On cue, their gazes drifted over to the Fresnel lens.
Noah quirked one eyebrow. Elisa shook her head as she considered. “It’s all beveled glass—nowhere to hide anything. So what would be opposite the lens, or the light?”
“Typically a lantern hangs from up high, right? So, maybe the floor?”
They looked down. No evidence of a trap door, secret compartment, nothing. Just smooth concrete beneath their feet.
The footsteps came closer, along with voices. They were running out of time—and privacy. “I just thought of something.” Elisa gripped Noah’s arm. “Would your grandfather have even been able to climb all the way up here? In his…condition.”
“I didn’t think of that, either.” Noah’s face paled. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
She sighed. “So it could be downstairs.”
“There wasn’t anything downstairs, remember? Only the staircase.”
Then their gazes locked as the approaching footsteps grew louder. “The stairs.”
“He could have taped the clue under one of them, and no one would ever think to look.” Noah’s brow furrowed. “But which one?”
Bless it. There were only 177. But wait. “The clues contained numbers.Oneif by land,twoif by sea…”
Hope lit Noah’s eyes. “So the first step? Or the second?”
Adrenaline tingled through Elisa’s fingers. She loved this—the thrill of solving clues, figuring out secrets. Maybe Noah would come to appreciate it once they had a taste of victory. “Let’s try both.”
Two college-aged guys popped in the doorway, out of breath and joking with each other. They nodded at Elisa and Noah as they maneuvered around the lens to the observation deck.
Elisa jerked her head toward the door. “Let’s go.” They should have enough time to get back to the bottom and check under the steps before the men attempted to come back through.
Noah gestured for her to descend the narrow stairwell first. “I’m just glad we didn’t pass them on the way down.”
“Do I need to tell you more of my life journey stories?” she half-joked over her shoulder. But his steps were keeping up with hers this time. He must be motivated to get to the first floor—not that she could blame him.
“Thanks for that, by the way.” His voice was so low she almost missed it over their rhythmic footfalls.
Her heart stammered again, and it wasn’t from the exertion or the thrill of the hunt. She carefully schooled her words. “You’d have done the same for me.”
His silence made her wonder, but she refused to turn around to check. Probably best she didn’t see his face—or let him see hers.
They made it to the bottom of the lighthouse in half the time it’d taken to reach the top, and Elisa eagerly turned to face the first step. She knelt on the hard floor, running her hands under the rough bottom of the stair. “Nope.”
Noah squatted and searched under the second step, a hint of anticipation in his eyes. Then his face fell. “Nothing here either.”
Elisa sat back on her heels, out of breath. Dust motes floated upward in the sunbeams scattered across the circular tower. She followed their journey, thinking. “Your grandfather was always so patient at the puzzlers club meetings.”
“I didn’t inherit that trait, if you hadn’t noticed.” Noah joined her, sitting on the concrete floor by the start of the winding staircase. “Maybe your hunch was wrong.”
Maybe. She closed her eyes, running back through the clues, the conversation she heard at Bayou Beignets, what she knew about Gilbert. “He often said in meetings, when newcomers would get frustrated, that the answer was usually right there in front of them. They just had to wait until they saw it.”
“So we’re waiting on something—we don’t know what—to reveal itself.” Noah scrubbed his chin with his palm. “Seems like a solid plan.”
She shot him a look. “Do you have a better one?”
“Sure.” He scoffed. “Maybe we could count to three, sayabracadabra, and?—”
Elisa grabbed his arm and sucked in a tight breath. “That’s it.”
“The heat must be getting to you.” He pressed the back of his hand against her forehead. “Grandpa wasn’t a magician,sugar.”
