Page 8

Harper

Nine days left to find Monty Montana, write this article, and also, apparently, find buried treasure??

The ghost town of Devil’s Kiln was just half an hour from Santa Fe.

The low shape of the foothills grew menacing as the sun dropped, all the shades of brown and red turning sapphire in the twilight.

The adobe houses with wooden doors slowly disappeared, until I was driving down an empty highway.

My headlights traced the curving yellow lines as I wound past strange rock formations and fields of scraggly brush.

I passed a wooden sign that read Ghost Tours of Devil’s Kiln — Next Right (if you dare!).

My hands tightened on the steering wheel as my stomach dropped. There was no getting around the fact that I needed to meet this next contact.

I just hated admitting—to myself and others—that I was almost thirty years old and still afraid of ghosts.

Even obvious tourist attractions like the one I was about to drive into.

It didn’t matter if the vibes were, “It’s all fake, we’re just here to make money.

” It was a fear I couldn’t shake. In daylight or not, in sunny weather or thunderstorms, alone or with friends.

My mom had loved scary movies of every flavor, and the night before she died, Daphne and I had watched some ghostly flick with her that had given me actual nightmares. I’d tossed and turned for hours, but had felt too embarrassed—at the ripe old age of fifteen—to run into my parents’ bedroom.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since she passed away in her sleep from an undiagnosed heart condition.

The ambulance was already on its way by the time Daphne and I had stumbled out of bed that morning and wondered why Dad was standing in the hallway with an expression of such anguish my blood had run cold.

Years of grief therapy helped me understand my emotional association between my mother’s early death and the spirits that haunt us from beyond the grave.

It didn’t take much analysis to get it, but sharing this fear with anyone besides Daphne made me feel fragile and much too sensitive, like some Victorian widow fainting during a seance.

I turned right and drove slowly around the potholes dotting the road. I might have felt a little more emotionally resilient if I’d slept last night, instead of doing what I’d actually done. Which was conducting imaginary arguments with Eve Bardot in my head, making sure I won every time.

You’re just some stranger who blew into town with a deadline. And the sheer volume of information you don’t know about this situation is laughable.

My phone rang, and I sent it to my car speakers. My fact checker’s voice crackled through.

“Hey, it’s Kristi,” she said. “How’s life on the road?”

I forced a wide smile, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “When I get back to Brooklyn, I’m never leaving my apartment again.”

“Rough, huh?”

I passed a sign that said Warning: Ghost Crossing and immediately hit a pothole. “Just different,” I said through gritted teeth. “Much less routine than I would prefer.”

“It’s been anarchy with the office supplies since you’ve been gone,” she said. “The Post-it notes aren’t stored by color, and the pen supply has gone rogue.”

I shook my head. “Fucking monsters.”

Kristi laughed, but she was one of just a few staff members who appreciated my intense and lifelong dedication to staying organized. But nothing quieted the chaos in my brain like the sight of a clean desk and a to-do list with every item neatly checked off.

Which made this treasure-hunting-themed work trip especially hellish.

“I’ve been poking around any other records of residence for Loretta-Mae Montana, and nothing’s popping up. Just her house in Taos you already visited.”

“And the neighbors told me it’s being rented out,” I murmured.

“That tracks, but I’ll keep looking,” she said.

“And I’ve been gathering extra background information on William and Priscilla Blackburn.

You know, before she disappeared with the diamonds, he was despised by the public.

Wealthy men in that era were often torn apart in the newspapers and political cartoons, and William was no exception.

Especially since he wasn’t a fan of workers’ rights or their safety. ”

My tires crunched over gravel as I approached the parking lot. “So what happened after his wife disappeared?”

“His public persona improved. Her disappearance was such a high-profile story at that time. A grieving husband, a pretty wife with secrets, scandalous marital rumors.” Kristi’s fingers clacked on her mechanical keyboard in the background.

“Priscilla was portrayed as the villain, of course, and William the victim. He even got a few political appointments in the years after.”

I slowed the car to a stop beneath a dimly lit streetlight, turning over this new information. “He sounds horrible, but I can’t say I’m surprised that he came out of it on top.”

“You haven’t heard the worst of it,” she continued.

“I got sucked down a Reddit rabbit hole today about Priscilla Blackburn. There’s a long-standing theory that she never left or stole the diamonds but was murdered by William because he found out she was cheating on him.

The ‘missing diamonds’ angle was nothing but a cover-up. ”

I was already shaking my head before she even finished. “That would mean every treasure hunter I’ve been talking to out here has been chasing a dead end for decades.”

“Don’t you think that’s slightly more realistic than believing this woman actually pulled off a diamond heist, then disappeared without a trace?”

Reaching across the console, I pulled out my notebook, flipping open to what I’d scribbled after several conversations I’d had today.

“I get the reasoning, I do,” I admitted.

“But it doesn’t explain the existence of Priscilla’s locket, allegedly recovered in this area.

Plus there are people I spoke to on X Marks the Spot today who showed me old newspaper clippings, eyewitness accounts of seeing Priscilla Blackburn get off the train in Haven’s Bluff, a small town about an hour north of here.

The same town where they found her locket. ”

“Hmmmm,” Kristi hummed under her breath. “Not to be all ‘fact-check-y’ about this, but they could easily be fakes. Same as the locket. Can you send them to me for verification?”

“Already on the way,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. I was a trained journalist. I already knew there were major holes in this story.

Didn’t stop me from wincing in disappointment at everything she poked at.

Seeking out this missing fortune was only supposed to be my way of finding Monty, of strategically hunting the treasure hunter.

But I was starting to grow unprofessionally attached to the idea of Priscilla Blackburn stealing from her shitty husband and making a break for it.

The kind of professional error my father just loved to point out in my work when he spotted it.

“I also learned that the general store in Haven’s Bluff kept a log of visitors to help identify people looking for family members who’d traveled through on the railroad.

Local historians found the preserved logs from 1900…

A few weeks after Priscilla disappeared, her name shows up on that sheet,” I said, a newly learned detail that gave me goose bumps when I’d read it this morning.

“Send me images of the logs, too… but …”

“ Kristi .” I laughed, letting my head fall back against the seat. “Don’t say it.”

“Something like that is easily forged, Harper,” she said, a teasing warmth in her voice. “And I know you know that.”

I stared out past the asphalt I was parked on, into a wide field, pale and misty in the moonlight. Thought about that famous picture of Monty, posing victoriously with her wife. Thought about Priscilla, dreaming at night about her great escape to the West.

A shiver passed through me, more from anticipation than fear this time. Whatever defiant little seeds were taking root in my heart had responded to these new clues today, unfurling at the notion of Priscilla, out here, fleeing down the train platform toward her freedom.

Basically the exact opposite of the neat and tidy to-do lists I used to keep control of my life back home.

“There’s something about this story, Kristi,” I murmured. “It’s different. I can feel it in my gut.”

A long pause, then she said: “I get it. Send whatever you’ve got, and I’ll see what I can verify. Even if that means spending the next few days on true crime Reddit threads.”

“We don’t deserve you,” I said with a smile before hanging up.

Then I stashed my phone and notebook in my bag and stepped out into the swirling mist. My contact for tonight, Waylon Boyle, was the local who’d pawned Priscilla’s locket to Nadine.

She’d kept that information from me originally, but luckily I had a few extra autographed items from my father to use as an additional bribe.

Waylon was also the most sought-after ghost tour operator in the area and had a lifelong love for Devil’s Kiln specifically. Per his instructions, he was waiting for me in the last building on the left.

“Guess I’ll just wander through this ghost town filled with hungry and vengeful spirits all on my own,” I muttered to myself, straightening my glasses and shoving a pen through my bun.

Then I carefully made my way down the narrow, dusty street. The mist swirled around my ankles the farther I walked, past boarded-up buildings that sat silent as a graveyard. There was a car parked at the far end of the street, and I assumed it was probably Waylon’s.

Until I got closer and realized it was a cherry-red, 1967 Ford Mustang, looking seductively lethal beneath the moonlight.