“I think you would make a perfect secret MI6 agent. Ambling around, wearing a black tux, seducing beautiful women, and using sex as your weapon to get secrets out of them. Instead of your name, they’d scream classified codes as they climaxed.”
I might have gone overboard here with my imagination. I didn’t have any top-secret information, but I’d probably give up my Netflix password. Heat crept up my neck as an image of naked, worn-out Andrew lounging in a bed with silk sheets, materialized in my mind.
Andrew’s hands came to a stop, and he glanced at me, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Any secrets I need to get out of you?”
My heart somersaulted, and my jaw went slack. “What?!”
I gaped at him.
He stared at me.
I wanted to kiss him.
He cleared his throat.
“Sorry, a poor joke,” he said and returned to scraping.
Now it was my turn to clear my throat. “Um, what do you think is hidden here?”
“Not a clue. It could be nothing, or it could be a map, journal, correspondence, or heirloom, or a piece of a broken vase.”
“Sounds like you’ve found all of those items before.”
“I have.” A bead of sweat dripped down his face.
I observed him carefully push the blade along the tile edge, admiring his sculpted forearms, cords of his muscles flexing and dancing with each movement.
When he’d dug most of the grout out, he set the tip of the blade at the edge of the tile and pressed on the knife’s handle, lifting the tile up. Catching the tile by its edges, he moved it aside, and adrenaline in my body surged to a record high when a hollow space underneath came into view. We grinned like idiots at each other, my chest rising and falling with a rapid speed. Andrew broke our eye contact and shone the light inside.
He frowned. “It’s empty.”
“No!” I leaned forward, hitting my forehead on his cheek.
“Ouch.” He chuckled, rubbing his jaw. “I’m kidding. I see something.” He reached into the space and pulled out a bundle wrapped in a stained cloth.
I could have exploded with excitement.
He carefully unraveled the dirty fabric and exposed a mahogany box. Inside, on a stack of light-brown, folded paper sheets was a bracelet like the one I had on my wrist, but instead of green stones, it had dark blue gems. The box also had a brass cipher composed of two disks, and a similar book with a collection of short stories with an Augustine Pérez monogram in the center.
“Do you think this is the cipher we need to read messages in his letters to his sons?” I asked, turning brass rings.
“We’ll find out soon.” Andrew took his phone and shined it on the gold bracelet. “This is unexpected.”
He moved it slightly, catching the light.
“Do you see the map on it too?”
“Yes.” Andrew smiled. “This should complete the map we already have.”
My phone buzzed with a message.
William
Brandon and I are going to the pool. He’s going to change first in his room.
It’s fine. We’re in a closet.
His room?!!!
