“And the caves on Mount Olympus?”
“One of several sites Bill identified based on historical records and Rockwell’s own journals. He was convinced there was a major cache there—not just a small stash, but something significant.” She sighed. “Bill would say he thought he was being followed. But I never imagined how much danger he was in.” She paused and then sniffed, tears filling her eyes. “I never wanted him to die. I didn’t.”
Nash reached across the table and took her hand, his touch grounding her. “We’re going to figure this out, Sadie. I promise you that.”
The earnestness in his eyes made her want to believe him. But she’d learned the hard way that promises, no matter how well-intended, couldn’t always be kept.
She blew out a breath. “Your turn again,” she said, deflecting. “What’s the Cross family’s connection to all this? The conquistador gold, the broken arrow, all of it.”
Nash studied her for a long moment, as if deciding how much to share. “It actually started with a different letter. Not the one with Bill Harris in it. No. It was a letter that Porter found when he took over the ranch after my father passed. Porter reached out to Trey Stone and asked him about the conquistador gold.” He let out a light laugh. “We honestly had no idea what they’d been through and what we were stepping into.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I won’t say everything, but we ended up finding the missile silos on our property that weren’t on any official maps. They had the broken arrow symbol on them.”
“Right. Okay. You said your father was decommissioning missile silos,” Sadie said, making the connection. “And using them to hide the gold?”
“Well, we knew he’d been in charge of decommissioning them. We thought there might be gold, but we never found it in the silos.”
“Wow.”
Nash waved a hand through the air. “Yeah.” He spent the next couple of minutes going over the Stones and Cross’s stories of trying to find the gold—including several uncomfortably close calls.
“Holy cow.”
“It’s crazy. Basically, all we know is that some of the conquistador gold was there—Ms. Connie on the reservation was melting down pieces of it, and it was being sold through Kentucky and South Carolina. But we’re convinced there’s more.” Nash leaned forward. “What if the main cache, the bulk of the gold, is somewhere else? What if the broken arrow symbols are pointing to multiple locations?”
“Like Mount Olympus,” Sadie whispered.
Nash nodded. “Like Mount Olympus.”
The implications were staggering. If the Cross family had been looking in the wrong place all this time … if the gold was actually here in Salt Lake …
“We need to get up that mountain,” Sadie said, glancing down at her ankle with frustration.
“We will,” Nash assured her. “But first, you need to heal. And …” He hesitated.
“What?”
“I think we need to tell each other everything. No more secrets, no more holding back. If we’re going to do this together, we need to trust each other completely.”
Sadie felt her heart rate pick up. Complete honesty would mean revealing things she hadn’t talked about in years—the details of her father’s case, her real identity, why they’d been in witness protection to begin with. “I’m not sure I can do that,” she admitted.
Nash’s gaze was steady. “Try. For both our sakes.”
Maybe it was the earnestness in his eyes, or the lingering warmth of their joined hands during prayer, or simply the exhaustion of carrying her secrets alone for so long. Whatever the reason, Sadie found herself nodding. “Okay,” she said softly. “But not everything I know is mine to tell.”
“I understand.” Nash began clearing their plates. “Rest your ankle. I’ll get some water, and then we talk. For real this time.”
As Nash moved around the kitchen, Sadie closed her eyes briefly, gathering her courage. She’d been Amanda Levitt once, a girl with a crush on Nash Cross and dreams of college and a normal life.
Then she’d been Sadie Blair, a young woman living in constant fear, always looking over her shoulder.
Who was she now? And who would she be after she told Nash everything? She didn’t know. But for the first time in eight years, she was willing to find out.
Nash returned with two glasses of water and set them on the low table in front of the couch. He sat beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from him but not so close as to crowd her.
Before reaching for his water, he unexpectedly took her hand. “Would you mind if we prayed again? Before we get into everything?”
