Page 6

Eve

Hotter Lois Lane

My headlights bounced off the metal sign posted at the trailhead, glowing ominously in the dark: Please stay on the trail and be aware of sheer drop-offs .

On any other day, this was the kind of warning that thrilled me.

Moving to Santa Fe with Monty all those years ago had activated every memory of the kid I’d once been—a dirt-stained menace, all skinned knees and endless curiosity for the world around me.

New Mexico’s expansive beauty and bright blue skies had unlocked that deep, unquenchable curiosity again, had unlocked the person I’d been before my parents forced me into a tiny box made up entirely of other people’s expectations.

But I wasn’t here for a leisurely night hike.

I was here because I was freaking the fuck out.

After Harper stormed off yesterday, I’d frantically scanned the same forums she’d been boasting about, searching for the surprising news about Jensen’s team that had sent an unpleasant shockwave through my bones.

Every word out of her lush, berry-red mouth might have been aggravating, but—as I learned within minutes—she hadn’t been lying.

I didn’t know Jensen well, but he’d run in the same treasure-hunting circles as Monty back in the day.

And I’d had no idea he was going after the diamonds.

Which meant the hunt for the Blackburn Diamonds was officially on , and I’d existed on the outskirts of the local community long enough to know that people would soon be crossing state lines to get here.

I still didn’t know where Monty was, but she sure as hell needed to know this extremely alarming news.

I put my car in park and flicked on the overhead light, snatching up the map of Monty’s I’d brought along tonight for reassurance.

Half a mile in on the trail was a scribbled red circle indicating a potential location of the diamonds.

Scrawled over it, in her trademark blocky letters, was the word BUST .

And a journal entry from the week they’d spent here digging: Seven days of hard work with nothin’ to show for it.

Doesn’t help that Ruby and I argued for most of it.

It’s just that Priscilla Blackburn’s been renting a room in my heart for damn near half my life—but now every time I think we’ve found her, we’re comin’ up empty.

My chest ached at this rare glimpse of her pessimism, but I didn’t doubt that hard work she’d mentioned.

It was why I’d hauled myself all the way out here, to see the dig in person, hoping to glean some tidbit of information I was clearly missing. There was just no way Jensen had uncovered something after Monty and Ruby had so expertly torn this place apart.

Right?

My phone buzzed with an incoming call. I propped it between my ear and shoulder while my eyes stayed glued to the map.

“How’s it going at the shop?” I asked Cleo, by way of a greeting.

“Splendidly,” she replied. “Now why don’t you follow my advice from earlier and hang with me here, instead of traipsing around cougar country in the dark?”

“No can do,” I said, refolding the map and shoving it back into my pack. “I need to figure out what Monty and Ruby might have missed.” I peered through the windshield, out into the night, and thought I saw movement off to the side. “Cougars are the least of my worries.”

“Maybe Hot Lois Lane could help you,” Cleo said.

“Uhhh who ?”

“Harper Hendrix? The reporter babe with the glasses?”

“But Lois Lane was hot,” I said without thinking.

“Right, so like… hotter . Hotter Lois Lane.”

A warm flush worked its way down the entire length of my body.

A traitorous response if there ever was one, but I hadn’t been able to shake our interaction from yesterday, the look of Harper pressed up against the door in front of me.

Defiant and a little mouthy, her storm-blue eyes blazing with irritation.

And much, much too pretty. She’d shown up to challenge me with glossy lips and a pencil skirt that clung to her curvy hips.

When she’d slid away to leave, I’d almost given in to the wild, desperate urge to grab her wrist. Pull her back.

Breathe her in. Yank down that perfect bun and bury my face in all that dark hair.

“Ahhh, I see,” I managed to say. “You’ve got a crush on the woman hell-bent on fucking with me right now.”

“More like you have a crush,” Cleo teased. “I was there when you met. Watched you trip all over yourself, trying to flirt with her.”

“I’m committed to providing excellent customer service.” Shutting off my car, I swung the door open to stand. “Oh, fuck me .”

“What, what happened?” Cleo asked.

The movement I’d seen had unfurled fully in the dark, becoming the outline of a person with a high bun and a bunch of what I already knew to be pencils flaring out, looking eerily similar to the metallic starburst in the middle of that mahogany bar we’d rescued.

My stomach dropped. “Hotter Lois Lane is here,” I hissed. “How in the hell—”

“ Oooh boy, have fun,” Cleo said. “I’ll be here late if you want to swing by and tell me how your date went.”

“This is the farthest thing from a… Hello? Cleo? ”

With an annoyed grumble in my throat, I shut the car door and prowled along the dirt path toward my current tormentor, clicking on my flashlight.

Harper stood by a tree, now slightly more visible, and I had the distinct pleasure of seeing the exact moment when she realized it was me.

Her eyes widened, then narrowed sharply behind her glasses, her gaze sweeping me from head to toe.

“Fancy seeing you here, Hendrix,” I drawled. “I thought the next time I saw you, you were gonna be, what was it… swimming in buried treasure?”

Two spots of red appeared on her cheeks. She wore an oversize, long-sleeve T-shirt over black bike shorts and a pair of hiking sandals that looked like they’d never been worn before today. I valiantly ignored the look of her thighs in those shorts, as well as the delicate dip of her collarbone.

“Oh, ha ha ,” she scoffed. “I obviously didn’t mean I’d be recovering the treasure a mere twenty-four hours later.”

I shrugged. “Sure sounded like you did.”

She waved her hand between us, indicating my flashlight and pack. “For someone who literally couldn’t care less, you certainly look like you’re about to embark on a treasure hunt.”

I forced a smile. “Maybe I like night hiking.”

“At this creepy desert murder spot?”

I waved the flashlight up toward the sky. “This is one of the best places to see the Milky Way outside of Santa Fe. Probably wouldn’t hurt to look up at the stars every once in a while, you know? Not everything’s about the job.”

She blinked, and for a moment I almost thought she looked hurt. “Must be nice not to have to worry about something as insignificant as paying your bills.”

“The opposite, actually,” I said, with more emotion than I intended. “I worry about everything. Constantly. But the stars help.”

This time I couldn’t decipher her expression at all—confused, maybe? Whatever it was, it didn’t last. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “Why are you out here tonight?”

“Hendrix,” I started, then sighed, already shaking my head.

“Why are you out here?” Harper repeated, stepping closer to me in the dark. It was the worst time to notice that her lips were free of makeup, and something about the vulnerability of her bare skin sent a shiver down my spine.

She cocked her head to the side when I didn’t answer.

“Okay, I’ll go first. I’m here because this is where that guy Jensen talked about digging for the diamonds, and I wanted to see it for myself, try to understand his reasoning.

He’s ignored all of my messages and won’t return my calls, so I figured I’d go straight to the source.

” Her gaze swept the length of my body for a second time, but it felt more dismissive than anything else.

“But if I’d known you were going to follow me, I wouldn’t have come. Technically, you’re my competition.”

My lips twitched. “I live here, could walk the entirety of this park in my sleep if I had to. If anyone followed me to this extremely specific location”—I leaned in another inch—“it’s you.”

Harper shot me a scowl, then pushed past me on the trail, her shoulder brushing my arm as she stomped off. “As if I would. Don’t flatter yourself, Eve,” she called back. “No need to follow me again, by the way. I’m good.”

“Except you’re going the wrong way.”

I heard her sandals stop abruptly on the dirt. When she flounced back to my side, she said, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “Guess we’re going night hiking, then.”

“Guess we are.”

I raked a hand through my hair and set off down the trail, suddenly anxious to get this over and done with.

As fun as it was, briefly— very briefly—to rile up the woman next to me, she’d backed me into a corner and knew it.

Time was of the essence here, and while having her inadvertently tag along was an annoying distraction, at most she’d be seeing a big, empty hole filled with nothing and lacking any of the vital historical context to understand it.

It was every other secret I was keeping from Harper that felt much too precious to divulge.

I made quick time on the trail, with Harper right behind me. Owls hooted in the distance, and the sound of bat’s wings rustled as they darted over our heads. My flashlight beam bounced off thick roots and rocks, occasionally blending with slivers of silvery moonlight.

At the fifth fork, I turned left and followed a worn footpath down a steep incline covered in scraggly bush.

Harper scrabbled behind me, sending tiny stones skittering past us.

At the entrance to the site, I slid a leg over a jagged boulder.

Then peered down into the deep pit I already suspected would be there.

There were lanterns strewn about, a few still shedding feeble light.

Which meant they were probably coming back in the morning.

I heard the hitch in Harper’s breath. Felt her body heat when she crouched down next to me. “They weren’t lying,” she whispered. “Do you think they found them?”

“I think they’re fucking idiots,” I said, though my stomach still clenched at the possibility. “As you can see, they’re not exactly experts in subtlety.”

A line formed between her eyebrows. “Then why do it?”

“Honestly?” I leaned back on the rock, uneasy. “I don’t know.”

This kind of carelessness was concerning. They clearly hadn’t recovered anything. We would have heard by now. But why else would they be acting this confidently?

Unless Monty and Ruby had missed something here.

When I turned my head, Harper’s face was much too close to mine in the darkness. My stomach flipped over, and I heard her swallow, watched her eyelashes flutter.

“Eve,” she whispered, her voice stripped of argument, “you’re going after the diamonds, too, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here tonight.”

I sent her a look. “You already know that I am.”

I expected her to gloat, to launch right back into another circular argument with me. Instead, she said simply: “Then take me with you.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “What happened to being competitors?”

“This could be an amazing story,” she said, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “It could be about you and Monty, your relationship, about second chances and coming out of hiding and—”

“Not a chance in hell.” I swung my other leg around and slid down to the flat dirt surrounding the pit. “This is literally all that you’re getting from me, Hendrix. This night hike through a ‘creepy desert murder spot’ is your one freebie. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

I toed at one of the lamps, directing my flashlight farther into the hole. Followed the curve up, toward a small cave that matched both my memory and the map description. Harper tumbled down behind me a second later, and I didn’t have to turn around to know she was pissed.

“I’m not your enemy here,” she pressed. “I could be your partner. It’s a genuine offer.”

I walked a slow circle around the pit, trying my best to ignore Harper and concentrate on what I was missing. But she was much too angry and much too beautiful, and it was like trying to ignore the sun.

“Except I have no legitimate reason to trust your intentions and absolutely nothing to gain from you telling a story about me, my family, or the missing fortune. It’s all professional benefit for you, invasion of privacy for me.

” I pointed the flashlight in her direction, pinning her to the spot.

“Not to mention that anything you write about me would just point a giant red arrow in the sky, saying ‘hey look here’ to anyone with a shovel and a metal detector.”

She propped her hands on her hips and shrugged. “After everything that happened to Monty, after La Venganza , doesn’t…doesn’t your aunt want to tell her side of the story?”

My throat tightened, and it was suddenly hard to hold her gaze. “The media is responsible for what happened to her. Reporters, Hendrix. Just like you. So the answer is no .”

She released a noisy breath, tapping her foot against the ground. “Then I guess…I guess we’re going to stay competitors.”

I kicked a rock into the pit, listened to it bounce against the side. “Sure. Whatever. If you think you’ve got the skills to solve a mystery that I’ve been working on for years.”

Harper perked up at that, as obvious as a hawk scenting a mouse on the wind. I snapped my mouth shut. This was why I need to stop indulging whatever this newfound urge was to bait and bicker with this woman.

The longer I did it, the easier it was to admit things that I shouldn’t.

A twig snapped sharply from above our heads, followed by the sound of boots crunching on the trail, some muffled voices. It had to be Jensen and his crew—back already?

Harper went rigid next to me.

Then she snagged my wrist, ducked her head, and yanked me into the small cave.