,” Mary offered. “It’s old, but it works. I can lend it to you.

But it’s better if you go at night to attract less attention.” We discussed the details of the trip. We decided to leave at midnight, when the roads would be deserted.

Mary gave us a map of Pennsylvania, marking the location corresponding to the coordinates on the note. Sure enough, it was a forest, except for the populated areas. How would we find the hiding place there? What if the coordinates weren’t precise enough and we had to search hundreds of square meters of thicket? But there was no other option.

This was our only chance for salvation. We spent the rest of the day at Maria’s house, preparing for the night journey. The old woman gave us warm clothes, flashlights, food, and water.

We studied the map, trying to plot the safest route. And all this time, I couldn’t stop thinking about John. Where is he now? Is he alive? And when will we see him again, if ever? At 11:00 p.m., we were ready to go…

Mary led us through the back door to the garage, where an old Ford Focus sat. “Full tank,” she said, handing the keys to Sarah. “Documents in the glove compartment.” “Good luck, and be careful.”

The three of us—Sarah, David, and I—got in the car.
As we pulled out of the yard, Sarah turned off her headlights and drove on only the parking lights until we left the city limits. Only on the highway did she turn on her low beams, and the car drove off into the night. The first hour of the journey passed in silence.

Everyone was deep in thought. I looked out the window at the passing trees and thought about how incredibly life can change in a couple of days. Just on a Saturday morning, I was an ordinary woman with ordinary problems and joys.

And now I’m driving at night on a deserted highway with my husband’s wife and son, hiding from strangers and looking for a hiding place with documents for a new life. If someone told me a story like that, I’d consider it fiction, the plot of a cheap detective. But this was my reality, my life, unexpectedly turned into a thriller.

“How did you meet John?” David asked suddenly, breaking the silence. I turned to him. The teenager was sitting in the backseat, hugging his knees.

In the dim light from the dashboard, his face looked older, more serious. “We met at a modern art exhibition,” I replied after a pause. I was there with a friend, and he…

He said he came for work and that his company sponsors events. We started talking at one of the exhibits. He was very attentive, interested in my opinion, and joked around.

At the end of the night, he asked for my phone number. A couple of days later, he called and invited me out on a date. And you’d never know he already had a family.

There was no accusation in David’s voice, only genuine curiosity. “No, of course not,” I shook my head. He never gave any reason to be suspicious.

He was attentive and caring. Of course, there were moments that, looking back, seem suspicious. Frequent business trips, strange calls.

But then I chalked it all up to the peculiarities of his job. And now it turns out his job is espionage, David said quietly. And Mom and I didn’t know anything either.

We thought he was just an ordinary logistician. He knew how to keep secrets, Sarah commented, without taking her eyes off the road. And how to build his life on lies.

There was bitterness in his voice, and I understood it. We had both been deceived by the person we trusted, the one we loved. And even now we knew the reason for his lies.

A noble reason, as Mary would say. Accepting it wasn’t easy. “Do you still love him?” Sarah asked suddenly, looking at me quickly.

I thought. Did I love John? After everything I’ve learned, after everything that’s happened? I don’t know, I answered truthfully.

I’m not even sure I ever knew the real John. The person behind all his masks and roles. But I loved the John I knew.

And I think a part of me still loves him. Do you? Sarah was silent for a long time, focused on the road. “I lived with him for 16 years,” she said finally.

She gave birth to his son. I shared joys and sorrows with him. And all this time he lied to me.

Not about small things, but about the most important things. And it’s not even that he had another family. I could forgive him for his infidelity.

But he hid his entire life from me, his work, his goals. Everything about himself. How can I love someone I don’t know? Silence fell, interrupted only by the sound of the engine and the crunch of tires on the asphalt.

We drove all night, three people connected by a man and his secrets. Three people whose lives were turned upside down by a broken flowerpot. Around three in the morning, we turned off the main road onto a dirt road.

Sarah’s phone’s navigation system indicated that we were about 20 kilometers away from the location indicated by the coordinates. The road was getting worse. The asphalt was replaced by dirt, and the car began to shudder over the potholes.

I began to worry that we might be stranded somewhere in the desert, with no connection or possibility of help. But Sarah drove confidently, as if she were a regular on those roads. Perhaps she was.

Perhaps she, John, and David often went out into nature, unlike John and I, who preferred urban recreation. Finally, the navigator informed us that we had reached our destination. Sarah stopped the car and turned off the engine.

In the silence that followed, the sounds of the nighttime forest were especially clear. The rustling of leaves, the hoot of an owl, a distant rustling. We got out of the car and looked around.

All around was forest. An ordinary deciduous forest, nothing remarkable. No landmarks or signs indicating a hiding place.

Just trees, bushes, grass, a forest road leading into the distance. “What now?” David asked, scanning the surroundings with a flashlight. “How will we find the hiding place?” Good question.

The coordinates led us here, but what next? There had to be some landmark, some clue. I took out the note and reread it. Coordinates.

Key in the third molar socket. Encrypted documents. Key.

Date of birth (DBO) in alphabetical order. Account access code. First five digits after the decimal point of Pi, plus the year of the relationship.

Nothing to indicate the hiding place. Unless… “It’s in the socket of the upper right third molar,” I said thoughtfully.

What if it’s not just John’s tooth? What if it’s a clue? Third molar. Third molar. Upper right.

I looked to the right and then up. Nothing special. Trees, sky with twinkling stars.

Maybe it’s related to a particular tree,” Sarah suggested, shining the flashlight on the nearest trunks. “But how can you tell which one? There are hundreds here.”

We began examining the trees growing to the right of the path. Nothing unusual. Oaks, birches, and poplars.

No marks, no notches, nothing to indicate a hiding place. Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place? David said. Maybe the clue means something else.

I reread the note again. Third tooth, top right. Third.

Right. Up. What if it’s an address? Suddenly I understood.

Third. The third tree? To the right of the path? And up? Maybe the treasure is at the top of the tree? We started counting the trees to the right of the path. First, second, third.

It turned out to be an imposing oak with a spreading canopy. We shone the flashlight upward, scanning the branches. And sure enough, about three meters up in the trunk was a hollow.

“Here it is,” Sarah exclaimed. “This must be the hiding place.”

But how did we get there? The hollow was too high to reach from the ground, and the lower branches of the oak started even higher. “I can try climbing,” David suggested. “I rock climb, I should be able to do it.”

Sarah looked worried, but after a moment’s thought, she nodded. “Okay, but be careful. And if you feel like you can’t go up or down, let us know immediately.”

We’ll think of something. David took off his jacket to make his climb easier and began to scramble up the oak tree trunk. His hands and feet rested securely on the uneven bark.

Sarah and I shone our flashlights to help him see and anxiously watched his progress. Finally, he reached the hollow. There’s something here.

He shouted from above. “Some container!” He pulled a small, capsule-like metal cylinder out of the hollow and began to descend.

A few minutes later, he was standing next to us, displaying his find. The container was tightly sealed with a screw-on lid. I tried to open it, but the lid wouldn’t budge.

“It looks like it’s glued together,” I noticed as I examined the joint between the lid and the body. “Or welded.” “So we need to open it,” Sarah decided…

But not here. Let’s go back to the car. We sat in the cab, turned on the lights, and began to carefully examine the container.