Page 15

Chapter Fourteen

A ndrew’s room was a mirror of mine except it overlooked the pool and had a view of the green mountain range as the backdrop. Below us, guests relaxed on white loungers, drinking expertly mixed cocktails. The room didn’t have a desk or table, so the only reasonable option was to settle on the bed. I tried my best not to think that Andrew would be sleeping here tonight, under fine cotton sheets, wrapping his arms around soft pillows. My mind wandered to what he slept in. Did he wear pajama pants, or would he perhaps be completely naked? My stomach fluttered.

Andrew pulled his backpack from the closet and dropped it next to the foot of the bed. Then he lowered onto the tiled floor and began pulling items out of it. I pushed off my shoes and settled on the opposite side of him, crossing my legs and pulling my skirt over them. We spread everything out between us.

“Where would you like to start?” I picked up the brass cipher we’d found and examined it. The outer ring had thirty-three sections with uppercase letters and several numbers in no particular order, and the inner one had twenty-nine lowercase letters.

“Do you know how to work that?”

I shrugged. “I’ve watched enough movies. You turn the discs, and they point to the correct letter.”

“Yes, only you need to know where to start.” He stretched his arm out and waved his hand to give him the cipher. “This one resembles the Alberti Cipher, invented by a Renaissance polymath. We could try its method first. This ring,” he said, pointing at the outer disk, “is the stabilis . It’s fixed. And the smaller one that we can rotate is called the mobilis . The sender and recipient agree on the index letter. Let’s say ‘s.’” Andrew turned the smaller dial until the small “s” went under “L” in the outer disk. “‘L’ is now the start of the ciphertext. Once the recipient receives the message, they use the same cipher and do the reverse decoding.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “Does it make sense?”

I nodded. “How do we know what they agreed on in the first place?”

“Uh,” he said, “that’s a great question. We don’t know.”

“So our best way is trial and error?” I gave him a stern look. “In this case, I won’t be very helpful because I don’t know Spanish.” Slight envy about Brie being multilingual pinched me. How many languages did she say she knew? Six? I only spoke two: good English and bad English. I also couldn’t help sketching the second bracelet’s map because I couldn’t draw a cartoonish house to save my life. I was useless. I shouldn’t have agreed to help him. Why did he even ask me?

“What’s wrong?” Andrew said in a low voice.

“Nothing.” I swallowed, picking dirt from under my nail. “I’m just not sure what I can help you with. I can’t draw. I can’t read their language. I should probably go and let you do your job.”

“No. Stay,” he said with so much urgency that it was almost comical. It made me smile.

“Why?”

“Because I need your help.”

“You’ll be fine on your own. I didn’t go to school for all this.”

“You don’t have to go to school to do what I do. You have a great talent for memorization, and your attention to detail is astounding.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Yeah. It’s got me so far in my life.”

“Why are you insisting on putting yourself down? You’re the one who pointed out that Augustine used different handwriting in his letters to his sons. And using this cipher now we can read what messages he sent. You discovered the map. And you saw that there was something special about the sketches.”

“Again. Pure luck.”

“It wasn’t pure luck,” Andrew said, his word firm. He picked up Augustine’s book and the stack of letters. “You can help with these. You don’t need to know Spanish to find words corresponding to the numbers.”

“Okay. I can do that,” I said, trying to hold on to my emotions and not let my voice break, as appreciation and excitement blossomed inside of me, not because I could be more helpful, but because Andrew had stood up for me against my judgmental bully, against my worse critic—me.

Andrew took a pencil, then tore the middle pages from his notebook and handed them to me.

“Do you know how an Arnold Cipher works?” he asked.

I leaned back against the foot of the bed, pulled the book closer, and unfolded the first letter, which resembled merchant trade records with one column containing strings of digits separated by periods, and the other column having words separated by commas. “My wild guess is the first number is the page, the second is the line, and the third number is the word in that line.”

Andrew grinned. “You got it.”

An hour later, I was done with my task, but Andrew was still working with letters he’d copied from the sheets, rearranging them and turning dials, then dragging a line across the words and trying again.

“What should I do next?”

He bit his inner check, thinking, then he gave me his iPad. “Thirty-one zero one. Could you research any palaces or ruins of large mansions in Colombia? We need to find where Augustine was building it.”

When I unlocked the iPad, I wasn’t surprised to see a picture of Lulu as his background. She was grinning, one baby tooth missing, face covered in chocolate ice cream. A longing I never imagined I could feel pulled at my heartstrings. “How old is she here?”

Andrew glanced, and his lips turned up. “Five. It was the first time Charlotte had ever left me to look after Lulu on my own. I have never been more nervous in my life than I was on that day. Of course, she’d lived with me since her birth, but Charlotte had always been there. I took Lulu to spend a day in London. We visited the Natural History Museum and then a playground in Kensington Gardens.”

“I’m sure you did just fine. She looks like she had the best day of her life.”

I could only imagine how many women clutched their hearts while watching handsome Andrew playing with a little girl, giving her rides on his broad shoulders in the park.

“We had a good time.” He returned his attention to the page in his hands.

I wondered if he wanted to have a family and kids of his own. He would be a great father, and most likely a perfect husband. I wouldn’t mind one day settling with a decent man, but as for kids, I didn’t want them. Each time I thought of becoming a parent I pictured my own mother. What if I didn’t have what it took to be a mother? My grandparents abandoned her, and she deserted William and me. Seemed to me that the neglecting gene ran in our family. I didn’t want to take a risk. I wouldn’t forgive myself for ruining my kid’s childhood. The iPad went dark. I unlocked it again and tapped on the Safari app. Focus .

Colombia had several palaces, but none of them resembled the sketch. I searched for ruins of historical buildings, and only found two, but the footprint wasn’t large.

Andrew absentmindedly pinched his bottom lip as he stared at his notes. He exhaled sharply, let go of his gorgeous mouth, and scribbled something on the paper.

“Breakthrough?” I asked.

“The earliest message says, ‘The twin bracelet is done.’ The next one is a year later and says, ‘The requested trunk from the ángel Hermosa has arrived.’ This one says, ‘Vault is ready.’ And the last one says, ‘Stop construction. Pay the agreed price in full. Everyone needs to leave.’ It’s dated a day after Maria died.” He dropped the notebook and groaned, stretching his arms above his head.

“Does this mean there is no palace?”

“I guess not.”

It made sense. In three hundred years someone would have noticed a huge building, even in the middle of a jungle. I twisted the bracelet on my wrist.

“Is ángel Hermosa a town?”

“No. I don’t know. It translates to ‘my beautiful angel.’” Andrew closed his eyes and tilted his face to the ceiling. “I have heard it before somewhere.” He reached for his notebook and paged through it. “It’s the waterfall where Jorge secretly married Augustine and Maria.”

“Why secretly?” I cocked my head.

“Because her family was opposed to their relationship.”

“Oh. How old were they?”

“She was fifteen, and he was eighteen.”

“Oh wow, young. How long were they married?”

“Twenty-nine years,” he said, lost in his thoughts.

It must have been nice to find the love of your life at such a young age. Too bad they didn’t grow old together.

Andrew bit his bottom lip. “I could’ve sworn Augustine used those words somewhere else. Where did I see it?” He grabbed a green plastic folder and plucked a stack of photocopied letters. Two pages enclosed in transparent laminated sheets fell out of the folder and landed between us. I whisked them up and peered at them, trying to make sense of what they were. Both papers had faint combinations of dotted lines that went up two-thirds of the sheet, with dashed lines branching out left and right, stopping and continuing a few centimeters up the page. Squiggles or maybe letters were marked in some places. One sheet had a short railroad track-looking scribble almost at the center and an inch to the right. Everything looked as if it was drawn in an unsystematic way. One page was in better condition than the other, its lines more defined and not smudged.

“What are these?” I asked, turning them both upside down. They still didn’t make sense.

Andrew directed his attention to me. “That I don’t know yet. Dr. Garcia gave them to me right before I left him. What do you think?”

“Are these also Augustine’s work?”

“We’re not sure, but they were found among other items that belonged to him.”

“Some of this looks like stairs or maybe… shoot, I don’t know… but it looks to me like an incomplete architectural foundation or floorplan drawings maybe? Like, it’s as if whoever made them was just sketching out ideas on a napkin. Version one and version two. Look at this one. If you flip it, it looks like a fountain maybe? Could it be a garden plan?”

After Andrew didn’t answer, I looked at him. He was immersed in reading the letter he held. He scanned the page, then he picked another, and another until he found what he sought. “Here, ángel Hermosa. It’s from Augustine to Maria. It says… hmm…” Andrew slowly nodded, biting his lip as he read. Then his eyebrows shot up, and his lips parted. He concentrated even harder on the sheet in his hands.

“What?” I straightened and peered at him. “You know where it is?”

“Not exactly.” Andrew shifted in his spot, lifting and adjusting his shirt collar on the back of his neck. “No. It does mention the waterfall.” He hesitated a moment, as though not knowing what to say next, and a blush had crept up his neck. “He says he loves her dearly.”

“Aww.” I cooed. “What else does it say?”

Andrew scratched his forehead. “He’s in Portugal right now,” he murmured, and brushed a hand through his hair. “And he misses her,” he said, so quietly that his voice was barely audible.

I observed him, amused. What had gotten into him?

“Oh my god. I would rip that paper out of your hands and read it myself if I knew how.” I laughed impatiently and pushed his thigh with my foot. “Why are you mumbling?”

“Well…” He rubbed his neck, his eyes flicker to mine and then back to the paper. “He’s talking about how beautiful she was the day he kissed her for the first time behind the waterfall.”

Seriously, that’s what made him so squirmy?

I sighed. “I remember my first kiss. I was in ninth grade.” It was awful. The boy stuck his tongue inside my mouth and just stood there not moving. A minute later he stepped away, shrugged, and said my tits were too small. Asshole . I was only fourteen. Not a first-class introduction to the male species.

Andrew scoffed and scratched his forehead again, the blush on his face deepening. “This is not the kind of first kiss he is talking about.”

I blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s the…” His face turned red. “It’s the other kiss.”

I arched an eyebrow. “The other kiss?”

How many kisses were there?

“For the love of god, Andrew. Read the damn paragraph out loud. In English.”

“No.”

“Why not? It’s their first kiss.”

His eyes drifted around the room, then fixed on my face. “It’s not their first kiss. He talks about the first time he kissed her there .”

He sat still, holding my gaze, then lowered his chin a little, his gaze landing on my skirt, somewhere in the proximity of where my thighs touched.

Ah, crap, I couldn’t just drop it.

I gasped and slapped my palm over my mouth. And then I giggled. Yep. That was me when I was embarrassed.

“Just for the record,” I said, waving my hands in front of me, “I was not kissed like that in ninth grade.”

Andrew chuckled, holding my gaze. “I figured.”

I wiped tears from under my eyes. “I’m curious now, what else did he write there? Is it in poetic prose or pure porn?”

Andrew slid the sheets back into the folder. He swallowed. “Augustine doesn’t go into details.”

He stared at me, his startling eyes dark and heavy as if he was pinning me underneath him right here on this floor, on these old letters. If I were standing, my knees would buckle. Thirty years from now I might not remember all the details of a sexy stranger who dragged me to Colombia, but the way he looked at me right now would stay with me forever.

Heat surged from my toes to the top of my head as my imagination plummeted into the dangerous territory of Andrew nudging my knees apart, running his tongue up my thigh, his lips gently sucking on my swollen center, his face smug with wetness around his mouth, his hair disheveled by my fingers. My nipples began to harden to sensitive peaks.

“All right,” Andrew said, breaking my daydream. I’m a wreck. He gave me a questioning look. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” I said, my voice embarrassedly thick. I needed a cold shower.

“We have another mention of the waterfall,” Andrew continued, his pupils dilated. I had the distinct sensation that he was trying to keep himself from leaping like a wild animal at me. I wouldn’t stop him. “The place where they got married. If he stopped construction on the palace, he most likely didn’t move the loot from its original location.”

Right . We were back to the business. Concentrate .

“And the note said one trunk arrived from ángel Hermosa. Does this mean there are more trunks left?” I picked up his iPad and google searched waterfalls in Colombia. Too many results came up, we couldn’t possibly check all of them. Well, we could, but it would take us weeks. We could narrow the list down by this sketch. “So far everything Augustine has drawn has been a missing piece of the puzzle. It only makes sense to go there. The question is, do we know where there is?”

“Let me call Carlos.” Andrew pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and mouthed One sec . He got up and strode over to the window.

While Andrew was on the phone, I continued browsing beautiful waterfalls in Colombia. None of them looked like the one from the sketch. They were all too popular. Curious tourists or locals would have discovered the lost treasure by now.

“I was wrong.” Andrew dropped next to me. “Cascada de Belleza Escondida is the place where they got married. ángel Hermosa must be another location.”

“And did other things.” A teasing smile danced across my face.

“Right.” Without meeting my eyes, he opened the maps app on the iPad, and without typing the name of the place swiped his finger across the Colombia map. “It’s about a two-hour drive from here.” He zoomed in on a blue dot. “Once we get there, it won’t be a short jaunt.”

“So far, this journey hasn’t been for the faint of heart. How bad is it?”

“Four-mile hike through the jungle, mostly uphill.”

“Of course.” I rolled my eyes. “Round trip?”

He shook his head.

“Are you serious? Can we hire some horses or donkeys?”

Andrew’s gaze perused down my body, his lips curved in a private smile. “You’ll need to buy hiking-appropriate clothes and shoes. In the morning, you and William can take a car into town while I take care of a few things.”

My lips curled at the thought. “If I see a Fedora, can I get it for you?”

It was Andrew’s turn to roll his eyes. “If you must.”

My phone buzzed with an incoming message.

William

Would you be terribly upset if I go out with Brandon tonight? We want to do a sunset horse ride, and then have dinner at the top of the hill.

You’re making me nervous. You know he works for the bad guys.

I do, but I think he’s one of those good guys who is confused.

?

I don’t think he believes in what he’s doing.

Fine. I don’t care if you hang out with him just make sure he doesn’t know who you are.

how did today go?

I didn’t risk telling him. If William had a few drinks, he could get a loose tongue. If he accidentally shared with Brandon that we were searching for something it would be one thing, but if he were to announce what we found that was a total catastrophe.

Fine. I’ll tell you later.

Did you and Dr. Johnny Rocket make out while you were hiding in a closet?

don’t have too much fun with Brandon. Love you.

btw, did he mention if Brie or Richard are here?

He says he’s traveling alone

I looked up and caught Andrew watching me with an amused expression. “Is that William?”

“Yes. He is going to have dinner with Brandon.”

Andrew glanced at his watch. “He’s either really into playing a secret agent or he likes the guy.”

“I think he likes him.” I also checked the time. It has been four hours since we sent William on the spy mission. “It’s after five. I think I’d like to go back to my room and take a shower. I’ll leave you alone to do the rest of your work.” I collected my shoes. Andrew got up before me and held out his hand. Like I need him to touch me again. I pressed my palm into his. At the contact, the sensation of being molded against his hard frame threatened to overwhelm me. But he would have to make the first move. He drew me to my feet and held on to my hand for a beat or maybe five before letting go.

His broad shoulders relaxed, his hands were now in his pockets, and an easy smile lifted the corners of his lips. “Thank you again for helping me.” His sincere expression told me he actually meant it.

I didn’t do much. I was not even sure what we agreed our next move should be because my mind was muddled by unforeseen lust.

“Anytime.” I walked backward to the door. I had a date with the tub’s showerhead.

“Meet me for dinner at seven?” he said in a warm, gravelly tone.

Halfway out the door, my shoes dangling on my fingers, I turned to look at Andrew over my shoulder with what I hoped was an enticing smile. “Tonight, I’ll get you drunk, and you’ll tell me the rest of Augustine’s dirty letter.”

Or better yet you could show me.