This lovely, married man was just doing his job, trying to find the priceless treasure to share with the world, and here I was, mapping out where his body touched mine. I wassooogoing to hell for this. When did the room become so freakishly hot? Heat rose from the tip of my toes to the top of my head; a couple more degrees and my skin would fuse to the bracelet. I should have stopped any unnecessary touching, but since my brain ceased to function, I stood statue still.
“Quite a dance you’re doing there,” William commented, and I could hear suppressed laughter in his tone.
I sucked my stomach in and pushed my hips forward. Andrew cleared his throat and finally passed by me. He reached with his left hand and rested it on the bracelet before removing his right hand.
“As we apply pressure, we also need to press these stones,” Andrew said, pointing at smaller gems on the bracelet, “in a certain order, like pressing buttons on a security panel.”
“Okay, so start pressing them,” I said when my brain rebooted, and my vocal system worked again.
Andrew’s fingers pushed on the gems in various ways before they stilled, and he stepped back from the table, his hand leaving my wrist, cold instantly replacing his touch. “I don’t know the pattern,” he said. “Or this is the wrong bracelet.”
“But it can’t be.” Dr. Garcia got to his feet. “All the research papers, along with the interpretation of Augustine’s diaries we have, point to this chest and this bracelet.”
Andrew faced a wall with a narrow window opening to a sidewalk.
“Let me get the papers.” Dr. Garcia hurried to a cabinet and threw a drawer open. “The pattern should be mentioned somewhere. We can figure it out. We just need more time.”
“Which we don’t have,” William said with a voice of authority as if he was part of this conversation. My hand was pressing into the chest since I wasn’t sure if I could move or not.
“Can someonepleasetell me what you think is inside?” I said.
“A map, my dear,” Dr. Garcia said while rummaging through the filing cabinet. “Directions to the location of a great treasure.”
Apparently, Carloswasat liberty to share this information, unlike another professor in this room.
“We’ll read through these again. The answer has to be here.” Dr. Garcia lifted a hefty plastic bin onto the desk and pulled out folders. “You and I can go over everything,” he said to Andrew. “Stay up all night if we must. We have until tomorrow at one in the afternoon before they collect the chest.”
Andrew returned to the desk, picked up a manila folder, and opened it. He paused when he glanced at me. “You can remove your hand.”
Relieved and disappointed at the same time, I stepped back and took my purse from William. “So, what do we do now?”
“Wander for a few in the museum,” Andrew said, scrutinizing the papers in his hand. “I’ll find you soon.”
* * *
For an hour, William and I meandered in and out of halls, enjoying different Colombian historical artifacts and artwork, eventually making our way into a gallery dedicated to Augustine Pérez. It displayed a collection of jewelry, locks and keys, parts of shipwrecks, old notebooks, letters, and much more. Several beautiful pencil sketches along one wall drew my attention. These sketches held so much detail that, at first, I thought they were photos. One atmospheric drawing with lifelike intensity illustrated a town square with a church in the middle and rolling hills in the background; another depicted a ranch with a large house in the Spanish style with horses running before it; the third portrayed a palace at the base of a towering mountain, and the fourth displayed a tall waterfall surging into a small lake. Details of the waterfall were so vivid its roaring sound almost reverberated in my ears, but the rest of the sketch was incomplete with faint lines of what appeared to be the beginning of tree branches. I fished my iPhone out of my purse and snapped a photo of each artwork.
“This is fascinating,” William said, staring up at a carved wooden figurehead from the bow of a ship. “But all the information is in Spanish, and I don’t understand what it says.”
“The gift shop has a book in English about Augustine Pérez,” Andrew said, his voice startling me.
“Hey.” I turned, hiding my phone back in my purse because I had no clue if we were allowed to take pictures in this museum or not. In my defense, I didn’t use the flash. “How did it go with the Pandora’s box?”
But I knew the answer by the way he stood in the doorway with his shoulders slumped forward and a disappointed expression on his face.
“Not well,” Andrew said, shaking his head. “We need more time to go over Augustine’s journal to identify the pattern.”
“How many more hours?” I checked my watch. It was past two in the afternoon, and hunger and boredom had replaced my earlier excitement.
“You should go to the hotel and enjoy the rest of the day.”
“And you? Are you coming with us?”
“We only have until tomorrow afternoon, so every minute counts. I might stay here all night.” He ran his hand through his hair. “If something surfaces, I’ll come and get you.”
Andrew walked us to the taxi, briefly stopping at the shop where he purchased the book about Augustine Pérez for William. Outside, he explained to the driver to take us to the Complejo Del Gran Castillo Blanco resort.
* * *
