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Their assurances only give me a slight reprieve from my hesitation. When I lead them down the hallway, my feet feel like cement blocks trying to wade through mud, and I half-wonder if my father is sending me messages not to do what I’m about to. He would kill me. He would disown me.
But I have to find him. And it’s not just the creepy as fuck note that has me positive that if I find the treasure, I’ll find my dad. It’s because if I know anything about Clark Wilder, it’s that he wouldn’t dare die until he found the treasure. Or, he would’ve died trying.
I nudge my father’s study door open with my shoe and come to a halt. Wyatt’s chest bumps against me, and I step into the study with a gasp.
There’s shit everywhere. The desk is upended. All of the cupboards have been torn down. Paper litters the floor with my father’s distinct handwriting scribbled everywhere. The lamp is smashed on the floor, glass shards sparkle against the small rays of sun that peek in through the window.
It’s been ransacked. In fact, it looks just like when these assholes went through my shit looking for stuff.
I’m an idiot. Of course, they’ve already been here. Why wouldn’t they try here first?
I turn, locking them all with a glare as my hands turn to fists. “You assholes!”
20
My nails bite into my palm as I stare daggers at them. I can’t believe I even half trusted them. A quarter trusted them. I can’t believe I would even soften to any of them at all. “I see you’ve already been here.”
Stone matches my glare and gives it right back to me. “What?”
I spread my arms out wide. My face heats like I’m going to explode. “You’ve already been through the room. Did you find everything you so desperately wanted? The one clue that was worth this?” What a violation of privacy. My dad always said they couldn’t be trusted. It’s a damn good thing he hides his most precious treasure information. If they only tore up this room like they did with my dorm, then there’s no way they found whatever they were looking for. “You can kiss my help goodbye.”
I try to push between them, but Stone grabs me. He sure does love grabbing me a lot, doesn’t he? He hauls me back to his chest, his breath hitting my ear. “Is this not what this room usually looks like?”
“Are you serious?” I grind out.
I turn my head to stare at him but he only blinks.
“Honestly, it’s not that much different from the other parts of the house,” Lucas says in a small voice, like he’s worried I’ll start swinging. I just might. My father and I had a hell of a lot of time on our hands, and one way we passed the time was to make sure I could hold my own if I ever needed to. No daughter of his was going to be someone’s punching dummy.
He was wrong about that because sometimes words hurt more, especially when you have a muzzle on you.
“Look at this,” Wyatt says. His sneakers crunch over the broken glass as he tiptoes toward the overturned desk. He pulls out a map of Clary that’s from the 1800s. On the blank side, STUPID GIRL is written in big, block letters just like the stylized note I got a few days ago.
This time, I don’t shy away from Stone, I move back into him. His grip loosens, and instead of forcing me to be where I am, it’s as if he’s shielding me.
“Same type of note from the apartment,” Lucas says in a hushed tone but with that same rich energy. It draws me to look at him. “We didn’t do this, Dakota.”
I press my lips together. I’m beginning to think they’re right, but it’s not as if I don’t have reason to doubt them. “I guess you’ll have to excuse me if I still have lingering trust issues. I know you were looking for something that night in my dorm room. You broke my door down. You went through my stuff.”
Lucas’s face flushes. Pink creeps up his neck and balloons over his cheeks. Wyatt and Stone are less inclined to feel remorse though. Wyatt shrugs, “You were the enemy.”
I want to tell him I was never their enemy, but that’s not technically true, is it? That’s not how Dad brought me up. I hate these guys, I just don’t know why it’s so hard to hate them when he isn’t here. I’m being torn in two different directions, and I’m not sure which path I should go down. Should I trust my gut or my father’s?
Thoughts collide, crashing into one another, and I yank my hair down with the start of a splitting headache.
Stone leads me to Lucas in the corner of the room who pins me to his side and starts running his hands over my hair. He even rubs my temples like he knows what’s going on inside my head. This guy definitely plays the part of silent observer well if he knows about my headaches, hair-driven or not.
Wyatt and Stone pick their way through the mess. There’s no rhyme or reason to my father’s research they’re finding even though they try to make sense of each paper they pick up. Stone’s practically having a stroke with how messy and unorganized my father’s writings are. He keeps twitching involuntarily.
Eventually, they get everything off the floor and in piles on the desk that they turn right side up again. I move to the kitchen to grab the broom and dustpan that are in the corner. When I come back, they’re talking in hushed tones, so I stop just outside the room. “You think it was them?”
“Or your dad.”
The last was from Wyatt. They were obviously talking about Lance and even from here, I’d know Lucas’s voice, so I can rule him out.
“This wasn’t my dad,” Stone growls.
“Yeah, you say that a lot.” A sigh filters through the room. “You have to tell her what’s really going on.”