In Search of Truth

by Sharon Wray

  “What now?” Ty said with so little enthusiasm one would think he’d just had a root canal.

  “We have a problem.” Nate was too worked up to sit, so he paced. “Where’s Kells?”

  “Gone,” Luke said around a yawn. “Don’t know where. He took Vane with him.”

  Of course Kells took Vane. Because Vane, despite being a highly trained and experienced soldier, was a suck-up. If Kells needed something from coffee to a listening ear, Vane provided it.

  “Any idea when Kells will return?” Nate asked the men.

  They shook their heads.

  “Good.” Nate rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s good because I have something to tell you and something to ask you and Kells can’t know any of it. At least not right now. Oh, and there’s also some distressing news. I should’ve told you earlier, but I didn’t.”

  Cain leaned back in the chair that was too small for his frame. “Let’s get the telling over with first.”

  “Last night, Detective Waring arrested Alex in Charleston.”

  Ty’s exhale sounded long and tired. “Why?”

  “Alex was protecting a child and hit a man. Except the man was the child’s father and filed charges. Luckily, Rafe handled it and got the charges dropped.”

  “How?” Luke asked. “Rafe isn’t a lawyer.”

  “He plays one for the Fianna.” Nate pressed his palms on the table. “Kells wasn’t here, so I made a command decision to send Rafe, Pete, and Garza to fix the situation.”

  “Wait.” Ty squinted. “Half of our unit is in Charleston?”

  “Yes.” Nate went through why Alex and Zack were in Charleston and everything about Emilie and the treasure. “While Alex was waiting to be released, Zack went to New Orleans to search for the witch’s examination’s appendix. While there, he ran into trouble with Remiel’s men. He may have fired a weapon in public.”

  Cain raised an eyebrow.

  Ty rested his head on his arms on top of the table.

  Luke stared into his coffee mug.

  Nate continued, “Things got spicy when the city’s power went out. Zack lost cell service, and he had to find a safe place to stay. Remiel’s men followed Zack until he ditched them. Zack couldn’t go to Vivienne’s because he knew they’d look there first.”

  Luke drank his coffee and grimaced. Probably from the bitter aftertaste caused by the cheap beans. “Where’d Zack go?”

  “To Kate’s.” Nate stopped talking because he needed that little detail to sink in. It took a moment, but one by one the men sat up and stared at him with wide-open eyes.

  “Whaaaaat?” Luke drew out the word until it hit three syllables.

  Nate nodded. “Zack had Allison with him—”

  “Whoa.” Cain threw up his hands. “Zack took Allison with him on a mission? What the hell is wrong with him?”

  “Dude.” Ty laid his head on his arms again. “Zack’s been off the rails since Stuart died. He’s spent more time in Charleston than Savannah. Which sucks because we need the help here.”

  Nate agreed but that wasn’t their main concern. “Zack is on his way back to Charleston and called before takeoff to fill me in on what he’s learned and what he needs help with.”

  “Is this the asking part?” Luke looked around the room at all the men who weren’t there. “There are only four of us.”

  Nate took another breath and told them about why Kells had been such an ass lately: Kate filing for divorce and Kells’s contact finding out about Zack’s unauthorized mission. The only two things Nate left out were the bit about Kells’s potential actions that may have held off rescuing their men, including Nate, for two years and the fact that Kells’s contact was so pissed he could send them all to prison.

  That intel was simply too fucking much for them to deal with at that moment.

  Nate ended with, “Zack needs our help rescuing Emilie.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Luke asked. “We don’t know where she is.”

  “I’m waiting for Zack to arrive in Charleston and call us back. Then we’ll make a plan.”

  “We did the tell and the ask.” Ty finally lifted his head. “What’s the distressing part?”

  Nate crossed his arms and stared at his men. “Kells knows that Zack went to New Orleans and fired him.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Allison ran into her house and headed for Stuart’s study. It only took a moment to open the safe and pull out Danny’s treasure box. She ran her fingers over the broken daisies her brother had painted along the sides of the lunch box.

  Zack appeared with their bags. “Have you opened it yet?”

  She clutched the box to her chest. “I was waiting for you.”

  He dropped their bags on a chair in front of the desk and said, “I’m ready.”

  She placed the box on the desk and opened it. The scents of pine and puppies filled her lungs and tears stung her eyes. She took out a manila folder with two words printed in Stuart’s perfect handwriting: For Allison.

  Zack undid the metal clasp. She held her breath as he pulled out a set of yellowed pages, each one wrapped in archival plastic. Gently, he laid seven pages on the desk next to each other.

  Allison took the magnifier out of the desk drawer. “It says appendix on top, but the entire page is filled with words. They’re not even in sentences. Just line after line of random words. This doesn’t make sense.”

  Knocks sounded on the front door and Zack went to answer it.

  When he left the room, she exhaled loudly. She was a coward. She had to tell him what she’d realized, what she had to do, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t be in the same room with him without wanting him. But while she desired his touch, his kisses, his body moving over hers, she would not be so selfish as to break his heart.

  Once her phone had worked again, she’d even texted her UVA colleague about that job.

  Using the magnifier, she studied the writing on the other pages. Every page was filled with words in no order with no sentence structure. And on various corners of every page, someone had drawn a tiny broken daisy.

  Zack returned with Alex and three men she’d never met.

  “Allison?” Zack motioned to the first man, who was wearing a blazer, dress shirt, jeans, and a holstered weapon. “This is Detective Garza.”

  She nodded and a second man stepped forward, hand out. He looked like a convict. Tall, brown hair, the most intense gaze she’d ever seen, and one arm tattooed with words in an elegant script that were barely covered by his black T-shirt. “I’m Rafe.”

  She turned to the last man with long plaited black hair that reached his waist. While not as tall as Zack, the third man was wide as a door and made of solid muscle. He wore black combat pants and T-shirt, and had tribal tattoos on his arms.

  He didn’t just shake her hand. He kissed her cheek. “I’m Pete. I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you.”

  She had the distinct impression all the men were armed.

  “Hi.” Because that was totally lame, she cleared her throat and added, “Thanks for helping Alex.”

  “No prob.” Pete placed his fists on the desk and said, “What’ve we got?”

  “We have the appendix and…” Zack held up the tracing paper with cutout windows that Allison had taped together on the plane. “A homemade copy of the Pirate’s Grille.”

  “Except,” she said, “I’m not sure I put it together properly.”

  For all she knew, she’d taped the three sections backwards.

  “Let’s give it a try.” Garza took off his jacket and tossed it on a chair. “What do we do with it?”

  “We lay the Pirate’s Grille over the appendix. The words that you see through the cutout rectangles will hopefully expose a message.” Allison pointed to an appendix page. “The Pirate’s Grille is smaller
than the appendix pages, and I don’t know how to align them.”

  Pete held the magnifier over an appendix page. “None of these words make sense. They’re not even in sentences.”

  “I know,” Allison said. “It’s possible it’s gibberish to throw off treasure hunters.”

  Pete handed Zack the magnifier. “Have I mentioned today how much I hate pirates? I hate their maps, their treasures, and their bullshit psy-ops games.”

  “Gotta give this old pirate credit though.” Rafe leaned over the desk to study the pages. “Henry Avery pulled off the largest pirate heist in the history of the world and hid his treasure in a way that no one has ever found it.”

  Allison placed the Pirate’s Grille over an appendix page and…nothing. Words appeared through the holes, but none of it made sense. “Huh. This is supposed to work.”

  “Maybe it’s upside down,” Pete said.

  Garza turned the Pirate’s Grille upside down, and still none of the exposed words made sense together. “That didn’t work.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Rafe took the tracing paper and laid it over another appendix page. “Why are there bent flowers on the corners of each appendix page?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Pete shot back.

  Minutes later, the men were still arguing about which side of the Pirate’s Grille was up or down. Allison went toward the window, where Alex sat with Danny’s treasure box on his lap. She was exhausted and could no longer look at the appendix pages without the words blurring.

  “Are you okay, Alex?”

  “It wasn’t the first time I’ve been arrested and won’t be the last.” He winked. “I even got a present out of it.”

  “Oh. That’s interesting.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know about any present.

  “What is this stuff?” He held up a Jolly Roger black bandana and a metal skull-and-crossbones key chain he’d taken out of the lunch box.

  “My brother’s treasures.” She took the keychain and ran a finger over the indentations. “When we were kids, we found carvings of pirate skulls on the upper floor of the barn. My dad said they were late eighteenth century. Danny and I used to make up pirate stories and act them out in our tree house.”

  She glanced at the men who were arguing over whether or not the sentence She laid waste to a headless son in the pasture was a clue.

  “Allison?” Alex poked her arm. “What barn?”

  She looked at him. “The barn at Fenwick Hall. Now it’s used for storing bottles of Raven’s Retreat Absinthe and drying herbs.”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed. “How far away is it?”

  “Depending on traffic, thirty to forty minutes.” She put the bandana and key chain back into the treasure box. “Why?”

  Alex handed her the box, returned to the desk, gathered the appendix pages and the Pirate’s Grille and shoved them in the envelope.

  Pete reached for the envelope that Alex held above his head. “What are you doing?”

  “We don’t need to find the treasure,” Alex said. “I know where Emilie is being kept.”

  “Where?” Zack demanded.

  “Fenwick Hall.” Alex looked at Allison. “In the barn.”

  * * *

  Zack tried to take the manila envelope out of Alex’s hand, but he wouldn’t let it go. “Why do you think my sister is in the barn at Fenwick Hall?”

  “When I saw Emilie, she was in a rustic building. I wasn’t able to determine where I was, but I smelled lavender and rosemary and other herbs—including something that smelled like licorice. And I saw carvings of skulls on a beam. Allison said she and Danny found skulls carved in the barn near Fenwick Hall.”

  Zack looked at Allison. “Do you think Rue would hide my sister for the Prince?”

  “If the Prince is holding Rue’s money hostage.” Allison went to the tote bag, took out the spreadsheet, and handed it to Detective Garza. “The Fianna were helping Stuart and Rue embezzle money.”

  Garza stared at the page. “Why?”

  “Supposedly Rue was trying to leave her husband. Although we don’t know Mack enough to trust him.” Zack had already filled the men in on their trip to New Orleans—including the part where Kells fired him.

  “Dude.” Pete spoke to Zack but stood next to Alex as if in a show of solidarity. “This is a good thing. Why are you discounting it?”

  “Because we don’t know for sure.” Zack dug through the desk drawer and found a map of Charleston he’d seen the other night when he’d searched the room. He laid it on the desk and pointed to Hoopstick Island, the small spurt of land off of John’s Island. “We’ve no resources. If we do this—plan a raid and she’s not there—we’ve tipped off the Fianna. They’ll know we don’t have the treasure, and they’ll hand my sister over to Remiel.”

  Garza looked at Rafe. “Will the Prince really do that?”

  Rafe crossed his arms. “Yes.”

  Zack looked at the men in the room. “Whatever we do, we have to be smart about this.”

  “I say we vote,” Alex said. “We raid Fenwick Hall and save Emilie or stand here and scratch our balls. In private, of course.”

  Zack chewed the inside of his cheek and stared at the map. If they were wrong, it could mean Emilie’s life.

  “It’s also the only thing we have to go on,” Pete said. “Since we’re voting, I’m in.”

  “As am I,” Rafe said.

  Garza nodded. “Me too.”

  Everyone looked at Alex, who said, “It was my idea.”

  “Do you have weapons?” Rafe asked.

  “Yes,” Allison said. “There’s a bunch to choose from.”

  Zack knew exactly what was in the gun safe. “Four pistols, three rifles, a twenty-gauge shotgun, and a twelve-gauge shotgun. There’s also a crossbow and a ton of ammo.”

  Allison raised an eyebrow and Zack shrugged. It was his job to monitor the weapons.

  “It’ll have to be enough,” Rafe said.

  “Alex?” Zack said as he started marking up the map with a pen. “You’re not coming.”

  Alex slammed his hand on the desk. “Why?”

  “You have to stay with Allison, and I can’t let you get into any more trouble.”

  “This is bullshit,” Alex said.

  “Zack is right,” Rafe said. “Someone has to stay with Allison.”

  Alex pointed at Rafe. “Then you do it.”

  “Enough.” The men turned to Zack with shocked stares, but he didn’t care. “My mission, my rules. We load up and leave in ten minutes.”

  “We can take my truck,” Rafe said.

  Allison was looking at her phone. She hadn’t said a word about not going and Zack had expected a fight—or at least a fuss.

  He studied her in her jeans and white blouse, her blond hair piled high in a messy bun. She glanced at him and a chill went up his back. There was something else about her…that distance cloaked in sadness that he still couldn’t identify. While he’d much prefer to stay here and figure out what the hell was wrong, he had to save his sister. “I’ll be back soon.”

  She placed her phone on the desk and nodded.

  Zack clasped his hands behind his neck and exhaled. “Let’s roll.”

  Chapter 38

  A few minutes later, Allison found Zack grinding his teeth in front of the open gun cabinet in the pantry. The men had packed up Stuart’s hunting weapons, and she’d drawn Zack a map of the hidden gate near the river that would get them onto the Fenwick Hall property.

  “Zack,” she said softly. “What’s wrong?”

  He placed ammo boxes on the counter. “Nothing.”

  She knew that wasn’t true because in the last few minutes, he’d been terse and distant. “I know something’s—”

  He slammed the door and faced her. His clouded eyes were filled
with hurt and anger. “Why didn’t you tell me you were considering that UVA job? Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving Charleston?”

  She swallowed and licked her lips. “How do—oh. My phone.” She’d left it on the desk right after they’d voted to save Emilie, and he probably saw the text that’d come in from her UVA colleague. It’d been filled with excited emojis. “It’s not decided yet.”

  “You haven’t asked me if I’d go with you.” He gripped the cabinet handle and his knuckles whitened. “Does that mean you haven’t decided whether or not to break my heart?”

  “No. I mean…” She clasped her hands behind her neck and stumbled over her words. “I don’t know what I want.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against his chest. “Then let me remind you.”

  His lips met hers with force, like a silent plea to be seen, to be understood, to be loved—a plea she wasn’t sure, right now, she could answer.

  When his lips softened, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. She might not know what she wanted, but she knew who she wanted—her wild man.

  Zack ended the kiss, picked up the ammo, and left the room.

  She followed him, but by the time she got to the foyer, the men had left, slamming the door behind them.

  She blinked to clear her blurred vision and locked the door.

  “Where’s Nicholas Trott?” Alex asked when she entered the study. He sat near the window, reading a book, with her handgun on a nearby table.

  “Spending the night with Susan and Mrs. Pickles.” Allison touched her lips and moved to the window. The garden lights were on, but it was dark outside.

  Zack’s kiss hadn’t just been forceful yet gentle. It’d been…fearful.

  It’d been a silent plea to wait.

  While she wanted to go after him now, she knew it was best if she stayed behind.

  At first, she’d been annoyed that he hadn’t wanted her to help save Emilie, but while watching the men—professional soldiers—organize their mission with such efficiency and calculation, she’d realized she’d only be in the way.

  Besides, she had the feeling Zack needed to save his sister without her.