Sam and I had planned to sneak into Uncle Bakht's office during the office lunch hours, when the halls were completely deserted. I put the key in the lock making sure to keep my ears cocked for any noises.

Pushing the door open, I whispered prayers to God that no one found me standing in this awkward position. Checking to see if I was clear, I tiptoed in and texted Sam.

"The coast's clear... you can come in now" she messaged back with an affirmative and I went to work.

Luckily for us, Ali had visited his office two weeks before he was kidnapped, so we had decided to use those pictures as a way to tally and check if anything was changed. Going to my photo gallery, I swiped through the pictures of Uncle Bakht's office.

So far, the office seemed to be in its original state. I rubbed my gloved fingers together trying to figure out the best place to start.

He loved books. Maybe that would be a good place to start?

"Hey, did you find anything?" Sam said, coming in. I shook my head and gestured towards the pile of files on the table. "Great, I'll start there" it was unlikely that we would find something there, but we had to be thorough.

The dark bookshelf leaned tall, dusty and intimidating. I started to look at the books trying to figure out if they were arranged in a particular pattern. Sorrow hit me like a ton of bricks. I was always hounding Uncle Bakht for more books and now his whole collection was left unattended.

Shaking my head to get rid of those thoughts, I surveyed the shelves.

Hmm... it seemed like the upper two rows had been tampered with. I double-checked with the image on my phone, pinching to zoom in.

"Sam..." I began just as she said "Elena" we turned to each other, our eyes bright.

"Remember how Dad used to leave codes for me?" I nodded. "He always had the same word hidden, but in different ways..."

"Sunflower" I recalled. She nodded and gestured towards a file. It had a sunflower sticker on the title. Over the plastic. I hurried over towards her, excited.

We flipped it open only to find a bunch of numbers.

"What..." I began.

"Shh... I know this" I watched as Sam grabbed a nearby pencil and note pad and started to scribble.

Leaving her to her task, I moved around the spacious room, checking the drawers and the cupboards. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. I moved to his desktop computer and found it to be wiped clean. The feds really loved to do that.

Or they were hiding something.

If Haider could be believed and there wasn't any reason not to, the Interior Minister was manipulating the investigation and was probably behind this whole game. He was saving his skin. But why? What was he hiding? And where?

"Got it" Sam exclaimed. I rushed towards her. "They seem to be some coordinates, maybe a location?" my eyes went over the numbers, and my heart sank.

"How will we figure this out?" I groaned, googling the numbers. Sam put her head in her hands. Hopefully, Google could find out the location. Why was this so hard?

My eyes widened when I looked at the search results, "Sam, what did Uncle Bakht say about Islamic History?"

"That it's right in front of our eyes?" she said in a muffled voice.

"In the 10th century, the Persian city of Shiraz's library had over 300 rooms and thorough catalogs to help locate texts these were kept in the storage chambers of the library and they covered every topic imaginable"

"Okay..." I grabbed her by the shoulders and pointed at the bookshelf.

"30 books in one row, 10 rows" she gasped and looked at the figure in front of her. "The Mughul emperor Akbar was a warrior, sportsman, and famous cataloger. He organized a catalog of the Imperial Library's 24,000 texts, and he did most of the classifying himself" I continued.

"His message! 24,000 divided by 300 is...?"

"800," we said in hushed tones. That explained the shuffle. We rushed to his books, trying to find anything that had 'Eight Hundred' in the title.

"Found it," I said grabbing the one the said, 'Eight Hundred Ways To Categorize Your Library'. "A little in the nose, don't you think?" She shrugged. "Uh, what do we do now?"

"We go to either page 47, or chapter 47, or chapter 4 page 7..." She said, flipping the book open and marking out the pages on her pad. "See? Here, it says, that the 'mis-config' on the computer would open up previous files..." I ran to the computer. "Chapter 4, page 7 has two words that have been highlighted, sunflower pattern..."

"That's the password," I said, excitement bubbling in my stomach. I typed it in watching the multitude of files load.

Oh, they had not bothered to erase the backup files. Jackpot!

"And finally, Chapter 47. He highlighted..."
"What?"
"Nothing. He's highlighted nothing"

"That's okay. We have the files. Do you have the hard drive?" she nodded and gave it to me.

I plugged it in and breathed a sigh of relief. As soon as the transfer was done, we grabbed the book, the drive and after putting everything back where it was, we escaped.

Later that night we ordered pizza to celebrate. Finally, we were getting somewhere.

"I'll give this to Haider, he said he'll send someone to pick this up," Abu told both Sam and me. "Good job girls, you've done the impossible and made the breakthrough... "

"Hey, I gave them the key" Ali complained and Auntie Masooma patted his head affectionately. I smiled. It seemed like life had returned to their faces.

"I'm proud of you... Both of you" Auntie Masooma spoke after giving us tight hugs. She excused herself to go to her room and both of her children followed her, most probably to celebrate in private. Life was all about the small wins.

"You should thank God that I managed to convince her" Ammi proclaimed walking into the sitting are her arms raised for acknowledgment. "It was a daunting task but I did it"

"Convince who?"

"Alishba, my darling. She's agreed to have this event open to all family members. Haider can now just waltz in with an invite and no one will notice"

"How? What about the food? And the decor?"

"Remember the guy from Xanders?" I shook my head. "Well, I got into contact with him and he was delighted by the increase in guests. He even offered us a discount! So I told Alishba that everything was handled and the rest, as they say, is history."

"Oh thank God. I love you" I said giving her a tight hug. I could always count on my mother to solve anything.

"Your father owes me another diamond necklace"
"You can pick whichever my darling," he said, the lines on his face relaxing.
"There's the one at Harry Winston..."
"Send me the code, I'll ask someone to fetch it for you"

I smiled at both of them. All those years together and they were still deeply in love.

"We're never going to find this are we?" I asked Zaira.

"If only we're lucky" she muttered, her gaze on the two of them. "Do you have a dress?"

"No, I was hoping you'd get one?"

"Of course you were" I grinned when she rolled her eyes.

"But, that would mean I'm paying for our spa trips tomorrow" her eyes brightened and she squealed.

"Done"

*******************************************

This was some Lara Croft level sleuthing. Sexy times ahead...