Page 16

Eve

Priscilla and Adeline

The storm rolling in was going to be a problem—but I no longer had the luxury to wait it out.

With one eye on the clouds, I tossed my duffel bag into the backseat of my car, along with my treasure-hunting gear, and secured Monty’s absurdly large pile of notes on the Blackburn Diamonds.

It was too early in the morning for Cleo to be here, but we’d finally sat down last night and crafted a plan for me to be gone from The Wreckage—briefly—while I went after the diamonds.

She understood both my fears and the urgency surrounding it all, but leaving her without extra help didn’t feel right.

Cleo had informed me, quite adamantly, that we had tons of friends who were more than willing to assist her in my absence. Her actual demand, in all of this, was that I “stop staring off into space like a lovelorn romance novel hero” and make a move already on Hotter Lois Lane.

As if Harper Hendrix were just some gorgeous stranger I’d met at a bar—and not a complicated force of nature who’d upended my life from the moment she’d swept into our store.

Not that it mattered anymore. She knew how Monty felt, knew there was no way she’d intersect with my aunt while out searching for Priscilla’s diamonds. For all I knew, she was halfway home to New York by now, back to climbing the many rungs of her career ladder.

I was much too familiar with that kind of preoccupation. I’d been raised in that kind of life, brainwashed into believing my value came from the kind of accomplishments you could brag about at dinner parties.

And if I’d had an especially erotic dream about Harper being in my bed last night—naked and flushed, her skin warm and soft, her body arching up to meet mine—it was only because of what happened at the diner with Waylon.

Receiving the news together about Harry’s partner, Eugene, followed by Waylon’s own furtive hope that Priscilla had survived her ordeal.

I’d felt her visceral reaction to this new information. Had seen the brightness in her eyes, the soft smile on her lips, the way she seemed to blush from pure joy alone. It was an eagerness that I recognized—the eagerness of the thrill, the chase, all the puzzle pieces suddenly locking into place.

All these hours later and I hadn’t been able to shake free of that shared moment.

A burst of cool wind sent dust and dirt flying down the street in front of me, reminding me of every second I wasted, ruminating on a woman I was never gonna see again.

What I did need to do was get to Kept King, one of the ghost towns close to Haven’s Bluff.

For a while, Monty and Ruby believed the diamonds were buried out there by the old mine.

While nothing of note had been found recently, a small cluster of diamonds were recovered in the early 1980s by a local who’d since passed away.

There was no way of knowing if they were Priscilla’s. But it was enough for Monty to throw a whole lot of time and resources into seeing what she could dig up.

And late last night, surrounded by Monty’s old maps and scrawled notes—many on wrinkled envelopes and takeout menus—I finally realized the likely route Jensen’s team was taking.

They were circling closer and closer to Haven’s Bluff by eliminating every nearby spot already known to be a bust through gossip and word of mouth.

If Monty was right, and Jensen had been planning this for years, part of his strategy seemed to be revisiting every place where a clue could have been missed.

The abandoned Kept King mine still bothered Monty, too. Based on her notes and the corresponding dates in her journals, this was right around the time she and Ruby had begun the process of separating.

And right after I’d realized Jensen’s route, I’d come across journal entries I’d never read before, from Monty and Ruby’s time digging at Kept King.

Her emotional state was more obvious here, her handwriting a little shaky and thoughts left unfinished.

A piece of notebook paper had fallen out from these pages, and scrawled across it were the words: The diamonds found by that local in the eighties has to be important, right?

? No treasure hunter’s dug up jewels in New Mexico before that or since…

Ruby says I’ve been distracted out here at the mine. Hell, maybe I have been… She’s been distracted too, not that she’ll admit it.

After that, a paragraph crossed out, then in different-colored pen: What if those few diamonds were it? What if that’s all we ever get of Priscilla—a cluster of dusty jewels that some guy already pawned decades ago? Her whole life, reduced down to a transaction?

And on the very bottom, in thick black marker, she’d scribbled: Feels like we missed something out here that’s right in front of us.

The grief and distress seared into my aunt’s words had brought tears to my eyes.

Made me wanna travel back in time and hold her close.

Tell her what she’d always told me during my darkest moments—that no failure was ever truly the end.

That she was doing her best as her marriage fell apart around her.

Except Monty was hiding from me right now and clearly keeping her own secrets. So all I could do was take that same urgency and see if I could find something out there that they’d missed.

I rounded the back of my car and opened the driver’s side door. Just as I was about to hop in, another car squealed into the parking lot, braking to a hard stop right next to me.

The last person I expected to see was Harper, jumping out with a relieved look on her face and her beautiful hair, free from its bun, wild and windblown.

It was almost too much for me to take in—how gorgeous she looked, makeup-less, in yoga pants and an oversize, faded T-shirt.

The kind of outfit she might wear while lounging around on my couch, reading a book, with her feet on my lap.

Then I remembered our last conversation. How pissed I still was to realize that Harper was willing to trade in my aunt’s hard-won privacy to advance her career. How fucking typical of every reporter I’d ever—

“I can see you getting mad at me, Eve,” Harper said breathlessly. “But before you say anything, and before you leave, I need you to know…I’m here to make amends. And propose a truce. If you’ll have me, that is.”

I cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “There’s nothing you can say to change my mind. We’ve said all that needs to be said, haven’t we?”

Harper beamed then—there was no other way to describe it, and no other way to describe the cozy warmth that flooded my body at the sight of it.

“We haven’t, though, that’s the thing,” she said, coming around to stand next to me. “Because I found the missing piece. The piece that changes everything. And if I’m right, it ties all of it together.”

“But Monty’s still a hard no ,” I pointed out. “There’s no missing piece there.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to write a story about your aunt. Technically my editor doesn’t know this yet, and there’s a teeny-tiny chance I could get in major trouble, but you were right, Eve.”

I was having a hard time keeping up. “Right about what?”

Harper stepped closer, still smiling as strands of her hair whipped around her face.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, about the implications of disrupting her privacy.

Of what could happen afterward, the harm and the hatred.

It was wrong of me to try and force my way in when everything you’ve told me about your aunt makes it clear that she’s a woman who knows herself well and doesn’t change her mind easily. ”

I shifted against the door, studying the purple circles under her eyes, the marks on her bottom lip from where she’d been biting it. Of the many things Harper could have said, the last thing I’d ever expect to hear were the words “you were right.”

“Thank you…for listening,” I managed to say. “And for… And for respecting her. I know what you’re giving up to do so.” I raked a hand through my curls. “For the record, I don’t think you’re a bad person for needing stability in your life. Famous or not, your dad sounds like he was an asshole.”

“Oh…it’s whatever,” she said, looking embarrassed.

“It’s more than whatever ,” I said firmly. “It sounds like it was pretty bad for you at home.”

Yet another thing that had rattled around my frazzled brain in between lusty fantasies and treasure-hunting drama: cringing every time I remembered Harper’s burst of vulnerability about her dad and the way I’d sidestepped it like it was radioactive.

Her throat worked as she swallowed. “It was bad. Really bad. Thank you, I uh… Well, listen, I didn’t break the speed limit to rehash Bruce Sullivan’s worst traits as a father.

Trust me, we’d be here all day.” Harper laughed nervously while my stomach twisted in sympathy.

“I broke the speed limit because I figured out what was missing from the article I’m actually writing.

About Priscilla Blackburn…and Adeline Grant. ”

My heart froze in my chest. Before I could say a word, Harper was holding out her phone, where a blurry, black-and-white picture filled up the screen. I’d know those women anywhere, the mystery that had dominated most of Monty’s life and so much of mine.

The secretly queer relationship we’d always believed was our family legacy.

But I’d never seen whatever this picture was, the two of them in some drawing room. This further proof of their existence—no matter how banal—sent a surge of adrenaline through me.

We could have uncovered the rarest jewels from that Spanish warship we found and none of it would ever matter as much as this does to me.

“Hendrix…where did you get this?” I asked shakily.

“My fact checker, Kristi,” she said. “I told you…I’ve got resources. She’s one of them.”

Nodding, I cocked my head at the car. “I need to tell you something. Hop in. I’m on my way to look for the diamonds out at the Kept King mine, and I’m trying to stay ahead of the storm. And Jensen.”

But Harper remained still, eyes wary behind her glasses, chewing on her lip again.

I cracked a smile. “You’ve been begging me to partner up on this all week. And now you’re skittish?”

“I’m suspicious, not skittish,” she said flatly. “You’re keeping secrets, I can tell. I just dropped what should have been a total bombshell about Adeline Grant, and you didn’t even blink. What aren’t you telling me?”

I held her gaze as the wind rushed around us, tugging on my clothing and the strands of Harper’s hair.

There was no going back after this. I’d be divulging a secret Monty had entrusted to me and me alone.

But if Harper was telling the truth about the story she actually wanted to tell, that meant she had the power to change the narrative around Priscilla—who we’d always believed was the hero. Not the villain.

I turned around and dug back through Monty’s pile of notes, until I pulled out a manila envelope that contained some digital photos. Sifting through until I found the best one, I handed it over to Harper.

Her eyes widened immediately.

“This is the locket that Waylon Boyle pawned to Nadine, who in turn sold it to Monty. Priscilla Blackburn’s locket. Though when she got home and examined it more closely, she realized that the picture of William was a decoy. Beneath it is a picture of—”

“Adeline Grant,” Harper breathed. “Eve…that’s Adeline .”

“It is,” I said. “And there’s more.”

Harper peered up at me, the reporter I was about to divulge my most precious secret to. But the hunger in her eyes didn’t feel manipulative.

She looked as hungry for the truth as I felt.

“Priscilla Blackburn is my aunt,” I said. “And Monty’s, too. She’s our great-great-times-four relative. Per my family, per Monty…the missing Blackburn Diamonds have always been ours.”