CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Amap? Finley thought, arrested.
He pointed. “What’s this?”
“Grass?”
“Look closer.”
She bent over the page, straining to decipher what he’d seen. Two of the many blades of grass Dad had drawn had been connected with a horizontal line at the base, creating a shape that looked like a rectangle without a top. Three trees formed a triangle around it.
“Could it be a symbol?” he asked.
“A symbol?”
“For treasure?”
Her chin whipped in his direction. “I’ll . . .” She cleared her throat. “I’ll go get my computer so we can try to figure out if that shape has a meaning.”
Once she returned with her laptop, she indicated the sofa and waited for him to sit first. Had they been negotiating, she would’ve let him throw out the first number. Same principle here. Allowing him to sit first gave her an advantage because, as soon as he’d landed, she plopped downrightnext to him. So close their thighs touched.
She pretended not to notice that he’d tensed. She also pretended not to notice how heavenly this felt. He looked especially handsometonight in a pair of weathered jeans and a dark gray long-sleeved crewneck, pushed up at the forearms. It was dangerous to imagine a string of future nights—so many that the succession of them would bring them into old age—spent pressed up against him on this sofa.
The initial search she ran made it immediately apparent that a great number of people in the world were interested in symbology. She refined her search, rewording it a few times. In took less than ten minutes to locate what she sought—a list of American symbols used to indicate treasure.
Slowly, she scrolled through the content. Could Luke be right? Was this drawing—and not her conversation with Robbie or the poem—the real clue? Were they looking at a treasure map?
“There,” Luke said, pointing to a replica of the symbol he’d spotted.
“‘This particular shape represents treasure below,’” she read aloud. Goose bumps raced down her shoulders. She twisted to him. “You were right. This is a treasure map.”
Excitement lit the depths of his eyes.
“This is the first symbol Dad has ever used in a hunt,” she said.
“Probably because this is the first thing he’s given you that’s worth a lot of money.”
She set the map on her laptop’s screen so they could study it. “If that’s the case and this drawing had fallen into the wrong hands, Dad wouldn’t have wanted his gift to be marked with a red X or a picture of a treasure chest.”
“Exactly.” A few seconds passed. “I wish there were some words on this map.”
“I do, too. He hasn’t named the pond, the hills, or anything else. We’re going to have to figure out the location of the treasure using these landmarks alone.”
“Do you recognize anything here?”
Dad had sketched a few lines through the trees that might be roads or might be trails. “No.”
“Is this a map of the property where you grew up?”
“No.”
“A map of the land surrounding this house?”
“No.”
“Your aunt and uncle’s house?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I recognized this. But I don’t.”
