She steps back. “Great. Then I’ll just get Peggy and we’ll get out of your…ahh… I mean, we’ll head home.”
Dammit. “Wait.”
“Thank you for sharing with me, but I need time to think about what I’m going to do next.”
My pulse roars in my ears.
I have to tell her.
Shit.
Shit.
She lifts her brows at me. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but whatever it is, I’m regretting not bringing my stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. Are you having a stroke?”
Fuck it.
She has to know.
“Thorny Rock and Walter Bombeck switched identities when they left the ship. Thorny Rock founded Sarcasm. Walter Bombeck founded Shipwreck. If the treasure was hidden safely, if it was protected right against the elements, there’s another journal with the gold and jewels documenting their entire history. If anyone else finds that treasure, if anyone else finds out—Shipwreck’s fucked.Pleasestay.Pleasehelp me. Please.”
22
Sloane
Oh.
No.
He.
Did.
Not.
But he did, didn’t he?
He just said that.
And now Davis is staring at me with panic in his eyes while his left leg starts jumping up and down and he rubs his hand down his right thigh over and over and over again.
Mr. Expressionless, Mr. Stillness, is freaking out right now.
I squat and put one hand on his left knee and the other on his right hand, feeling the tingles of my own panic attack starting.
He’s wrong.
He has to be wrong.
“Davis—”
“My mom is a direct descendant of the real Thorny Rock. When her mom died two years ago, she inherited a safe-deposit key to a box at the oldest bank in Copper Valley. We didn’t know it existed. She had letters. She had maps. She had the captain’s log from the ship. He called it the Helter Skelter. Not the Escape Hatch like you have in the museum. Escape Hatch is what Walter Bombeck wanted to call it. The real Walter Bombeck. The real Thorny’s cousin and first mate. My grandma also had the manifest of everything that was on the ship when they docked in Norfolk. The handwriting on the map matches. Your map. At the museum. That’s how I knew it was from Sarcasm.”
Forget helping him calm down.
I plop down on my own butt and stare at him.
His leg bounces again.
