by E. M. Moore
“We honestly didn’t think it would resort to any type of fighting whatsoever,” Lucas clarifies. “Stone was just going to search the office. We only took Cole and the Dragons as a precaution.”
I keep glancing at Stone. I don’t like his pallor, and my heart is dislodging my anger at this point. I finally relent and lean into him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he mumbles, avoiding my gaze.
“I’m fine, too. Thanks for asking, though I kind of hate you right now.”
“Lies,” he murmurs, his gray-blue eyes finally meeting my stare. “You don’t hate me.”
He’s so right about that. There’s no way I could hate him. “That doesn’t mean I like you at the present moment.”
“I gotta know…,” Wyatt starts, and from the tone of his voice, I know he’s about to say something ridiculous, “How did Lucas get his dick sucked but Stone took a bullet for your family’s stuff, and he hasn’t?”
“It was a graze,” I mimic. “Talk to me when he actually gets hit.”
“Harsh,” Wyatt quips.
Stone ignores the bantering, but I lean into it. Wyatt has a way of normalizing things. I’m still pissed beyond belief that they would come up with a plan to recover the ring and not tell me about it. I don’t care if they didn’t want me to worry. There may be a double standard in there somewhere since I also left Wyatt and Stone to confront Lance but, in these cases, a short memory is pardonable.
We’re all on edge.
Stone tangles his fingers with mine. “We need the piece of gold to confirm that your family’s vein matches whatever vein we find. It’s as important as the ring.”
“Once we find the treasure, we’ll know we’re in the right mining cave,” I tell him, trying to prove that we don’t need to take that many risks.
“We don’t know how many caves there are. What if there are several different tunnels? The mountains are filled with old shafts. It would be a lot easier to identify the right site if we could take core samples and match them up with the nugget. Since we’re going back into the mountains soon, hopefully to find the cave, I… it just felt really important to have that piece of gold, and now we don’t. My father does.”
I shrug because I get it. I fucking do, but I don’t think risking our lives to try to get that stuff is worth it. I have faith that one day it will be in my possession again, but until then, the treasure is the priority. “Are you even able to search with us now?” I ask, not liking the bright red on his bandage, but also realizing it’s pretty much dry. There’s no new blood, at least.
“It’s barely a scratch,” Stone remarks, giving the bandage a cursory once-over.
“He just wanted to be cool and have scars like us,” Wyatt playfully scoffs.
I bite my lip. He’s right, and I hadn’t thought about that. Each of them is now boasting scars because of this hunt. Wyatt’s knife wound. Lucas’s neck. Now Stone’s arm. “If you ask me, he got off too easy.”
Stone lifts his hand to flip his friend off.
“Plus, he’s now going to get all the attention instead of me,” Lucas teases.
“Yeah, I’m with Tits. We should hate him.”
I flick my gaze to the cowboy. “Your humor isn’t going to make me forget this happened, you know that, right?”
He shrugs. “It was worth a shot.”
“Try feeding her,” Lucas suggests. “She likes that.”
I scowl at him. “Just fuck you all.”
Wyatt places his hands on the top of his jeans. “If you’re offering….”
I shake my head and lean back on Stone’s legs. He shifts so I’m lying against his chest with his arms wrapped around my waist, holding me there. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. “Getting back your things is important to me.”
I pat his leg. “We’ll figure out a way.”
We stay there for hours. Having them next to me—talking treasure, Wyatt cooking in the kitchen—is what my dreams are now made of. Half the fun of having a treasure to find is searching for it. I lose sight of that sometimes with everything else that has happened and with the added pressure of needing to recover it before Lance. But, I could be happy just searching with them. After all, what’s life without hopes and dreams?
21
The next day, we’re back at it. Stone’s fine; I made him show me his arm before we left early this morning, and it really is only a scratch. Cole thinks it was a warning shot. A bullet meant to ward them off. It’s all just speculation though.
Cole informed us this morning that he’s close to tracking down the identity of the team Lance hired. If they can graze Stone’s arm like that, I have no doubt they’re the professionals we always believed they were.
Ninja and the new guard, whose name is Pete, sit under an overhang in the shade as Lucas, Wyatt, Stone, and I walk up the pass between the two rock faces. We brought rock climbing gear with us, but right now, we’re taking turns using binoculars to search out any caves.
“We have to remember, too, that whoever deposited the treasure had to get it up there.” If that’s where it really is…. I frown at the sheer height and incredible feat that would’ve been.
“The thing is,” Stone starts, peering through the binoculars. “We don’t know what they used to get up there. They could’ve built something like scaffolding or some other contraption. Do you remember that article from the paper a few years ago about the wooden ladder they found near the lake? Everyone thought they’d finally found it.”
I almost roll my eyes. Not everyone believed they did. Dad and I laughed our asses off when the article came out. “Yeah, I remember. The ladder itself was impressive. Dad and I have been all through here, though, and never found any climbing tools.”
Wyatt practically snorts. “Of course not. If you were going to hide gold and jewels, why would you leave a ladder leading up to the cave?”
“Or a gold vein,” I add, laughing right alongside him. Even if—and it’s a very big if—the men who hid the cache left a ladder or scaffolding, my ancestor would’ve dismantled it as soon as he found his vein. He wouldn’t have left any clue as to where his claim was—or the treasure.
“Let’s pretend we’re Maria Luisa’s men,” Lucas proposes, shielding his eyes from the sun as he stares upward. It’s unseasonably hot today, and the collar of his shirt is damp with sweat. “The area is flooding, and they have to get the horde somewhere safe, so they bring it up into the mountains.”
“They’re in a foreign territory,” I add. “They wouldn’t have understood anything about this area. They just kept climbing to get away from the water.”
“Exactly,” Wyatt agrees. “And they needed a place to dump it safely, then return later so they all didn’t get hanged for losing the treasure.”
“They didn’t get hanged,” I protest.
Wyatt laughs. “Of course they did. When the history books say no one knows what happened to this set of people or that set of people, you can guarantee they met with a bad end. Especially people who lose a treasure. Can you imagine? Of course they got their heads chopped off or something equally gruesome.”
“I wouldn’t have returned,” Stone claims, finally passing the binoculars to Lucas.
“Maybe they didn’t.” Wyatt suggests. “They knew what was awaiting them.”
“Then why didn’t they stay here, come back for the jewels, and use it for themselves?” I offer.
“It would’ve been pretty obvious what they were doing when they tried trading tiaras and precious gems. It’s not like they were inconspicuous items.”
He has a point there. Wyatt winks at me, then inspects the cliff face. He might be the most changed from when we first met. This morning, he wrapped me up in a hug so tight he almost broke my ribs. Instead of shying away from intimate moments, now he gravitates toward them. He’s fully accepted me into this group, even though he’s only ever trusted the two men next to us. After what happened between his mother and father, I can’t blame him. That’s why
he doesn’t approve of Cole in my life yet. Cole represents the things his mother did. Cole’s the guy you hire to kill your husband for money, and for Wyatt, being associated with someone like him isn’t acceptable.
I reach out, closing my hand around his. He squeezes me back, wrinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes as he smiles. “What would you do if we found the treasure?” I ask him.
He turns toward me, blue eyes blazing in the brightness of the sun like icy diamonds. “This is the Dakota and Stone show. I’m just here to help.” I tilt my head at him, and his face softens. “The only thing I want is my ranch.” He glances away, but not before I see the worry lines return to his face. “Too bad it’s tainted.”
“If you don’t want to start that one up again, you could start another one,” I offer.
He shakes his head, sighing. “You’re too much like Stone. I’m pretty sure he’s told me the same thing about a hundred times.”
“So? What would you do?” I press.
He rubs the back of his neck. Stone and Lucas slow as if they want to hear his answer as much as I do. “I don’t know,” he muses. “I’ve actually been thinking lately that I’d like to go back there. Try it out.” He bites his lip, peering at me with the most vulnerable eyes I’ve ever seen. “I want to show you where I grew up. Show you my horses. Since I saw you on that other ranch, I’ve had a picture of you in the big ol’ open space of my family’s land.”
I tug on his arm to bring him to a stop. “I’d like that.” My stomach squeezes as two red blotches appear on Wyatt’s cheeks. My masculine cowboy sharing his feelings makes the lasso he has around my heart pull tight. I chuckle. “I don’t know anything about running a ranch, but I’ll try.”
“Told you,” Stone teases, the corner of his lip quirking up.
“What would you do, then?” Wyatt quizzes his friend, playfully shoving him in the shoulder.
Stone shrugs. “The only thing I want is to be next to people who care about me. I’ve spent too much of my life trying like hell to win affection. It would be nice to just enjoy love without having to try so damn hard to win it.”
Wyatt’s eyes widen as if he wasn’t expecting Stone to get so deep, and he claps his friend on the back a couple of times.
“You thought you could win your dad over with the treasure, huh?” I inquire, realizing how much Stone worked before we teamed up.
He nods. “It’s funny. I tried so hard to find it because that’s what he wanted, but now I want to find it before him. Don’t get me wrong, I was always intrigued by it, but I had other motivations.”
We’re a fucked-up group. Even with my life’s story—a father who isn’t actually my father—I don’t have the craziest tale of us all. Deep down, I think Clark Wilder did love me. I’m not sure about Lance loving Stone, though. It seems like the only reason he had him was so he could raise a miniature version of himself.
“Lucas?” Stone prods. “Your turn.”
Lucas starts walking again. “Whatever makes Dakota happy.”
“You must want something,” I encourage, catching up with him. “Anything?”
He stops and studies the ground when my hand grips his forearm. “I already have the family I’ve always wanted.”
His admission hits me like a ton of bricks, slamming into my heart with a force that almost knocks me off my feet. We’re the same in that. If they weren’t here, discovering my true lineage would have devastated me. But not now. Not with them.
I swallow through the thickness in my throat.
Wyatt reaches out to squeeze my hand. “There’s no crying in treasure hunting.”
“I’m not crying,” I protest through fractured tears. After I pull myself together, I continue, “You know, I’ve been thinking. Even if we don’t find the actual treasure right now, we’ve found the most important thing.”
“So, you want to stop searching?” Stone queries, eyebrow raised.
“Fuck that. I’m taking your father down.” I smirk, and they laugh. “I’m just saying, I used to think my life would be over if I never found it, but I don’t think that anymore. Actually, I don’t know what I would do with myself if I did actually find it. I’ve been training for this my whole life.”
“You’ll finish school,” Stone states.
“You’ll come with me to my ranch,” Wyatt adds.
“We’ll all come with you,” Lucas corrects.
“I wasn’t excluding you, dude.” He squeezes his friend’s shoulder. “I’d love to see your ass mucking out stalls.”
“Sounds smelly.” I wrinkle up my nose.
“You get used to it.”
“That sounds like a lie.” Stone’s face looks a lot like mine, and I press my lips together to keep from smirking.
We walk in silence for a while, the scenes of our possible future filling my head. I don’t know what to wish for anymore. I went from wanting to fulfill my family’s legacy most of all to college to these three. What do you do when you have everything you want? Do you keep going? It feels greedy to want the treasure, too. I want to prove to everyone that my family wasn’t crazy this whole time even though I’m not sure I owe that to anyone anymore.
A finger on my chin makes me look into Wyatt’s blue eyes. “You’ve still got to find the treasure, Dakota.” He tugs on one of my curls hanging over my shoulder that escaped from my bun.
“Maybe it’s not mine to find,” I tell him.
Wyatt shakes his head. “I’ve realized something over the last few weeks. I used to shy away from what happened to my family. I didn’t want to be associated with it, and I know I’ve said some shit about your dad, which I meant,” he tacks on, “but it’s still yours to find. You’re still a Wilder. The last Wilder. No one knows your history but us. You can make yourself whatever you want.”
“You already know I think it’s yours to find,” Stone agrees.
Lucas hands me the binoculars. “Absolutely.”
My father’s words wrap around me. Tell Dakota she deserves to find the treasure.
I bring the binoculars up and start searching the cliff face, the niggle of doubt in my stomach dulling to a smolder. It’s hard when who you are gets ripped out from underneath you. Instead of dwelling on that, I do what I do best: start searching.
The cliff faces sparkle in the bright sunlight. I’m sure there’s a science-y reason for it that’s probably been explained to me before, but science was never my forte. I always preferred books, fairy tales, and dreams. If I had to write my story, I’d write it with a happy ending. It’s changed since I was a little girl. It used to be me, my dad, and the Wilder legacy. Now, it’s me, Lucas, Wyatt, and Stone. Together. If the treasure comes, that’s cool. But as long as we’re together, that’s everything.
I turn to study the other cliff face but stop when I spy something unusual. Straight lines usually aren’t found in nature. I bring my hand up to mess with the binoculars, zooming in. “That’s...interesting,” I report, not knowing if what I’m seeing is important or not. High in the brown rock face, close to a pitched ledge, is a carving. The Apaches etched a lot of things into the rock here, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility to find markings, but it’s interesting that this is a square that matches one of the symbols on the map.
“Did you find a cave?” Stone’s voice is so close it almost makes me jump.
I shake my head. “No, I think I found a rock painting. Or carving. It’s a square. Like from the map.”
I hand the binoculars off to Stone who changes the magnification, moving the lenses until he’s focused on what I found. I can’t see it without the binoculars, and actually, it’s just dumb luck that I caught it at all. The sun must have hit it just so as I was sweeping the landscape.
Before I can ask, Lucas takes out the map, unfolds it, and spreads it out on the ground, smoothing the edges. It’s such a delicate piece of paper. The crude lantern drawing is at the end of the canyon—step one, I think of it as. No one has ever figured out what the x�
��s and squares mean, only that they could’ve represented cave entrances.
If this square is what’s on the map, it’s not a cave entrance at all. It’s a drawing.
Stone hands the binoculars off to Wyatt and kneels next to Lucas and me. “Hmm, it doesn’t match the map. The x’s and squares are outside the canyon.” He sucks his lip in, nibbling as he surveys the drawing my ancestor made.
“We should still notate it,” I express. “If it ends up meaning something, we’re going to need to know where it is.”
Stones takes out the GPS, climbs the little rocky hill and stands directly under the square carving as directed by Wyatt. He enters the coordinates.
Only time will tell if this means anything. I only hope it doesn’t take us another hundred years to figure out step two. Then the Curse of the Wilder treasure would be handed down to another generation.
22
At the end of the day, we find another square and three x carvings. We make multiple passes in the valley, recording the coordinates of each symbol. I don’t know how they fit into the map yet, but my gut tells me they’re important. It tells me we’re on the right track. We just have to figure out what they mean; or what they’re pointing to. Putting myself in my ancestors’ shoes so far isn’t working.
Knowing we’re a step closer than my family has ever been should make me feel freer, but instead, a weight settles on my shoulders. I wonder if it’s one my dad also held onto. Now that we’ve made it this much further, I want to take the next step and the next. I want to find this treasure once and for all. I want to take the glory away from Lance Jacobs, but more than that, I want it for the Wilder family.
The mountains have always helped me think. The crags and rocks a point of self-reflection. The majestic beauty a blatant symbol that there’s so much more out there than our regular lives. While we found the x’s and squares today, the back of my mind worked on the issue I’ve had since finding out I’m not really a Wilder. My dad said I deserved to find the Wilder legacy, but that’s the exact point I’ve been struggling with. The Wilders always deserved to find it, but now that I’m not one, I’m not sure I do.