CHAPTER 30
SUPER-SECRET SPY CODE

VERONICA opened up the freezer window yet again, digging a tiny, plastic spoon into the barrel of mint chocolate chip and handing it over to Robin. The tall blonde placed it into the hands of the young customer in front of them, who just so happened to be Dustin's friend's younger sister, Erica. The whole staff of Scoops Ahoy knew her far too well, seeing as she was here almost every day, taking multiple samples so she wouldn't have to pay.

Erica was surrounded by her friends, all of which were licking at the ice cream samples on their spoons. Robin watched Erica suck on the small spoon, brows pulled together with uncertainty, while Veronica leaned against the freezer. She was completely bored with customers, especially Erica, and her face showed it. Robin met her coworker's gaze with a look of frustration.

"Hmm," Erica said, tilting her head to the side. She nodded to herself and chucked the spoon into the tiny waste bin on the counter. "Can I try the peppermint stick?"

Robin blinked. "Haven't you already tried the peppermint stick?"

Erica scoffed, looking to her friends for backup, but they all seemed to be lost in their own little worlds. She turned back to eye the two teenagers in front of her. "No," she objected defiantly.

"You have already tried the peppermint stick," Veronica added, raising a brow in the younger girl's direction. "We have a sample policy, Erica. You're just doing this so you don't have to pay."

"Then why wasn't it enforced ten samples ago?" Erica jutted her chin out. "Seems like a broken policy to me. What if I have a disease that causes me to not remember flavors, huh?"

Veronica paused, mouth opening slightly. "Because that doesn't exist."

"I would like to try the peppermint stick, please."

Sighing in Robin's direction, Veronica grabbed another sample spoon and scooped a small portion of the peppermint stick ice cream into it. For the twentieth time, Robin handed the sample to Erica, who took a long moment to study the sweet treat in front of her. "What are you doing?" Robin asked.

"I'm checking to make sure neither of you contaminated it."

Veronica rolled her eyes, turning away from the counter so she could rest her back onto the freezer. She played with the ends of her dark blue shorts, fingers brushing over the cheap material, before a hand patted her shoulder. When she lifted her head, Veronica noticed Robin was standing closer to her, hand on her hip and head cocked to the side. Erica was still eyeing her sample with serious intensity.

"So," Robin began, lips curving into a wicked grin, "why did you and Dingus break up?"

"Dingus?"

The blonde scoffed, "Steve, okay? I meant, Steve. Now, answer the question."

"Uh –" Veronica's chocolate eyes shifted around the room, refusing to land on Robin. "Why do you want to know?"

Robin frowned, gesturing to the back room with her chin, where Steve was currently on his lunch break with Dustin, doing who-knows-what. (With those two, it couldn't be good.) "Because he won't tell me, so I figured I should just go to the source. You know, the one who committed the crime."

Veronica's expression twisted. "I really don't think that's anyone's –"

"Can I try the fudge brownie swirl?"

The teenaged girls turned around again, glaring in Erica's direction, before Robin finally shouted, "Steve!"

They received no response from the backroom, leaving Veronica and Robin to narrow their eyes. For once, both girls seemed to be sharing the same thought, as if their brains were somehow connected. Before Erica could get out another word, the two were storming into the backroom of Scoops Ahoy, hands placed firmly on their hips.

Steve had been pacing in front of the table, banana in hand, and he almost choked on the piece in his mouth when his coworkers had burst through the door. Dustin sat at the small, square table in the backroom, holding a silver tape recorder in one hand and an English to Russian dictionary in the other. Veronica crinkled her brow at the sight.

"Alright!" Robin exclaimed, throwing her scooper into the air as she stalked into the room. "Babysitting time is over. You need to get in there, Dingus."

"Yeah," Veronica agreed, leaning against the door frame, "Erica Sinclair keeps asking for samples and won't take no for an answer. Maybe your charm will work on her."

"His charm?" Dustin grinned in Veronica's direction, before winking at Steve. A purr emerged from his lips, one that made Veronica roll her eyes when Steve wasn't looking.

Robin didn't pay attention to the exchange in front of her. As if she could sense an imbalance in the room, she turned to where she last placed her whiteboard and found it was now being used for other purposes. Veronica stepped forward and realized there was some different language written on it, along with the English alphabet.

"Hey, my board!" Robin's mouth flew open in shock. "That was important data, shitbirds!"

Dustin raised a hand, exasperated. "I guarantee you, what we're doing is way more important than your 'data.'"

Robin's eyes formed into slits. "Yeah? And how do you know these Russians are up to no good anyways?"

Dustin paused, glaring at Steve for a short moment. "How does she know about the Russians?" He whispered.

Steve shrugged and swallowed down the banana piece in his mouth. "I don't know."

"Wait," Veronica blinked, gripping the chair across from Dustin, "Russians? What are you –"

Dustin jabbed a finger in Steve's direction. "You told Robin about –"

Steve shook his head defiantly. "It wasn't me!"

"Hello, I can hear you!" Robin waved her hands as she approached the small table. She stood beside Veronica, arms crossed over her chest. "Actually, I could hear everything you two have been talking about for the past hour. You are both extremely loud."

Veronica elbowed her coworker in the side. "And you didn't think to tell me?"

"I thought it was too ridiculous to share," Robin replied, turning back to Dustin's shocked expression. The younger boy opened his mouth to interrogate her, to test her intelligence, but Robin was already speaking, "You think you have evil Russians plotting against our country, on tape, and you're trying to translate, but haven't figured out a word because you didn't realize Russians use an entirely different alphabet than you do. Sound about right?"

Glancing in the direction of her ex-boyfriend, Veronica exhaled heavily, "Steve, not again."

"What do you mean, 'Not again?'" Steve raised his hands in surrender. "You know the things I've seen, Ronnie. The things we've seen – together. This can't be too far off."

"Even if it is true, you think you two can solve a fucking Russian investigation?"

Robin leapt forward, halting Steve's upcoming response. She reached for the tape recorder, but the older boy stopped her before she could get her hands on it. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I wanna hear it," she replied innocently.

Dustin and Steve chorused together: "Why?"

"'Cause maybe I can help," Robin declared. "I'm fluent in four languages, you know."

Veronica deadpanned at the conversation in front of her.

"Russian?" Dustin asked with skeptical eyes.

And just like that, Robin began speaking in an entirely different language that Veronica couldn't make out. The blue-haired girl lifted a trimmed brow.

Dustin blinked. "Holy shit!"

"That was Pig Latin, Dingus." Robin giggled, which earned Dustin a dishrag slap from Steve.

The blonde sat down at the table, crossing one leg over the other casually, as if they weren't totally talking about translating a Russian transmission. "But I can speak Spanish and French and Italian, and I've been in band for twelve years. My ears are little geniuses, trust me." Peering over her shoulder, Robin's brows shot up towards Veronica. "What about you?"

Veronica pointed a finger to her chest. "What about me?"

"Are you fluent in any other language besides English?"

Steve stepped forward, almost as a protective gesture, but Veronica tried not to notice it. "No, no. Ronnie wouldn't want to be –"

Sending him a glare, Veronica pulled out the chair she had been leaning against and plopped herself down into it. Did Steve have a point? Most likely. It probably wasn't wise to get herself involved with something when she was still haunted by memories of last Halloween, but Veronica was too stubborn to let her ex-boyfriend get the final say. She was going to nip this PTSD in the butt, no matter how much it secretly terrified her.

She slapped her sailor cap on the table and smirked towards Steve, before turning to Robin, "I'm fluent in Spanish. I was taught some Bulgarian at this weird summer camp I went to in eighth grade." Steve wrinkled his nose at her confession, leaving Veronica to add, "My dad wanted me to be some prized student at one point. Didn't work out too well."

"I've heard that Ukrainian and Bulgarian are close to Russian," Robin smiled, and both girls spun to face their critics with a pleased expression. The register bell rang a few times outside. "Come on, man. It's your turn to sling ice cream, our turn to translate. We don't even need credit."

Veronica nodded along with her. "It's much better than me having a bitch fit over Erica ordering one more sample." When she realized Steve was contemplating his next response, she decided to use the best trick in her book, even though it was wrong.

Steve noticed she was staring at him, and when his dark irises flickered over to her, Veronica batted her clumped eyelashes, chin leaning against her hand. A deep crimson flushed across his cheeks, causing both Dustin and Robin to glance at the couple with confusion. Veronica sighed, "Please, Steve."

Robin held out her scooper, egging him on. With an annoyed groaned, Steve gave up and took it. He hated having a weakness.

•••

After just an hour, Robin managed to crack out one sentence from the tape. Veronica was digging her hands into her scalp of damaged hair, wracking her brain to help, but she was starting to realize that her summer of Bulgarian studies was not useful. Her Spanish fluency did nothing to help with Russian, and wasn't like Russians would start speaking English any time soon. She was kind of shit at helping.

With a pen and paper in hand, as well as the translator dictionary, Robin wrote down the last word to her sentence. Before Dustin had played the recording, the girls almost didn't believe him, even though Veronica – out of both of them – had seen some pretty gnarly things with the curly-haired kid. She was always a skeptic, though, and there was a thought in the back of her mind that begged for his newest mission to be a joke. Ignorance was seriously bliss.

"Can you play that last part again?" Robin instructed. Dustin pressed down on the play button and sat back, leaving the tall blonde to erase one of her words and replace it with another. She nodded to herself, causing Veronica to peer over her shoulder with interest.

Her eyebrows crinkled then. "The week is long? That's it?"

"No," Robin replied, channeling her inner Russian accent, "it's, 'the week is long.'"

Dustin grinned. "You gotta admit, that accent is pretty good."

Veronica frowned, opening her mouth a moment later to rebuttal, but she was interrupted by a fist knocking against the backroom window. "Hey, guys!" Steve exclaimed, continuously pounding his fist against the glass. "Can I get some help out here!"

Twirling a piece of hair around her finger, Veronica said, "It doesn't sound busy out there."

"You should go out there," Robin insisted, far too quickly for Veronica's liking. A smirk pulled at the edges of her lips. "Dingus and I got this. Go help Dingus Overlord."

"Dingus Overlord?" She repeated, face twisting with confusion. "Are you sure? What if I want to help –"

Robin stood, sighing pitifully at Veronica's response and resting her hands on her coworker's shoulder. "Oh, Ronnie. We appreciate your lack of help. We really do." Veronica looked over and realized that Robin leaned down to her shoulder, eyes sparkling with mischief. "But you need to go talk to lover boy. Goodbye."

The blonde had to have some weird, secret strength that none of them knew about, because she was able to pull Veronica out of her seat and haul her through the backroom door in under a second. Veronica swore she got whiplash, steadying herself on the door frame once she was inside the main parlor. Her eyes flickered over to Steve, who was leaning against the counter, a bewildered expression on his face. She then plucked her scooper out of her apron, only to realize that the parlor was basically empty.

"I thought you were busy up here?" She scoffed, slapping her scooper onto the pristine, white counter. "Why'd you call for back up?"

Steve shrugged. "I was bored."

Veronica's expression fell.

"Have you guys cracked the code yet?"

She sighed, her insolent, hardshell slowly crumbling as she neared Steve. He pressed his back against the lip of the marble counter, facing her. Veronica gingerly stood in front of him and leaned against the window to the backroom, hearing Dustin and Robin's whispers through the thin glass.

Veronica bowed her head to look at her High Tops, finally responding with a low, "Almost."

"Almost?" Steve drummed his fingers against the white marble. "What does that mean?"

"It means," she said, raising her chin to meet his worried stare, "that we have one sentence."

They stared at each for a long moment, before both of them erupted into laughter. Veronica turned her head to the side, giggling into her shoulder, while Steve rocked his body back and forth, chuckles exploding out of him. Eventually, their laughter died down, and they were left in the slow, steady silence of each other's company. Veronica rubbed at the edge of her nose.

"I guess my four-week summer learning beginner's Bulgarian hasn't really helped too much," she quipped.

Steve shook his head. "I can't believe you tried learning Bulgarian. It's so weird." He paused, chewing on his bottom lip for a split second. "I thought I knew everything about you."

Veronica's jaw shifted, and before she could say anything, she noticed a mother with a baby stroller waltz through the entrance of the parlor. She swallowed down her pride and whipped out her trusty scooper, muttering to Steve as she approached the counter, "Guess not."

•••

Veronica really couldn't believe what she was seeing.

In just under two hours, Robin had managed to figure out the whole transmission on Dustin's tape recorder. The whole mall was closed now. Gates were locked and signs blinked dramatically. Everything was completely still. Steve and Veronica had cleaned up the parlor an hour ago, closing up while the blonde girl finished her translation, until she finally called them all into the backroom. Both Veronica and Steve practically shoved each other out of the way to find out their answer, stopping short in front of Robin's whiteboard, which had it all written out for them.

Robin pointed to each word with her finger: "The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly."

The former couple shared a confused gaze, until finally, Steve released a scoff. "That's it? You gotta be kidding me!" He swung the backroom door open, allowing the other members of the crew to follow him out. Steve stalked towards the entrance, lifting a hand to pull down the gate, while the other gestured for them to come forward. Veronica dragged her camouflage messenger bag from the back and stuffed her sailor cap in it, before trailing Robin and Dustin.

"I translated it correctly, Dingus," Robin said. Her lips curled with hostility. "It's all there."

Steve yanked the gate closed and twisted the lock with his key. "I mean," he shook his head. "it just can't be right."

Veronica found a stray cigarette in her pocket and began tossing it between her fingers. "It does sound a little off, like a code of some sort."

"Obviously, it's a code, lady." Dustin agreed, taking the lead with Robin to walk them out of the mall. Veronica and Steve strode cautiously behind them, hands almost brushing against each other. "Like, a super-secret spy code."

"That's a total stretch," Steve shook his head.

Robin shrugged. "I don't know, is it?"

"Now you're buying into this?"

"She did translate it, Steve," Veronica added, tilting her chin in her ex-boyfriend's direction. He continued to shake his head. "Okay, how 'bout this: let's entertain the chance that maybe the kid happened upon a secret Russian transmission, just out of the blue. If it's what we think it is, no Russian is gonna layout specifics like, 'fire the missile for America at dawn.' Unless they're, like, incredibly stupid."

Robin agreed with a nod. "My translation is correct. I know that for sure. So, think about it." She laid out her hands, recounting the code from memory. "'The silver cat feeds.' Why would anyone talk like that unless they're trying to mask the meaning of their message? And why would anyone mask the true meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?"

Dustin grinned, sending Steve a look that said, I told you so.

"So I guess that confirms your suspicion. Evil Russians." Robin chuckled along with Dustin. "I can't believe I'm about to agree with this strange child, but – yeah, totally evil Russians."

"So how do we crack it?" Dustin asked.

Robin hummed, "Well, I guess we translate the rest and hopefully, a pattern emerges."

The younger boy nodded excitedly. "Yes, a pattern!"

"The 'silver cat' obviously means something," Veronica continued, catching up to their speed. "It could be a meeting place, a person ..." She smirked and nudged Dustin a few times with her elbow. "Or a weapon. Watch out for them evil Russians, kid –"

"Hey, where's Steve?"

Robin's question suddenly had all of them on high alert. Veronica then noticed that her ex-boyfriend was nowhere in sight. But it only took her frantically looking over her to shoulder to find him kneeling before one of those coin slot kiddie rides. He was digging through his pockets for a quarter, dropping random amounts of change onto the floor.

Veronica was the first to step forward. "Steve! What are you –"

"Uh – um –" He pulled the insides of his pockets out, turning to Veronica with a panicked expression. "Do you have a quarter?"

Robin followed her coworker in suit. "I do," she said, tossing the quarter to Steve. "But I think you might be too tall for that ride, little Stevie."

Dustin crinkled his brow as Steve slid the quarter into the coin slot, waiting for the ride to move. Veronica crossed her arms over her chest, dropping the lone cigarette from inside her pocket, and asked, "I am not going near that thing, Harrington. Last time you almost made me sit on one of those, it almost collapsed –"

"Shush!" Steve brought a finger to his lips. "Listen."

Music flowed through the tiny speaker below the change slot. It echoed throughout the empty mall, flooding the tiled corridors and running through locked-up stores. Veronica pursed her lips, confusion wracking her brain, until Dustin whispered, "Holy shit."

"What is it?" Veronica asked, laying out a hand to help Steve up. The last thing she expected was a spark of electricity to erupt at his touch, and both teenagers quickly slipped their hands away.

Steve's voice from a year ago engulfed her mind: It's like before it's gonna storm, you know. You can't see it you can feel it. Like, this – uh ...

Veronica chewed on her bottom lip. The electricity.

"The music! It's the music!" Dustin shouted, ripping his backpack off his shoulders and pulling out the tape recorder. He held it out for them all to see, pressing the play button once again. Veronica expected just to hear the same Russian bullshit, a repetition of the words that Robin had him play a dozen times, until she realized ...

Her eyes went wide. "He's right," she whispered, wagging a finger at the tape recorder. "The music is the same as this kiddie ride. It's the same fucking song."

"Maybe they have horses like this in Russia," Robin muttered, wrinkling her nose.

Steve disagreed, "Indiana Flyer? I don't think so."

The blonde rolled her eyes. "Then what do you suppose it is?"

"This code – it didn't come from Russia." His eyes suddenly flickered over to Veronica, and they both nodded, as if their minds were synced. Maybe they really were. Steve swallowed hard, "It came from Hawkins."

•••

A/N: I'm really trying to keep this update schedule!!! 😪😪😪 And I've also been making chapters longer bc most chapters in Book I were literally 1,000 words YIKES 🥴 That being said, I don't think I'll be able to update twice next week because I'll be on vacation! I'll probably update Monday only, depending on if I get more writing done. (I won't, idk why I think I will 🤡)

Also, I don't want to be a big ol' meanie, but it's so irritating to get a load of "UPDATE!!!" comments right after I announce my update schedule for this book. Of course, the majority of people know that's impolite, but I guess some don't. So honestly, I'm taking a rule out of timeforwolves book and muting anyone who sends an update comment. I'm sorry if that's harsh, but I just Cannot™, ya know??

( made by JustSav )