Like what random federal agencies might know about an old pirate and his crew.
“Nobody cares anymore once a treasure’s found,” I say. “It can go in a museum—one with actual security—and the legend will live on. But if Dixon finds it?—”
“He won’t find it.”
“He’s been in Shipwreck every day for the past two weeks. Including Saturday, when security had the entire town locked down for the wedding. He’s been dodging another of his ex-girlfriends while visiting the museum every single day. Nearly certain he’s the guy who broke in Saturday night too.”
“Sort of like you?”
“I’m the good guy. He’s a fucking fucknugget.”
Vanessa rolls her eyes.
We were the youngest of the crew growing up in our neighborhood. The other kids included us, but sometimes it felt like just barely.
That changed for me in late middle school and continued more when our parents agreed to let me drop out of high school and tour with the band, but Vanessa never joined in the neighborhood shenanigans.
Partially because she was uninterested in keeping up with the guys—there were only two other girls in the group besides her, both a couple years older—and partially because while we were playing basketball and getting in trouble, she liked reading and doing her math homework.
So when my sister realized that Ellie Ryder—Ellie Morgan now—was dating the same guy who’d dumped Vanessa for a woman in his office a couple years before that, she didn’t say anything.
Not even to me.
Not until the fucker cheated on Ellie with Sloane, who, as far as we can all tell, was completely clueless that he was dating someone else when they met.
When a dude has dated three women in my circles and none of them have anything good to say about him, he’s trash, and I’m gonna treat him as such.
“How much longer are you off work before you have to get back to the reactor?” Vanessa asks.
“I quit.”
“Davis.”
“Got bored. They hired new staff. Younger kids. Next-level smart. They’ll be fine.”
She stares at me harder.
Not squirming is far harder in front of my sister than it is in front of anyone else.
“Is this Denver all over again?” she asks.
Denver.
Where Bro Code fell apart.
Because of me.
And because of something none of the five of us in the band have ever told anyone, but Vanessa knows.
She talked it out of me one night about four years ago.
I roll my shoulders. “Not if you tell me what the CIA knows about where Thorny Rock’s treasure is buried so I can get it and give it to the Rocks and pretend that’s the end of this.”
“The CIA doesn’t work on American soil.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t know things.”
“We don’t know things. Even if we did, I don’t have any need to know what we know. And what’s next? What’s next for you after you find a mythical treasure and need something new?”
