The words came unbidden, and she wasn’t even sure where they had come from. Then more came.
I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you.
Scout opened her eyes and let out a shaky breath, her gaze dropping to the distant view, to the ocean far below. Her mind caught on something. The clue.
She whispered it aloud to herself. “‘Where the earth bows to the sea, and the sands stretch pale beneath the crag’s shadow, seek where the waters gather to cradle the light of the sun and moon and stars ...’” Her eyes scanned the coastline far, far below, and it hit her all at once: She knew where the gold was hidden, and it sure wasn’t on this mountain!
Invigorated, Scout reversed direction to turn back the way she’d come, pausing only long enough to glance upward at the gray sky. “Thank you,” she said, this time with a little more weight behind the words. Her fear of heights didn’t entirely vanish as she navigated the narrow trail, but purpose gave her feet an anchor.
Lydia, Chase’s editor-in-chief and favorite aunt, arrived in Chase’s office at the newspaper, a legal pad tucked under her arm. “Okay. I’m here. I left my granddaughter’s swim meet for this. What’s your update?”
Chase handed her the rough draft of the shipwreck and gold story. The weight of it was heavy in his hands. “Here you go. Needs a little editing. It’s the biggest story we’ve ever run.”
Lydia raised an eyebrow. She skimmed the first few lines while standing. “You’ve found the hidden gold?”
“Keep reading,” Chase said, watching her face.
Finally, she sat, pulling a red pen from behind her ear like it was a weapon. Lydia’s pen made a rhythmic scratching against the rough draft as she circled, underlined, and occasionally wrote scathing little notes in the margins.
“You’re overusing semicolons again.”
“Noted,” Chase said, already braced for her editorial takedown.
“‘Breathtaking discovery’ is a bit over the top, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. Lydia, this happened in our own backyard.”
She didn’t reply, just hemmed and hawed in her usual way, the red pen pausing in midair before landing decisively on the page. Finally, she set the draft down and looked up. “Needs some serious polish.”
“Yeah, of course. I expected as much.”
“But no visuals?”
He grinned. “Incredible pictures. Teddy’s working on them now.” Teddy was a local photographer who did contract work for the newspaper. “So what do you think?”
Lydia leaned back, her chair creaking under the motion, and folded her arms. She was the only one besides Chase who knew how dire the paper’s future looked. “If we play this right—if we lean into the human angle, the history, the mystery—this isn’t just a headline. It’s a lifeline for the paper.”
Chase smiled, relief flooding through him. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.”
As if on cue, the office door swung open, and Teddy, the photographer, strode in with his laptop under one arm and a camera dangling from the other. “Got the shots,” he said, dropping into the chair across from Chase’s desk and pulling out his laptop. “You’re gonna love these.”
Teddy pulled up the photos, high-resolution digital copies of the envelope and documents they’d found. The lighting made the worn pages look almost cinematic.
“These are incredible,” Lydia said, leaning forward.
“And here’s the gold,” Teddy said, scrolling to a shot of the cache found at Cadillac Mountain this very morning. Chasehad taken pictures on his cell phone of the brass box, the gold coins in Scout’s palm.
“Wow, wow, wow,” Lydia said. “And there’re still some out there, right?”
“There are!” But the words had barely left Chase’s mouth before a sinking realization hit him. His face froze. Scout. He glanced at the clock on the wall. He’d completely forgotten her up on Precipice Trail. In the rain.
Lydia was watching him. “Chase? What’s wrong?”
He bolted to his feet. “You two start working on the mock-up. We need a killer headline. Something bold, like, ‘Hidden Gold at Acadia National Park.’ I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He headed out of his office toward the front door but stopped abruptly to pull out his phone and call Scout. “Scout,” he said after the beep, his voice low with guilt. “Call me as soon as you can. I’m sorry I didn’t come back to get you. Something ... uh ... something important came up. Please just call me.” He hung up, staring at his phone for a long moment, sickened by the wave of guilt that swept over him.
How had he let this happen? The biggest story of his career—and possibly the salvation of his struggling newspaper—and yet, somehow, he’d managed to forget a person who should matter more than a headline.
