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Lance is going to want answers, and I don’t know what to tell him, but for right now, giddiness pours over me.
Wyatt pulls me into a hug. Careful to avoid my shoulder, he wraps his hands around my midsection. My old wound burns like a motherfucker, but I smile through it, letting him hold me. “You did it,” he beams.
I bite my lip. I wish I could take this moment in, but Lance’s presence ruins everything. “I’m not sure what to do now.”
“We better find out.” He moves away, and I notice worry lining his eyes. “He won’t wait long.”
I nod in understanding.
“Well?” Stone calls, expectation clear in his voice.
Wyatt waves him and Lucas back in. We hold the map for them and they peer through the holes with the binoculars to see for themselves. Even Lance takes his turn, confirming that he sees what we do.
The answer was in plain sight on the map the whole time. We never could figure out what the squares and x’s meant, only that we believed the x’s could’ve represented caves, and the squares were anyone’s guess. Now we know.
They brought us to this moment right here. We’ve already taken more steps in the last two weeks than my immediate family has taken in hundreds of years.
Stone grabs my hurt shoulder, and I hiss. His eyes turn dark when he realizes why, and he glares at his father before moving closer to me. “You can do this, Dakota. You can figure this out.”
“Wecan,” I tell them, meeting each one of their stares.
I wouldn’t have gotten this far in the journey if it weren’t for them.
“So?” Lance starts. “What now?”
And there it is. The question I’ve been dreading. My pulse beats at my wrist so loudly that my head is consumed with thethud, thud, thud. I have to come up with something, and I have to come up with it quickly.
32
“We have to think.” Stone scowls at his father. “Just like you don’t make business deals in a day, you can’t find treasure in a day either.”
“We’ll search this area,” I say as the two Jacobs eye each other. “Stone, can you mark the GPS coordinates here?”
He does as I ask, bringing out a brand-new GPS to save the exact position we’re in. I only hope that our other coordinates are saved in the cloud or some shit. Whatever that means.
“Should we metal detect?” Wyatt suggests.
“Couldn’t hurt.”
There’s something nagging at me, though. Why here? Why this spot? I close my eyes, block out the conversation around me, and pretend that I’m the one who drew the map. The x’s and squares were put on the cliff face to match up to this exact spot. The next clue has to be right here—or within viewing distance.
Lance and his team hang back as Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas get to work. The telltale beeps of several pieces of equipment sound, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything with them. Stone runs the metal detector over the spot directly where I’m standing, and it doesn’t go off. He frowns up at me, and he must be thinking the same thing I am. If there’s nothing right there, we’re not going to find anything away from this spot either.
I stare straight ahead, searching every last nook and cranny before turning counterclockwise and searching again. I look for a cave; for another etching. I look for a neon fucking arrow—anything that will help us get out of this mess right now. Lance isn’t going to sit around and wait for us to find something. We know he’s being unbelievably arrogant and ridiculous, but he doesn’t understand that. He’s used to commanding a room. He snaps his fingers, something gets done. If only treasure hunting worked the same way.
Sweat dots my brow that has nothing to do with the fact that the sun is high in the sky now. It must be bordering on midday. We would usually stop for lunch, but there’s no time for that. Each passing second is like the ticking of a time bomb. If the crunching of the gravel behind me is any indication, Lance is getting impatient.
“Anything?”
“No,” Stone barks.
I swear those two are going to end up coming to blows before the end of this. Not only because his father is a raging lunatic, but because he obviously had no idea what he was sending Stone off to do every summer. If I think back to when they started at Saint Clary’s, the trajectory all this took makes so much sense. We were destined to dangle off the end of Lance’s rope. He’s not a man used to hearing no, and he’s heard no in regards to the Wilder treasure for too long. He was bound to break at some point.
“Perhaps Dakota needs a reason to work faster?”
I spin where I am. “I’m doing my best,” I affirm, like I’m trying to talk someone off a ledge. “You have to give me some time to think.”
“Find me the treasure!” he bellows.