“What’s that?”
“Elliot’s diary.” My heart skips. He kept a diary as Elliot.
He flips through the pages and turns them to face me. He has the same handwriting, and the sketch he’s pointing at was drawn in the same style as the other work he drew years ago.
Am I looking at…?
“It’s the stone,” I whisper.
“This was a hobby of mine in Miami.” He laughs. “This, along with watching Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Expedition Unknown—all of them.”
“See… you’ve never been that far away from yourself.”
“This drawing. It’s the stone Finn is talking about, right?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I drew it for fun. But it had to be something I remembered.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, there’s something that’s bothering me.”
Curious, I wait for him to continue.
He turns back to one of the older journals. “My theories changed—evolved—into something more complicated than archaeology. Especially toward the end... I started consulting with others on...” he stops.
Oh no. Not this again. “Nathan, what? Tell me.”
“I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I don’t want to scare you with any half-baked assumptions right now. Let me dig into it a little more.” He picks up another journal.
I put my hand over his.
“No more secrets. You’ve tried to keep danger from me in the past—look what happened.”
A red flush flares across his cheeks. “I’m so sorry I left you with him.” He lowers his head, defeated. Immediately, I regret my words and feel my own face heat.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” I have to make him understand that I can’t do this again. “I’m your ally. You’re my best friend. Don’t keep secrets from me this time. I can help you.”
He lifts his gaze, opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s a man at war with himself.
Finally, he nods.
“Okay,” he says as he clutches my hand. “I’ll share what I know. After I found Carter’s Drop and the warm stone, I started questioning how a civilization as advanced as Atlantis could even exist more than a myriad years ago.” He takes a deep breath. “The isolation of technology to a single location with one destruction event didn’t make sense, even though my research was leading me to evidence that an advanced society did indeed exist.” He shakes his head in frustration. “I consulted with other scientists in rapid succession. But in typical-mefashion, I never spell out exactly what I was looking for anywhere in these journals.”
He frowns and runs his fingers through his hair.
“Keep looking. You’ll figure it out. I know you will,” I say, gently pulling his hands away from hishead.“And I’ll be right beside you thistime.”
I pick up an old book lying on the side of the pile of notebooks. A bookmark taken from the ones I keep on the end table holds his place at about 30 percent.
Has he read this from the beginning?
“Look at this one yet?” I ask innocently.
He glances at the book of poetry by Lord Byron. “Yeah.” Heat rushes across the skin on his chest to his neck. He tugs on the collar of his shirt and sits straighter.
“You used to read these to me sometimes… and works from other poets… and even your own poems.” He can’t quite make eye contact. Might as well make him blush some more. “Especially when you were horny.”
He coughs and tries to stop smiling.
I laugh at him. “Reciting beautiful poems and bad jokes. Those were your tells.”
