With a sail burned into one corner.
“Thorny Rock’s other journal,” I breathe.
He gingerly opens it. “Handwriting matches the real Thorny Rock.”
“Oh my god. We found it.”
He grins at me again. “We found it. Now let’s get rid of it. Here. Stay there. I’ll hand it to you, then climb out.”
“Wait. We should get a picture.”
He shakes his head. “We weren’t here.”
Is he serious?
We found apirate treasure chest, and he doesn’t want pictures?
“Just for us?” I say. “On your phone? No cloud?”
He hesitates the briefest moment, and then he’s passing me his phone. “One picture.”
“Don’t worry. I’mverygood at getting your best side.”
He dead-eyes me, and then he cracks up.
And that’s what I get.
Davis, laughing over a pirate treasure.
Hispirate treasure.
I hand back his phone. He passes the chest out to me, and Iurpwhen I take it.
It’s heavy.
Not too heavy, but probably at least twenty-five or thirty pounds.
More than I was expecting.
He crawls back out into the main area and then hoists himself out of the hole. “Hand it up?”
I’m holding a pirate treasure.
A hidden, buried, lost, previously undiscovered pirate treasure.
History.
Blood.
The reason I have a hometown that I love now.
My throat clogs, and my eyes get hot.
A warm hand touches my hair. “You good?”
I look up at Davis. “This is kinda monumental.”
“You did good.”
