“How long would it be?” Walt asked. “Out and back?”
Lily studied the hand-drawn map, blood pounding in her ears as she nervously tapped a finger against her leg. “If we’re riding to the Maze and then going by foot? Three days? Maybe four. But this is really treacherous country. It’s not family fun or tourist friendly. You need a permit with your itinerary so they can find your body if you don’t come back. We’d need to stop and get supplies.”
“If you’re leading us, we can do anything,” Bradley crowed, confidence booming. “We’ll just call the police on the other side. With the money. You’re in, right, buddy?” He looked over at Walter.
After a beat of hesitation, Walter nodded. “This is my do-over, remember?” He looked at Leo meaningfully. “All of ours. When will we ever have a chance like this again?”
“It’s not like taking an afternoon hike, Walter,” Lily said. “It’s dangerous. What we’ve done is the easy part.”
“That was easy?” he said.
Lily met his eyes. “That was nothing.”
The fire crackling was the only sound.
She expected someone to push again. She did not expect the words that rose out of the darkness to be Leo’s: “But do you think we could do it?”
“Leo. Are you telling me you actually want to do this?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he admitted. “But that riddle feels like something, Lil. I know you feel it, too.” She blinked away, running a hand down over the goose bumps on her arm. Lil. No one had called her that in years.
And he was right; she did feel something deep in her gut that told her not to ignore this. Leo pushed on: “I know we all thought he was an asshole, but Terry believed it enough to bring a gun. To take Nicole hostage. Was he going to shoot us? Was he going to make Nicole take him down into the canyon?”
“Don’t forget the zip ties,” Bradley said. “You don’t bring zip ties to fight bobcats and cougars.”
Leo walked around the fire to kneel in front of her. He put his hand on the journal. “Terry needed what was in here. And you have it.”
There was an ember of hope flickering faintly beneath her ribs; he stoked it with the unexpected hunger in his expression. What did he want her to say right now? It all felt like too much to process at once. Terry’s death aside… she felt in her bones that the riddle was more than just a game.
And yet Duke hadn’t given this diary to her. He hadn’t told her he’d found the treasure, either. He was fine selling her favorite place in the world, leaving her poor and alone. She was tired of her life being decided by Duke Wilder.
Still. Was it worth just… looking?
“Walt and I are with Nicole,” Bradley said. “We’re in.”
“I’m with Dub,” Nicole clarified. “I’m with whatever she says. We’re a team.” After a beat, she added, “I mean, I do think there’s a way to go ahead with the riddle and also not get into trouble about Terry.”
Bradley turned to Leo. “What do you think, man?”
Leo was still crouched in front of her, but his gaze dropped to the dirt at their feet. The fire licked shadows across his face, setting the angles of his jaw and cheekbones aglow. After a moment he lifted his chin to meet her eyes again. “I’ll do whatever Lily says.”
Lily tried to kick down the tiny spark in her chest. She looked at the map again, and the words in Duke’s handwriting.
The answer is yes.
“We’ll sleep on it,” she said. “We can’t do anything until the morning anyway.”
Chapter Thirteen
LEO WASN’T SURE how he managed to sleep as hard as he did, but he woke on their fifth morning in the desert with a shoulder so stiff it suggested he’d barely moved all night. He didn’t remember dreaming, didn’t remember a single second of consciousness between when he’d closed his dry, exhausted eyes and now. Grateful, given the alternative, he pushed up onto an elbow, clearing the sleep from his vision. With a spike through his gut, it all came tumbling back: the bewildering discovery of the gun, the view of Terry slipping over the lip of the canyon, the map suggesting there might be real treasure out here.
He wondered whether Lily’d gotten any sleep at all.
There’d been no animal sounds the night before, no creatures rustling around the camp. No birdsong greeted the day now. It was just after five thirty, and through the soft gray tent walls he could tell that the sky was the deep-sea blue of a morning still considering daylight.