She laid down her shovel and sank to her knees.
Carefully, Luke pressed his shovel back down and cleared more dirt. Then down again. Then again.
She swept loose clods to the side, revealing a flat, shimmering surface.
“Want help?” Luke asked, lowering to his knees across from her.
“Yes, please.”
His hands joined hers, dislodging dirt.
Letters and numbers began to appear, imprinted into the surface of the metal. “‘Fine. 1863,’” she read aloud.
Had her father left her ... bars of gold? That’s what this looked like. Bars of gold. Her brain cartwheeled, and for a few disorientingmoments, she could not determine which way was up and which way was down.
Luke continued to work, finally freeing a rectangle of metal and handing it to her.
A gold bar. From 1863.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a concerned tone.
“No. Yes. Undecided.”
He pulled off his headlamp, his expression grave.
She eased into a cross-legged position, holding the bar in her lap. “I know what this is. Do you remember me mentioning that Dad raised me on bedtime stories of unsolved mysteries?”
He nodded.
“This is some of the Confederate gold that went missing at the end of the Civil War. He told me all about it. Many times.”
Artificial light lit the few feet of space between them. Dark forest encroached on every side like a crowd of avid witnesses. The wind ruffled Luke’s hair. His long-lashed eyes gleamed bright.
She cleared her throat. “When Richmond, Virginia, was about to be overtaken by the Union, the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, received an emergency message from General RobertE. Lee, urging him to evacuate. Late that night, two trains left Richmond. One with Davis and other leaders. One with the Confederate treasury—gold, silver, coins. A fortune estimated to be worth millions.” She turned the gold bar over. Then right side up again. “Some of the treasury money was used to pay troops and buy supplies. But most of it was still present when the train arrived in Washington, Georgia. Washington’s less than an hour’s drive from where I grew up. Davis decided to disband the Confederate government and asked two of his trusted men to smuggle a huge portion of the treasure out of the country, to Great Britain.”
“It never got there?”
“No. They think some might have been hidden and some stolen. What’s certain is that when Davis was captured six weeks after leaving Richmond,noneof the treasure remained. My dadand Robbie ... read books and articles written by people who’d tried to track the missing gold. They concocted theories about its whereabouts.” Memories dawned. “The two of them went hunting for it across our region of Georgia with their metal detectors.”
“And one of those times, the metal detectors led them to this?”
“It appears that way.” The gold in her hands seemed to pulse with menace.
“Do you think that sending us to a gold mine was your dad’s way of hinting at the final prize?” Luke asked.
“Yes. In fact, let’s think back through the clues.” The gold bar was giving her the creeps. She set it aside. “The first clue contained a picture of Dad and me in front of the bookshelves at the house where I grew up. That picture and that place reminded me of how much he loved me.”
“We found the next clue on a record cover.”
“The name of the band that made that record was The Civil Wars.” Tingles raced down her spine. “He was using the clues to tell a story about me, and him, and this treasure.”
“The record led us to a hollow tree.”
“Which reminded me of the things he used to leave for me there, so that I could take care of the imaginary animals that lived in that hollow tree.”
“The next clue took us to the train depot.”
“A historic train depot ties into the missing gold because the gold came to Georgia on a train.”
