Nash knew when to back off. Even though he didn’t want to leave her, he needed to go talk to everyone. “Here’s my number. When you’re ready to talk—really talk—call me.” He placed his card on her coffee table.
She stared at the card, still looking horrified.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob, looking back at her. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your father. And I’m sorry about how things ended—or didn’t end—between us.”
Sadie’s expression softened slightly and her eyes flitted back to him. “Me too.”
“Lock up behind me,” Nash said. “All three locks.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “I always do.”
Nash stepped into the hallway, waiting until he heard all three locks engage before heading toward the stairs. As he walked to his Jeep, his mind was already working through the next steps. He needed to know more about Bill Harris’s murder, more about Porter Rockwell’s connection to the broken arrow, and definitely more about how all of this connected to his family’s gold hunt.
But most importantly, he needed to figure out how to convince Sadie Blair that whatever danger she was facing, she didn’t have to face it alone.
As he climbed into his Jeep, Nash pulled out his phone and initiated a group video call with the Cross and Stone families. After everything that had happened between their families, they had agreed on total transparency.
One by one, their faces appeared on his screen.
“I’ve found a lead on the gold,” he said, skipping the greetings. “A significant one.”
That got their attention.
“What kind of lead?” Chance asked.
Nash took a deep breath. “I ran into Amanda Levitt today.”
“Your prom date?” Blaze looked confused. “The one who disappeared?”
“Yeah, except she calls herself Sadie Blair now. She’s been living in Salt Lake, and get this—she’s researching Porter Rockwell’s connection to a gold cache in the mountains. The same cache I’ve been tracking.”
The rest of the faces stared at him in disbelief and blank nonunderstanding.
“That’s … quite a coincidence,” Brooks said carefully.
“It gets better,” Nash continued. “Her research partner, a history professor named Bill Harris, was murdered last week in Provo Canyon. Shotgun blast to the back of the head.”
“Good grief,” Colt muttered. “And she thinks it’s connected to the gold?”
“Trey says that Bill Harris was a SEAL with our fathers.”
Everyone went completely quiet.
“Dang,” Trent said.
“Crazy,” Hunter said.
Kensi cleared her throat. “Does this … old prom date know about all of this?”
“A lot of it,” Nash offered. “She’s got an entire research wall in her apartment connecting Porter Rockwell to the broken arrow symbol.”
Porter leaned forward. “The same symbol from the missile silos?”
“Exactly. She believes Rockwell used it to mark caches throughout the mountains. Not just gold, but documents,weapons, artifacts—things the early Mormons wanted to protect.”
Brooks was already typing something on another device. “I’ll look into Bill Harris’s murder. What else can you tell me about this woman? Sadie Blair, you said?”
“That’s where it gets complicated.” Nash glanced toward Sadie’s window, where he could still see her silhouette moving near her research wall. “She told me that her family was in witness protection in Cross Creek. Her father was supposed to testify against someone dangerous. They had to flee the night of our prom, and her father was killed the next day.”
