The Dead Letters

Chapter 1

“Got anything for me?” Tyson opened the door to the mailman. He was sure that Herman would be shocked. Tyson had been sleeping well past Herman’s visits the last few weeks. Now he was up at the crack of dawn, waiting for the mail to arrive.

“You have another one of those letters.” Herman stuck out his chubby hand and offered the stack of letters.

Tyson took the mail and skimmed through the stack of letters, three bills, a letter asking him to join a foundation he’d never heard of, and the inevitable headhunters wanting him to get back into the job market. He found it without effort. A square envelope and a word processing font that mimicked cursive handwriting used for his name and address. The stamp in the corner was perfectly placed and had a consistent one-quarter-inch border around it. It had the appearance of a professional letter but without any means of identifying the sender.

“Did your boss find out anything about the letters?” Tyson asked. He wanted to be done with these mysterious letters. They weren’t threatening or hateful. For lack of a better name, these letters had numbers on the folded piece of paper inside. For this was the third, each letter came without a return address. He’d learned that the sender had not dropped the letter off to a postal clerk.

“Yeah, he said you needed to find a new hobby.” Herman laughed. His girth seemed to shake with his chuckle.

Tyson grimaced a little at the statement. He’d felt the same way lately—ever since his job had ended. These days, nursing had become a marathon of extended hours to cover the sick and he had quit. He’d found himself more resentful of the demands, which cut into his cherished personal time.

Tyson would not have described himself as an introvert; after all, he had introduced himself to a hundred new patients a day as a nurse. However, he had a small circle of friends, which made some people put that label on him. Add his love of books and his passion for research, and he could easily spend the day apart from others.

Tyson pulled out the materials he’d begun to use to keep the letters pristine: latex gloves, holding by the edges, plastic sealable bags so that he could examine each message.

By now, he had begun to use the techniques of opening a letter where there might be clues or forensic evidence that might enable him to figure out the meaning of these letters.

Opening the third envelope, Tyson discovered a series of numbers. He wished he knew what they stood for. Google was of little help unless he had context for the numbers. They could be monetary amounts, phone numbers, social security numbers, ISBNs, or anything else he could imagine. The subject matter was vital to solving the anonymous pieces of paper.

When Tyson looked up from the letter, lost in his own thoughts, the mailman had gone. Tyson wasn’t sure when he’d left, but he would see him with another letter tomorrow if history was repeating itself. The first had arrived on a Monday, the second on Tuesday, and now the third on Wednesday.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, Tyson was surprised that the post office could operate efficiently. Some of his own mail had gone awry, and he’d spent two hours on the phone trying to pay a missing electric bill. Was there a reason to make the letters come one per day instead of all at once? What purpose did that serve?

Yet these odd missives had come from New York State, a far cry from Raleigh, North Carolina, where Tyson lived. Tyson didn’t even know anyone in New York State outside of a few college friends in the city. Maybe someone had confused him with another person; however, Tyson kept ruling that out. The letter was addressed to him with his name and the correct address. Tyson wasn’t the most popular name in the US; he’d been named after his mother’s maiden name. She’d wanted her name to go on, even if it wouldn’t be a surname. So the chances of another guy named Tyson in the Raleigh area were small to nothing.

Tyson looked up from the letter again, hearing a car door slam. Will was walking up the driveway and waved.

“Did you get your letter?” Will asked, eyeing the paper Tyson held in his hands.

“Yeah, what are you doing here so early?” Tyson asked.

Will worked in healthcare, something they had shared until recently, and he worked those long hours as well. Yet here was Will standing outside of his home at 9:30am. Will was juggling a lot these days. His wife had announced her pregnancy a few months ago. Will was trying to do his job, stay healthy, and find time for his soon-to-be-growing family.

Tyson smiled at his friend as he walked closer. He’d known Will from his neighborhood growing up, and they’d gone to the same high school and later the same university. Will was one of the few people who had known Tyson’s parents before they passed away. That time had been traumatic, and Will’s friendship helped him get through that dark time.

Even though Will was a sophomore to Tysons’ senior in college, they’d been in some of the same classes in healthcare management and patient care. With his round glasses and serious air, Will looked like the type who would be studying two years ahead of his age.

However, he’d been stuck on a nursing program picnic with Will. They’d won the three-legged race. Tyson had never expected to learn that the studious Will was also coordinated and athletic. Later in the day, Will won the swimming competition across the lake, showing off a body that looked like he had never studied. Tyson was still surprised at the things Will could do with so little effort. Things came much harder for Tyson.

“I couldn’t wait,” he confessed. “This is like one of those books where the hero goes off to find adventure after they’re given a clue. Someone else gets wind of the hunt and comes after the hero. You’d better be careful. I’m planning on asking you to be the baby’s godfather. I don’t think you can do that if you’re dead.”

Tyson laughed. “You’ve been reading too many of those books, I think. There’s no adventure here. They’ve just got the wrong guy.”

“They have the right guy,” Will said. “And the right address. It’s not like a ‘John Smith’ letter to a PO Box. You’ve lived here for a couple of years, so they know your address. Whatever this is, it’s not a fluke. Someone wants you to have these letters.”

Tyson tried to think of when he’d moved here. It had been just after he’d broken up with Megan; she hadn’t been the right girl for him, and he’d found a new place just on the outskirts of Raleigh that suited him. Not too big, but not too small for two people—if that ever happened. The solicitude of the house had been perfect after his parents passed away.

He felt a pang of jealousy as he traveled back through that memory. Will was two years younger than Tyson. Yet Will had a beautiful wife, parents who loved him, a baby on the way, and an executive job in healthcare. Tyson was very single and had quit his nursing job because the demands had grown too much in the past years.

“Okay, so they’re sending them to me. To what end?” Tyson asked. “What’s in it for them? If they have something to say, why not say it? If they want me dead, why warn me?”

Will, who had been studying the letter, looked up. “Damned if I know. Look, I do have to get to work. You’re right about that. Let’s do drinks on Friday night. Bethany is going out with her friends. They’re throwing her a baby shower. That means I have to go to the shower—or sit home alone. Drinks with you sound better than either of those options.”

Tyson laughed and nodded. “Nice to know where I rate on the scale.”

“Man, as long as you’re getting those letters, you’re number one on my scale. I could use a fun puzzle to solve. Beats paperwork and honey-do lists, hands down. Since I’m thinking of it, bring the letters, too. Maybe we can figure out what they are.”

On Thursday and again on Friday, Tyson received a letter that he couldn’t decipher.

Chapter 2

Will had selected an upscale bar with tons of professional people celebrating the end of the week. Tyson walked into the bar and sat down at a booth. He checked his watch, but he was right on time.

He looked at his phone, but Will hadn’t texted him. He must be on his way. Tyson scanned the bar again and saw Addison and a friend walk into the bar. He’d noticed her, but she hadn’t bothered to look his way. Several guys immediately approached them, and Tyson took his loss. Figures.

He turned around and checked his phone, pretending to be interested in it more than Addison – just in case she noticed him.

He looked up when he heard a voice. “You’ve been waiting long?” Will asked as he slid in on the other side of the booth. “This is a lot of room for just the two of us,” he said with a grin. “Expecting a party?”

He jerked his head in the direction of Addison, who was now talking to two men. Her female friend had disappeared for the moment.

“Nope, I’m sure that I’m in the friend zone there.”

“You don’t even really try, Tyson. You’re not a bad-looking guy. I’ve seen you flirt with women and have them laughing at all your jokes. I’m sure you’d have a chance with Addison if you tried.”

“Not bad-looking?” Tyson asked with a smirk. “That’s hardly the recommendation I’d want to put on my resume.”

Tyson knew the statement was true. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes. The time off work had allowed him to keep the scruff on his cheeks, but he’d just had a haircut that exposed the skin on the sides of his head. He was a slim six-foot-tall and tried to keep up with the exercise program he’d promised to maintain after he quit.

And he knew he could meet some women tonight if he tried. However, there would be small talk and the typical dates questions that had the typical answers. He wasn’t in the mood for those interactions. Maybe the time off had made him rusty at such exchanges, or maybe Tyson had his mind on someone, in particular, someone who was ignoring him at the moment.

Will shook his head and took a sip of what Tyson assumed was whiskey, Will’s favorite nurse-a-drink liquor. “Man, you make me glad that I’m married. I am too old for all this.”

The words stung since Will was two years younger than his friend. Tyson tried not to compare himself to Will, who had the life that Tyson wanted, but on some occasions, especially when Addison Prentice was in the room, he had more difficulty keeping those emotions in check.

Tyson turned and shrugged in Will’s direction.

“I got two more letters since I saw you, and I really didn’t want to try to show you these while we’re surrounded by other people.”

“Very MI-6 of you, Bond. More numbers, or did we actually get some letters to make words?” Will arched an eyebrow, doing his best imitation of a Bond nemesis.

Tyson laughed. “Not the type of letters that explain what is going on here. The last one, the letter that came today, had an equation on it. So it wasn’t all numbers.” Tyson unlocked his phone and opened the photo album app. He found today’s note and pushed the device across the table. Will almost grabbed at it.

Will’s eyes sparkled at the news. He liked a good puzzle, and this was turning out to be a complicated affair. “Do you think they’re telling you to bone up on your math skills? Need an Algebra refresher class?”

“Why did you say Algebra? How do you know that it’s not calculus or trigonometry?” Tyson asked, feeling more intrigued by the last note and his friend’s assumptions. The others were all numbers separated by decimal points and dashes. This one could actually lead to something.

“Well, I really didn’t think about it when I first saw the equation, but it’s a fairly simple equation, three numbers divided by three and another set of numbers divided by three. There are no exponents and no equal signs, so it seems less involved and not as high-level as a calculus problem—and certainly no derivatives. I hated those things.”

Tyson was about to speak when another voice said, “What are you two up to, sharing a phone like that? Are you trying to find Tyson a date on Tinder?”

Addison sat down beside Tyson and shouldered him to get him to move over. “You should not be encouraging him,” she said, looking at Will.

Will took a sip of his whiskey. “Who says it’s not for me?” he asked her before flagging down the waitress to order Addison and her friend drinks.

While Will chatted with the cocktail waitress, Tyson took a long look at Addison. She was beautiful, with light brown hair down to her shoulders dappled with blonde streaks. Tyson knew that her locks had the help of a stylist, but the effect made her blue eyes more intense and the full red lips more interesting. No surprise that Tyson was not the only guy in the bar looking at her.

Will finished the drink order, and Addison looked at him. “You’re a good guy, Will. That’s why you wouldn’t be swiping away on Tinder.”

Tyson wondered if that comment was partially meant for him, suggesting that he couldn’t settle down and be monogamous.

Addison’s friend approached the table, and she sat down next to Will, who had already slid closer to the center of the circular booth.

At this close range, Tyson could see that it was Mandy, one of Addison’s best friends and the daughter of James, a guy he had met briefly on more than one occasion.

The waitress came back with the drinks. She gave Will another whiskey, and the two women received beverages that Tyson didn’t recognize. He wondered how Will could know how to request their drink orders without asking. He would have to find out later. Will hadn’t bought a drink for him, so Tyson knew that he’d have to get his own in a few minutes.

“So if you’re not swiping right, what are both of you doing with that phone?” Addison asked, getting the discussion back to her original question. She definitely could be tenacious; Tyson had noticed this on more than one occasion.

“Tyson has been getting some odd letters in the mail. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on with them,” Will said. The alcohol had apparently loosened his lips.

Tyson was surprised at how to open up about the matter. He would have been more circumspect in the discussion with the two women.

Addison was a former law enforcement officer. If Tyson was being lured into some crime or being accused of a crime in some obscure manner, he really didn’t want to notify the police this early on.

“Let me see?” she asked, holding out her hand. Will handed Tyson’s phone over to the woman. The app was open, and Tyson hoped that she kept to only the images related to the letters.

She skimmed through the photos and then went back and looked at each one for a long time. Tyson waited for her to say something, but she didn’t speak for a while. She nursed her drink and looked pensive.

Mandy was the first one to speak. “Give. What did you see there that has you worried?”

Addison took another sip of her drink. “The location bothers me.”

“What do you mean by that?” Tyson asked, curious to see what she had come up with. This waiting strategy interested him more in what was being sent to him.

“Yeah, the postage mark on the outside of the envelope.”

Tyson decided that having a drink was probably helpful for this process since Addison didn’t seem to be in a hurry to share what she knew. Asking Addison to slide out, Tyson went to the bar to get his drink.

He was actually glad for the time. What had Addison seen that he had missed? He credited her law enforcement experience, but in ten minutes, she’d seen a clue that he hadn’t seen in five days. Tyson would definitely have to up his game if he wanted to stay up with the rest of them.

Going back to his seat, he looked around to see what was being discussed.

Will looked at Addison. “Why don’t you tell him?”

Addison sighed. “Well, here’s my thought. The person behind this stunt has taken a lot of care to not be discovered. No return address. Will said that he doubts there are any usable fingerprints and things like that.”

“Right, so what does that tell you?”

Addison stopped and took a sip of her drink. “It tells me that he, and it could be a she for all I know, doesn’t want to be found.”

“I’m with you so far.” Tyson was intrigued by where her brain was going. He could easily keep up, but he couldn’t see her ultimate destination here.

“Then why a small town in New York?” Addison asked. “While you were getting a drink, I looked up this town. Ten thousand residents. Why not mail them from the city, millions of people there, Philly, Newark, or DC? All of those are in easy driving distance and would have made it so much easier – and so much more anonymous.”

“Maybe he lives there. He might not be able to get around very easily. He could be too poor to afford the transportation to any of those cities.” Tyson could see her arguments, but he’d already thought of these things.

“You need to take this to the police in Medina. They’d have an answer for you in no time. Either a regular customer will be going to the post office, and there will be only one every day—or even better yet, a stranger will be coming into the post office every day. The people in that town know everyone’s business. You’d have a name in less than 24 hours.”

“I asked Herman,” Tyson said, pointing out that he’d been proactive.

Addison was obviously making an attempt not to laugh. “Your mailman? He’s not qualified to investigate a postal crime, and I guarantee that he’s never been to Medina.”

Tyson felt the annoyance build inside of him. He didn’t appreciate the ridicule of his efforts so far when he hadn’t exactly had a life in investigations. “So someone should go to Medina and ask them about the letters. Then what? We have no idea what they mean. It’s not a crime to send weird letters to people.”

Mandy set her drink down on the table a little too hard, and the alcohol landed on the table around her glass. “Locations. Of course, it has to be locations.”

Tyson looked down at his drink, wondering if he’d had too much on an empty stomach. He’d forgotten about lunch today. “What?”

Mandy sighed, looked at the remnants of her drink, and then looked at the three people sitting with her. “Any crime has means, motive, and opportunity. I’m assuming that something fishy is going on here. Otherwise, the person behind the letters would just text you and be done with it.”

Will smiled at her. “That’s a bit of a leap,” he said. “A crime? What if it’s a joke? One of those puzzles like the puzzle room?”

Mandy gave him a crooked smile that merely tolerated other opinions. “If it was a puzzle room, they would have advertised to more than one person. Have you heard of any others? I haven’t. It would be on the news. If it’s a joke, it’s a lot of work for someone to go through without any notion if Tyson would even go through with it. He could have chucked them all and gone about his day.”

Tyson grimaced a little. He had thrown away the first letter without any qualms. It had been recycled and collected before he got the second letter—or the third through fifth. So he’d lost access to it, and unlike the others, he hadn’t recorded it.

“I thought of the same thing,” Addison confessed. “I know it’s my background, but my mind went to drugs or contraband.”

“So then, how did you get to locations?” Tyson asked. While he had no desire to get involved in a crime, Tyson felt excited about getting out of Raleigh for a while. His only potential job interview had not responded yet. Tyson was beginning to give up hope of hearing about a good job soon.

“Means, well, we don’t know what the crime is. So we’re very limited in what we could tell. So the person who sent this certainly couldn’t provide us a clue for the means. And the same goes for the motive. We can list the potential motives: gain, jealousy, love or lust, power, hatred, but none of those tells us much. Tyson doesn’t have much – no offense, Tyson, but we can’t rule out all of them without a crime for context.”

Tyson sat back against the cushion. It was disheartening to hear his own life put out like that. For that matter, he didn’t have love – at the moment—and he didn’t have anyone lusting after him. Motives seemed rather skimpy.

“That leaves opportunity,” Many continued, not realizing that she’d set off the thoughts in Tyson’s mind.

Addison smiled at her friend. “You’re looking at the larger view of the opportunity. Not just an alibi for the person who might be accused, but does the person have access to the location where the crime was committed.”

Mandy smiled. “Exactly. The location.” She stretched the words out like she was teaching small children.

Will’s eyes gleamed, and Tyson could tell that he’d caught on.

Tyson wondered about how one converted numbers to a location, and then, of course, he realized. Latitude and longitude were available as GPS on his phone.

He scrolled back to the first set of numbers in his photos. 40.753685 and -73.999164 – he wondered which was which. He started with them in alphabetic order. The positive number represents the latitude, and the longitude is the negative number.

He’d barely typed them in when Mandy took his phone out of his hand. “Did you get it?” she asked as she started keying in the numbers on her screen.

Tyson pressed the enter button and waited. Mandy did the same.

“New York City,” he exclaimed seconds before Mandy said the same. “More specifically, 275 East 7th Avenue in Manhattan.”

Mandy was still busy, typing in information.

“It’s a multi-story building, and the lowest level of the building is a bank, the Acme Bank,” she said.

Now all of them were typing away; Tyson assumed they were all looking up the bank. His Google search had brought up some photos of the bank. This regal old space looked more like a haven for the robber barons than a contemporary space for electronic transactions. The gilt metalwork and the marble counters did not appear to be of this age. The safe and the deposit boxes were shown behind the wall with old-fashioned locking mechanisms. Tyson wasn’t sure that this was a selling point. He’d rather have current technology where the numbers were entered on a keypad.

He looked up after a few minutes, wondering what this had told them.

Will looked across the table at his friend. “That’s two indications that New York is involved somehow. If we’re going to start somewhere, it probably needs to be there.”

Addison looked at Tyson. He wondered if they all viewed him as the curator of this project since he had received the letters. It was confirmed that the sender had meant for them to go to Tyson, but the sender certainly had to know Tyson would need to involve others. He wasn’t all-knowing by any means. “While we’re there, we need to look at the post office in Medina too. We could get a lead to the person who is sending these.”

Tyson raised an eyebrow. “Do you think there will be more?”

“There’s only one way to tell,” Addison replied. “Time.”

“What about the others?” Tyson asked, realizing that he’d forgotten about the other letters with the excitement of learning what one of them meant. While he was excited about getting out of North Carolina for a while, the number of places would increase the amount of cash he’d need – and he wasn’t working. Now he had two, possibly three, locations to investigate.

“Nothing. I can’t figure them out,” Mandy said as she put down her phone, “but I will ask my dad about this. He’s prepared for anything, and I think he can help.”

Chapter 3

Mandy’s dad was a unique character.

Tyson learned that before James even opened the door. Mandy agreed to drive as she’d indicated that her dad’s place was difficult to find. That was an understatement. They’d taken I-87 out of town and into the less populated area of the Southeast. They'd left the highway on one of the smaller exits and gone onto a two-lane road sandwiched between the deep green forests. The road seemed to go on forever, and the sun spotted the road between the tall trees.

Tyson was confident they’d left the state or were due to hit the ocean soon. Still, after another twenty minutes of driving, Mandy pulled into a long gravel driveway. As it looked more military than personal, the compound had barbed-wire fencing surrounding the home and yard. The top of the fence was covered with wire and sharpened pieces of metal that did not encourage visitors.

Addison and Will hadn’t spoken for the last few miles, and Tyson wondered what was going through their heads. He understood now why Mandy had wanted to come. If he’d come alone, Tyson would have driven home without making it to the front porch.

Were they having the same second thoughts as him, or were they looking forward to a potential adventure? Tyson recognized that they were just tag-alongs, given that the only contact by the person or persons unknown had been delivered to him via letter. This shadow on the other side might not even know that Addison and Will existed.

And that pressure weighed on Tyson. He valued his friends and didn’t want anything to happen to them. He could be getting his friends into more trouble than they could handle.

They pulled up next to the house, which appeared to have seen better days. The siding needed to be painted, and the grass held bare spots every so often around the yard, round bare spots.

Mandy locked the doors on the car, leaving all of those on the inside without a way out. For a second, Tyson panicked, thinking that this was a trap set by Mandy to get them out into the wilderness. He felt his face flush as he looked out the window.

After a few seconds, Mandy said, “Okay, it’s good to go.” She unlocked the doors. “The mines are electronically turned on or off, and my dad tends to keep them in the on position. He gave me a signal to tell me that we could enter.”

The inside of the house was a stark contrast to the exterior they’d just seen. The modern furniture filled the room with leather and shiny metallic tables. One wall held nothing but servers and computer monitors. Tyson had a good head for computers, but the sheer amount of hardware baffled him. What did Mandy’s father need with this amount of computing power?

He immediately saw the video of the front yard, and now he knew how the man had seen them approach the house—and how he’d identified them. Tyson had not seen any sign of the cameras, which meant that they’d been artfully placed with significant amounts of planning.

The older man put his hand out to Tyson and said, “I’m James, Mandy’s father. I understand you’ve got some letters.”

As briefly as he could, Tyson explained the situation and what they’d deduced so far. The man looked enthralled by the story, and he peppered Tyson with questions when he finished the story.

“Do you have any original letters or envelopes with you?” he asked first. “I’d like to see them.”

Tyson had been instructed by Addison to put each letter and each envelope in a separate plastic bag with a zip top. He’d done so, and he’d brought two of each. Tyson found that he was nearly as suspicious as this man. His plan was to not have all of the clues in the same place simultaneously if he could help it. Then no one else would be able to steal them from Tyson. He’d always have some samples.

The man turned them over repeatedly, looking at both sides and studying something on the letter that had given them the latitude and longitude of the New York City bank.

“Do you see anything?” Tyson asked.

The man looked up and stared at Tyson. The deep blue eyes of the loner captivated Tyson. “Nothing that’s going to help you. The letters were written in Microsoft Word in the standard print and printed on an inkjet printer. I don’t think you’ll find anything there. Too many people have that combination. I suspect that whoever did this chose those options to not be traced.”

“So, nothing from the letters or envelopes?” Tyson asked. He realized at that minute how excited he’d become about this mystery. He had thought of his life as a drudge, a daily grind of getting up, going to work, and coming home to crash. Mysterious letters and other parts of the country were out of his norm.

“I didn’t say that,” James corrected. “I said the letters were nothing special. First, I’m sure you noticed the post office mark. The envelopes are a little different. They’re all the same. Every day, one person going to the post office is bound to cause some talk.”

Tyson nodded. “Yeah, we talked about that.”

“I have some friends up that way who might be able to help you out.” James didn’t look at Tyson now; he studied the envelope again.

“I think we were planning to go up there ourselves,” Tyson replied. “At least I am.” Tyson realized that none of them had discussed the details of what came next. He’d only assumed that they’d be traveling.

“You’ll need a safe place to stay if you go there. First of all, to keep you safe. Plus, you don’t want to stand out. Trust me, if many of us go trotting into town and asking questions, we’ll be the center of attention. If this is dangerous – and it could be—that’s the last thing you want.”

Tyson felt that James had done undercover work and camouflaged work before. This house was a prime example of what he would bring to the table and what he could provide to the team.

Addison spoke up. “I think we need to go to New York City first and check out the bank. That was a clue, after all.”

James snorted. “That’s a clue planted by the people behind this conspiracy. That’s what they want you to chase. They have you look into a bank, knowing that you would all run to the bank in this highly capitalistic society, hoping for money. The postmark can’t be faked. That letter has to be stamped by the machine and sent. No way is some cushy little postal employee going to change the postmark location for someone. Too risky. So, we have a real place and a real clue to follow.” The look he gave Addison was dismissive.

“But there could be money involved,” Addison said quickly.

Tyson knew that both he and Addison were currently out of work. He wondered if their employment status was coloring their decisions in the matter. Were they only interested in the money since they were out of work?

“This was clearly meant to follow a certain path. The letters came in a certain order for a certain reason.”

James snorted again, which made Addison angry. Tyson could see her fists clench as she stood there. He doubted that she’d been questioned too much when Addison had been in law enforcement. She’d probably run the operations—and now, this guy was snorting his amusement at her suggestions.

“A certain path for a certain reason to a certain trap,” he said.

The drive back to Tyson’s house had been quiet. Will hadn’t said much while they’d been at James’ house, and he had said even less on the ride home. Tyson wondered what was going through his friend’s mind. Was he just concerned about getting into a project like this when he had a baby on the way and a wife who would want him home? Maybe he was more concerned about being left out from the group if they found a treasure—especially with a baby on the way and a wife who wanted to stay home with the baby.

When Tyson got out of the car at his house, he felt something was wrong. He couldn’t pinpoint what was giving him this premonition, but he had noticed something or seen a clue that had set off his warning bells.

Now he just needed to figure out what it was.

Tyson took a hockey stick beside the door, a memento of his short days playing hockey in school. He’d always meant to get back to it, but the timing had never seemed to work out. He’d let the chances go while the stick sat by the door.

Now he decided to use it as a weapon to protect him—though he didn’t know from what. He quietly walked through his house, one room at a time, looking for an intruder or more tangible signs that someone had been present. He struggled to find them. Nothing looked moved or rifled. Nothing appeared to be missing.

He stopped the hockey stick above his head when he stepped into the living room. The various pieces of paper had been moved on the coffee table, all shifted to one side – and a single sheet of paper rested in the middle of the wood.

Tyson was worried about picking it up. He feared he was getting as paranoid as James, Mandy’s father. What if the person behind this had put poison or a trap on the paper, making it lethal to the touch? Now that it seemed as if the perpetrator was gone, Tyson put down the hockey stick and found a pair of gloves in the kitchen.

He came back with the latex already covering his hands. Short of acid, he would be safe.

He picked up the paper gently since it could still have fingerprints or some DNA from the letter. He unfolded the page and read the numbers. They resembled the other letters he had received through the mail, but this particular one had been brought in person.

The question Tyson had was whether this note represented the note that he’d thrown away – before he knew the purpose of the missives – or if the sender was now making house calls, which would mean that this person was in Raleigh.

Tyson heard a noise in the front hall, and he jerked to attention. He had not invited anyone, and he certainly wasn’t expecting anyone, not while this was going on. He found the hockey stick and put it up for a strike.

Will walked into the room. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you without the women here. Is that okay?”

Tyson suspected that the last sentence was about the hockey stick. He put it down, slid the note into an envelope, and then zipped it closed. He peeled off the gloves and then handed the clear bag to his friend.

“What’s this? You found another note?” Will asked, looking at both sides of the note. “Have you figured out what this is yet?”

Tyson shook his head. “Just found it. Not sure what it means?”

“I can tell you a few things quickly,” Will said, holding up a handful of mail. “You don’t have any letters from your friend today. The pattern was broken. So, either this is the letter from the mail—and someone else opened it—or this could be the letter you threw away.”

Tyson rolled his eyes. “You act like I should have known that the letters were important. How could I have known that?”

Will laughed. “You keep saying that, but you’ll be sick if we’ve missed out on a fortune because of your cleanliness.”

He pulled out his phone and typed in the numbers on the paper. “Bangor, Maine. He shouted it as though saying, “Eureka.”

“Not what I was expecting,” Tyson replied. “Not at all.”

“What were you thinking it would be?” Will asked in return. “It’s not like we had a lot to go on.”

“I thought it would be somewhere else in New York State. We had two locations there, so I was expecting this to be another one in the same region.”

Will shrugged. “Nope, not even close. We could still go there after we visit New York.”

Tyson noticed that Will had included himself in the discussion of going to New York City. He wasn’t going to deal with that now, but at some point, he would have to point out to his friend that Will’s wife was expecting a baby soon and would likely want him around.

Will pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “First things first.”

Tyson just waited rather than asking who Will was calling. He suspected it was Addison, a long-time friend of Will’s and Mandy’s.

“Hello, James,” he said.

Chapter 4

Somehow Will had talked James into coming to Tyson’s house. He expected it was the challenge of creating a suburban fortress, but Tyson would have none of that. He didn’t want a moat around the house or six-foot-tall wire fences enclosing his yard.

“You call this security?” the older man asked. “You should just swing open the front door and invite them in.” James was looking at the windows, but he’d looked at the doors before this, and he said that he had a few more things to investigate.

“It’s the same make and model as the other houses on the street,” Tyson said, trying to defend his home.

“That only means someone could break in there, but the neighbors don’t have some idiot sending him messages.”

Tyson watched as the man managed to open a window without turning the locks. James laughed and closed the window again. “You need a big dog if you’re not going to do something about this,” James said.

“Will just wanted to know how the person got into the house. See if that told us anything,” Tyson reminded the man. He was getting tired of the non-stop complaints about his home.

“Yeah, he got in through the front door. That’s pretty brazen.” He motioned for Tyson to come to the door. James pointed to a part of the lock and said, “See this? There are a few scratches there. That indicates that the guy used good picklocks and unlocked the door with them.”

“That’s it?” Tyson said, feeling disappointed.

“Hardly,” James said, giving Tyson a skeptical look. “The man was a professional. An amateur would have left scratches all over the place. This guy was careful and just left a couple. You wouldn’t notice that if you didn’t know what you’re looking for.”

“So, he’s good at his job.”

“More than that. It rules out your friend Will. Addison might be good enough at it to do this, but Will is in the clear. Mandy is too. She’s not that skilled, though I’ve tried. I’m suspecting someone with law enforcement training or training from the other side of the law.”

Tyson had to admit that the man knew his stuff. He would never have been able to rule out anyone based on the letter.

“Anything else?” Tyson asked, now curious about the man’s deductions.

“Yeah, this wasn’t from the mail. It was put here by the person who picked the lock.”

Tyson’s eyes grew wide. “How do you know that?”

James pointed at the folds on the paper. “The other sheets had folds that had been pressed down—hard. That comes from the machines that the post office uses. This one has folds, but the folds are looser. They haven’t been creased like the post office ones.”

“So he came here to deliver it?” Tyson said, feeling creeped out again by the thought of the sender being in his house.

“Not only that. The letters are done. There are no more clues to be had here. You can go to New York City whenever you want.” James pronounced the city’s name with a sneer as if he hated it.

“Does that mean you’re not going to New York?” Tyson asked. He had hoped for the older man’s help on the trip. His deductions on the matters both yesterday and today had been instructive. While Tyson could manage somewhat independently, he wanted to have all the brainpower possible to meet this unknown person.

“Not me. Couldn’t get me into that over-commercialized excuse for a city,” he said. “Give me Medina any day of the week.”

Before he could respond, Addison walked into the room. “The front door was unlocked,” she said with a smile as if unlocked doors were an invitation. Tyson had no desire to chastise her, though. She looked gorgeous today with a blouse that complimented her hair and eyes and a pair of khaki pants.

“Do you think I’m too dressed up?” she asked. “I wanted to be dressed nicely enough for the bank and yet comfortable enough for the drive there. I am assuming that we’re driving, right? Money’s a bit tight, and the cost of airfare and lodgings in New York is too dear for me.”

Tyson had assumed the same thing for much the same reasons. He had it planned that he could go about 18 months before needing to find work again. While his last paycheck and the ones before that had carried a hefty amount of overtime and incentives, he had to watch his bills carefully, so he didn’t go overboard.

“Yeah, we’ll drive,” he said. “I haven’t heard from the others yet, though.”

“That’s odd,” she said. “I would have thought they’d be here bright and early to get on the road. I don’t want to be late to whatever is brewing here.”

Tyson took the time to explain the fifth note, which had been replaced on his table last night. “The coordinates are for Bangor, Maine,” he said. “I’m not sure how far from the city or Medina.”

Addison pulled out her phone and had an answer before he could get another sentence out. “It's about eight hours from the city. Medina’s in the opposite direction from Bangor, so it’s about twelve hours by car. We’d have to decide what we want to do driving-wise.”

Tyson admired her efficiency and accuracy. She seemed like the perfect fit for the job. He wondered why she wasn’t employed and left law enforcement. “Yeah, we’ll have to figure out how to get around while we’re there. Have you ever been?” he asked.

“Plenty of times,” she said with a laugh, “though not lately. It’s been a while.”

Tyson just nodded, feeling slightly humbled by her answer. He wondered why he’d never gone farther. He’d never been out of North Carolina, only going to the Outer Banks for his vacations.

“I did a bit of snooping around yesterday after we got home. I was thinking about what those numbers could be. It occurred to me that the bank clue could need either a banking account number or a safety deposit number. So I called and found out,” she said with a smile.

“And they told you, just like that?” Tyson asked. His dealings with the bank had never easily offered information about the bank or the customers.

“Well, two things I offered them made it go faster. I told them of my involvement with the police. I just neglected the part about quitting.”

James, who had been listening quietly, burst out in a laugh. “That’s great. If they offer it to the police, they should be willing to offer it to anyone.”

Addison gave him a big smile, which James returned. Tyson got a strange emotion, watching them smile that way.

“Plus, I wasn’t asking for any account information, just information that could be used to identify a series of numbers. All checking accounts are 14 characters long, and all safety deposit box numbers are five digits long.”

James gave her another smile. “None of the numbers were fourteen characters long. There are some five-digit numbers on the page, obviously.”

Tyson looked at the older man. “How do you know that?”

“Got copies of the letters from you when you were at my house,” he said. “I copied them onto my phone while you were there. So I just went through them and found what I was looking for.”

“Thanks,” Addison said with a smile. “I thought that was the case, but I couldn’t remember the numbers exactly.”

Tyson now looked at both of them. “You have a phone?” he asked James.

The older man laughed. “Of course I do. I’m just careful how I use it. VPNs all the way and lots of protection against any snoopers.”

“Like you,” Tyson said with regret. If he couldn’t keep the images safely on his phone, anyone could take them and get to the treasure first.

“And you memorized them?” he asked Addison.

“Yeah, I’m not as good as I used to be. I couldn’t remember all the digits or the spacing, but like I said, I was pretty certain that I didn’t see a fourteen-digit number.”

James gave Tyson a smile. “We’re all in this together. You have to trust all of us to make this happen.”

Tyson wondered exactly how trusting he should be.

Will didn’t arrive for another forty-five minutes. “Sorry I’m running late, but Bethany wasn’t feeling well, and I had to get her settled before coming here.” The dark circles around his eyes suggested that he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

“Is she okay?” Addison asked. Tyson couldn’t imagine her being pregnant without having all the latest gadgets and a wealth of knowledge about what to do when she wasn’t feeling well.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine. She just didn’t sleep well.”

“Maybe I’ll just call and see if there’s anything I can do for her?” Addison replied.

“That’s not necessary,” Will said much too fast. “She’s probably asleep at the moment.”

No one said anything after that, but Tyson could tell the three people hearing this last statement doubted its truth.

“So, when are we leaving?” Will asked. His eyes sparkled, and he had a silly grin on his face.

“In a little bit,” Tyson replied. “We’re waiting on Mandy.”

Addison looked at Will. “How did you get time off of work? I thought you were really busy right now—and with the baby too?”

Tyson got the gist of what Addison was saying. She was hinting that Will and Bethany had likely argued about taking time off for a treasure hunt when the baby was due in a few months, and those days might be precious.

Of course, Will’s work might have paternity leave, but every day off would be a chance to stay home and help out, take the baby to a check-up appointment, or hang out with the family. This trip, which Tyson felt would end with an empty Capone’s vault, would be fun but not profitable.

Part of him envied Will for having a perfect life, but he didn’t wish to be in the position of choosing adventure or a happy family at home. He wasn’t sure what he would do in those circumstances.

A knock came from the door, and Will went to answer it. Tyson suspected that his friend had wanted to escape Addison’s question, which had gone unanswered. Tyson felt he’d have to watch out for the former law enforcement officer, or she would know all of his own secrets before the trip was over. He doubted that he’d know all of hers.

Mandy and Will were whispering when they came back into the room. In their younger days, Tyson thought that they would be fast friends forever, but now he didn’t know the day-to-day details of what each of them did. There indeed were a lot of secrets between everyone these days.

However, Mandy didn’t wait long to uncover her own secret. “I can’t go.”

Chapter 5

All of the others in the room were shocked by the revelation. Tyson’s own reaction was less charitable than the others, he suspected. Mandy had never been known for making the best life decisions. Her decision gave him more optimism that he was making the right choice here. Of course, he had less to lose at the moment.

Having met her father, he now suspected that James had played a role in the woman’s poor life skills. James had suspicions and a rigid line of what he’d do and what he wouldn’t do. If some of that had spilled into his daughter, it would explain some of Mandy’s choices.

“If I went, I’d lose my job, and frankly, this is the best job I’ve had in as long as I can remember. I don’t want to lose it.” Tyson wondered how much of that was true. He knew that Mandy had racked up a number of charges in the last few years. She’d taken a boyfriend to London as a birthday present, only to be dumped by the same guy a few weeks later.

Tyson could understand that reasoning, but it was so plain. She was missing the potential for a great fortune. He went back again to the very different responses of Will and Mandy. Who was right, and who was wrong? Tyson guessed that they wouldn’t know for quite some time.

Mandy looked at James. “Dad, you’re going to have to go in my place. I know you hate big cities, but you’re the only member of this group who knows the people with the house. We’re going to ask a big favor of them, to stay in their house.  Without you, I doubt these people will open their doors to strangers.”

Knowing James’ own attitudes, Tyson wasn’t even sure if James’ friends would open the door to James. He seemed to live by a paranoid mantra.

James didn’t speak for a minute. “Are you sure that you can’t go? I can go talk to the people who own the business.”

Mandy declined, but there was an adamant tone to her voice. That made Tyson wonder why she was staying home, finances, and a new boyfriend?

“You don’t have a job. I mean, you’re retired. You can take off and go in an instant if you need to. I can’t. I have responsibilities here.”

James made a noise that Tyson made to be in agreement.

Will spoke next. “Mandy, if you’re staying here, can you drop by and see how Bethany’s doing. I’m worried about her and the baby.”

Mandy nodded. “You’re able to go.”

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Will said enthusiastically.

James cleared his throat. “You’re going to need at least four changes of clothes. You’ll need boots for Maine, good walking shoes, maybe tennis shoes for New York City, and a comfortable pair for the rest of the time. Bring your phone, a laptop, or a similar device if you need connectivity. You’ll need a few hundred dollars in cash too. Assuming it is a guy, this guy already knows too much about us. He knew where Tyson lived, and I suspect he knew that he wasn’t employed now. If we use cash, we might be able to escape some of his detection. We'll be sitting geese if we use cards, money orders, or something like that. Be back here in an hour?”

Tyson didn’t have to wait the full hour to return. His wardrobe these days was limited. He’d relied mainly on scrubs when he was in nursing, so he hadn’t bothered with an extensive wardrobe. After quitting, buying a new wardrobe seemed like a luxury that he couldn’t afford. Tyson looked at his phone, deciding how much he could afford to spend on this trip. Gas, food, cheap lodgings, because James surely had a reason why they couldn’t stay first class. All of that took cash.

He decided on a sum and swung by the bank to pick up the money. He was back at the house in forty-five minutes.

James was already there and sitting in his living room. The man’s over-familiarity was disconcerting. Had he been sitting there the entire time, or had James taken the time to browse through Tyson’s possessions?

Tyson tried to think of everything in each room that could be embarrassing or upsetting to James. He didn’t have much in either category, but he valued his privacy.

James held up a small bag. “I came prepared. Besides, I’d be holding everyone up if I had to go back to my place and come back.”

Tyson looked at his watch and sat down across the coffee table from the guest. “I like a guy who thinks ahead,” he said.

James just smiled. Tyson wondered if the trip would be hundreds of miles of James’ wordless expressions.

Addison and Will both arrived back in the next few minutes, and they decided on Tyson’s SUV for the trip. He’d filled up the car two days ago, so the gas tank was full and ready to go.

Addison had decided to sit up front with Tyson for the first leg of the trip, and the two other men sat in the back. They were nearly to the Virginia border before someone spoke. Despite having satellite radio, the foursome had not been able to agree on music, so Addison had settled for a very mellow rock station that Tyson worried would put him to sleep.

Finally, James cleared his throat and spoke. “So I’m retired, so I know I don’t have any pressing responsibility at home, but what are your all’s excuses?”

Tyson was surprised that he’d spoken first. He had been sure that Addison would be the first to start a discussion.

“You’re not married?” Will said. Tyson knew that the man’s mind was on his own situation. Still, from Tyson’s perspective, that question seemed loaded with potential trouble.

“Nah. I was for a while—Mandy’s mom, you know—but we split up about when Mandy got out of high school. I’m sure she’s told you about it. She wanted to see the world and travel. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I started building my compound around that time, and she had no desire to live there. So, we went our separate ways.”

Tyson wasn’t going to ask, but he was curious how James had the money to retire after a divorce. While he didn’t have an exact age on the older man, Tyson had guessed him to be around 50. The words he used, and the cultural reference made him seem of a certain timeframe.

That would mean he’d have decades still to live, with no work and a rather large deduction courtesy of the divorce. Maybe this trip was about more than helping his daughter’s friends –or putting his survival skills to use. He could need money and lots of it. That would mean that James needed money, which made him a risk, and he felt that this would be profitable, which meant they would all need to be careful.

Tyson stopped his ruminations and brought his mind back to the conversation.

“What about you, Addison?” James asked. The man’s tone was light and flirty.

Tyson was surprised to think that James could be interested in someone his daughter’s age, but he’d seen too many couples in the ER who had been just that. Young women bring in their husbands because of a heart attack or other middle-aged maladies.

“I was in law enforcement for a while, but then I had to get out of it. Things were getting too heavy, and I wanted to do something else.” Addison looked out the window, and Tyson noticed that he couldn’t see her expression at the moment. Was that intentional?

“All that crime too much for you?” he asked. He said it with a laugh, but the sound was brittle, not jovial.

“The paperwork, the corruption, the sexism,” she said. “If I never hear another handcuff joke, I’ll be happy.” She turned slightly to the side, and now Tyson could see her expression. She looked sadden and –wistful, maybe? Not at all like his own attitude towards his hiatus.

James laughed with her, but it was a heartier laugh that didn’t have an undertone.

Will piped up before anyone else could speak. “I guess I’m the only one in the car with a job,” he said.

James looked at the man sitting next to him. “How exactly did you get this much time off? This could be a few weeks before it’s settled.”

“We’re allowed to bank our time off. I haven’t been taking much time due to the work-from-home situation. So I have quite a bit set aside.” Will went on to talk about his wife, the baby, and all the things he was looking forward to. Tyson had heard all of this before, so he tuned out to handle the directions.

They were almost to Fredericksburg when they pulled into a rest stop. Will was the only one with change. The others all had big bills from the ATMs. So he bought some candy and drinks for everyone for the next leg of the trip.

Tyson sat on a bench, watching the cars go by when Will came out of the restroom. “So, what do you think we’ll find in New York City?” he asked.

Tyson shrugged. “Not sure. Not sure I care.”

Will bit his lip like he would say something, but instead, he just stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked back to the car.

On the next leg of the trip, Will had offered to drive, and James sat up front. That left Tyson and Addison in the back. Will gave Tyson a wink, presumably about the seating arrangement, as he stepped into the SUV.

The group apparently had decided that it was Tyson’s time to talk about himself. James had asked some pointed questions about the pandemic and its effect on the medical community. Tyson avoided those questions just as he had for months. He didn’t want to talk about his job or the hardships of the last few months.

The workload was intense, with a filled intensive care unit and two of his friends passing away. He’d seen a coworker never bounce back from the disease, and finally, the stress had been too much. He’d signed on to help people get better, not triage them in the hallway. The demands and the hours had just overwhelmed him.

It was nearly 10pm when they arrived in Brooklyn. Like James had described, the place was an old-fashioned home that sat not far from the subway line. James had explained to Tyson that parking in Manhattan would likely cost him more than a hotel.

“Welcome to our house,” said the male half of the couple. “How was the drive?”

James made small talk with his friends while Tyson and others looked around. The neighborhood was relatively quiet except for cars whizzing past on the nearby highway. The sky was dark, which might portend rain tomorrow, but Tyson didn’t care. He was curious to see what the city would bring, the skyscrapers he’d only seen in the movies, and the other landmarks that were so familiar but never witnessed.

Tyson figured that Will and Addison, leaning against the SUV, had seen all this before and weren’t excited about the return to New York. They’d be in a hurry to solve the mystery of the first site and then move on to the others.

Neither of them looked at Tyson as he wandered up and down the block. He’d certainly had nothing like this in nursing, where he rarely went off the floor where he was stationed. Despite the ride, he was full of energy, and he wanted to start a real adventure.

The clouds had seemed to part, and even with the lights around him, Tyson could see a triangle of stars, realizing something.

Will and Addison were laughing when he went over to them. “Will,” he said in a whisper, “could that be what the equation is?” He pointed in the direction of the stars that made a three-sided figure.

“A triangle,” Will asked. “Yeah, I mean it could. The equation has three X values and three Y values, suggesting a two-dimensional, three-vertices figure.”

Tyson rolled his eyes. “I’ll take your word for that.”

Will laughed. “Well, I have some bad news for you, though. If you are looking for three points to make a triangle, you’re missing one of the vertices. We only have two points so far, the bank in Manhattan and Bangor, Maine.”

“What about the Post Office in upstate New York?” he asked, thinking of the post office and the desire to visit it soon. Maybe that site was serving as the third point.”

Will smiled. “I already tried that, but it ends up nowhere. I can’t imagine that’s what we’re looking for. I think that at some point, we’ll get a third set of coordinates, and then we’ll have the three sides of the triangle.”

“Couldn’t we determine the triangle's third point?” he asked. Tyson pointed to the sky again and showed how the straight lines had to cross, given two of the three points.

“That could work to narrow it down, but we’d have at least a set of points on each side of those two points and an arc of potential points on those sides. So, it reduces the number of destinations, but it’s still too many.” Will shrugged.

Tyson walked back to where James was still talking to the homeowners. They all stopped talking when he approached. Tyson wasn’t sure to be suspicious, offended, or curious by the abrupt stop in their conversation.

“What time do you want to get up tomorrow?” Tyson asked, looking at James.

“About eight a.m. should be great,” James replied. He looked at his friends. “Do you have an analog clock?”

Tyson assumed that this was part of James’ strategy not to use phones, which had GPS and tracking potential. After all, he was behaving like the government and business entities were following him every breath.

The lady nodded. “Of course we do.” She laughed as if she’d known James’ peculiarities for a long time.

“Great.”

James called Will and Addison over as the couple gave them a brief tour of the house. The house had four bedrooms, making it easier for everyone to split up. Will and Tyson agreed to share a room since they’d known each other for years. That left room for the owners, another for James, and a fourth for Addison.

Chapter 6

Tyson heard the knock at the door before Will did. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly eight am. He rolled out of bed; Will heard the noise and opened one eye. “It can’t be that early, can it?” he asked.

“Maybe today we’ll solve the puzzle,” Tyson said, opening the blinds so the light could get in.

Will turned over in the bed and covered his head with a pillow. “I don’t think so,” he mumbled under the covers.

“You don’t think we’ll learn anything?” Tyson asked, feeling that Will had suddenly started doubting the entire quest. He was disappointed, especially given that Will had taken off time from work to go with them. He now sounded defeatist.

“I think we will learn something here,” Will replied, “but we’ll need to determine how that information fits into what we know and what we need to know. This will not be our only puzzle or the only information we’ll need to contemplate.”

“Those are some pretty big words for this early in the morning,” Tyson replied with a chuckle. He headed to the bathroom to get cleaned up. He only took a few minutes in the shower and made his way back to his room so that the others could get dressed as well.

Given that they were going to a bank today, Tyson decided to use one of his nicer outfits. He’d want to look professional if he went into a bank to request information. He knew it would be an uphill battle to get the information out of the bank. They were not likely to want to share what they had.

Tyson sat downstairs and waited for the others. Mrs. Meenach, as he learned was her name, had prepared a feast for breakfast. He could smell the bacon and sausage before he made it down the stairs, but he was surprised to see waffles and pancakes on the table. They were definitely planning for a hungry crew today. 

Tyson had slept with his phone under his bed, just to be on the safe side. He wondered how much the Meenachs knew about the puzzle or the clues that had been given to them. People heard about puzzles and hidden treasures, seeing dollar signs. That combination did not bring out the best in human nature.

James came down next. He didn’t speak much, not really giving Tyson a chance to ask James how he knew these people or how much he’d shared with them about their adventures in New York City. This gap in his knowledge made him nervous about saying too much in the house. What should he talk about with these strangers? Small talk, or will they know more?

Tyson decided to stay silent and not put his foot in his mouth. He’d learned the art of small talk via nursing, where he could be perky and all smiles despite the worst prognosis. The food was delicious, and he was working on his second plate when Addison and Will came down.

He wondered about their timing. Had they been upstairs talking about what the bank might say? Tyson filled his mouth again and vowed to stop thinking about the others and their motivations.

Will looked like the professional he was in real life. He’d apparently included a suit, white shirt, and tie with his clothing. Grabbing a cup of coffee, Will sat down without a plate.

“Is that all you’re having?” James asked him. “It could be hours before we can eat again, especially if they allow us to open the safety deposit box.”

“Or the checking account,” Addison corrected him.

Given that they were talking about the bank and the possible accounts available to them, Tyson had to assume that the Meenachs knew at least some of what was happening. Still, he wasn’t going to spill the beans.

Addison grabbed a plate that held a level of food between Will’s coffee only and Tyson’s second plate of food. Usually, she was far more outgoing than this. Other than her greetings when she came downstairs, she had not spoken to anyone at breakfast. Tyson wondered what was up.

The foursome finished their breakfasts in silence. James collected the plates and silverware and took them into the kitchen.

Tyson heard him speaking to Mrs. Meenach. He distinctly heard him talk about the bank and the safety deposit box. While Tyson had never explicitly told his friends to keep everything to themselves, he’d assumed that no one would talk about this matter to outsiders. Yet James was definitely sharing at least a portion of the story with their hosts.

For a moment, Tyson worried that James had coerced them into helping him steal the purported treasure. He took a deep breath and looked down at his cup of coffee. All of this adventure was beginning to play with his mind.

Mrs. Meenach gave them explicit instructions on how to get to the bank. Apparently, the route from Brooklyn to East 7th was reasonably straightforward, with only a few turns here and there.

They made it to the bank by a little after ten am between the four of them. Via discussions, they decided that Will would be the one to represent them in the bank. He looked the most like a professional who would be interested in banking and accounts. Tyson suggested that he go to the bank and inquire about a new checking account. That would allow him to be present if anything happened.

Addison made an impassioned plea that she be the one to interrogate the staff. She had a background in law enforcement, and she flashed the badge that she had apparently taken from her last job. The effect was immediate.

Tyson agreed that Addison made a formidable figure. She borrowed Will’s jacket to look more professional. The overall look was impressive. She walked into the bank, and a few seconds later, Tyson followed her inside.

He asked a teller for the person in charge of new accounts. A young woman, probably a couple of years younger than Tyson, introduced herself. She was Miranda Keller, and she offered him coffee or tea as they started the paperwork.

About ten minutes into the process, Tyson got a text from Addison. Apparently, she’d been given minimal information and was told to bring back a warrant.

Tyson texted back, “So now what?” and he made a hasty explanation that the text required his immediate attention at work. He graciously told Miranda that he would need to return later and finish the interview process for the accounts. She nodded, looking slightly hurt, and shook his hand as he left.

He saw none of the group as he walked out of the bank. He stood on the corner, took a deep breath, and waited. Surely someone in the group would text him again or come back to get him. He was getting a bit paranoid, but he wondered if something had happened to them after asking about the checking account and the safety deposit box.

Tyson was about to head back to the subway station, provided that he could find it, when his phone chimed.

Addison had sent him a message. “If you’ve finished with your young woman, we’re down the street at the coffee shop.” She sent a photo of the building, which Tyson saw at the far end of the street.

He stood there for a moment, enjoying the tinge of jealousy. He liked that he had developed a relationship with Miranda, albeit nothing that would get them into the mystery accounts. Still, Tyson had charmed her enough that he might be able to learn something.

Addison had apparently struck out; Tyson thought she could charm anyone or anything, but she had met her match in the bank manager.

He looked up and down the street again, seeing the old-fashioned buildings that had been here a century or more, and wondered if their old propriety had soaked into the people who worked here. It would make the task of getting information from anyone far more complex.

Chapter 7

The rest of his crew was sitting in a booth, each with a beverage. James and Will were drinking coffee, and Addison had a cup of tea whose scent was alluring.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Pomegranate and lemon,” she said with a smile. “Have I tempted you? These two would have nothing to do with it.”

Tyson laughed. He’d expect nothing less from Will, who was set in his ways at such a young age, and James, who probably suspected anything other than black coffee being spiked by a conspiracy of coffee growers.

He found a black tea with a fruit infusion. After all, he was in a strange city and staying with people he didn’t know. He might as well live it up.

When the waiter brought the tea in front of him, Tyson waited before speaking until the man had left. He realized that James’ suspicious attitude had begun to affect him.

“So, I guess this is the end of the road for this clue?” Tyson said and then took a sip of the tea. The drink was far sweeter than he imagined or expected. Not bad, overall, but not an experience Tyson would try again. He wondered how he would feel at the end of this trip. Perhaps the same, or would he be happy with the results.

Addison scoffed. “It can’t be. The whole puzzle is worthless if we’re expected to know something or have things that we don’t have. We’re missing out on something.”

Will cleared his throat. “Tell Tyson what the bank manager told you. I think he missed out on that story.”

Addison laughed. “Yes, he was too busy getting his account checked out.”

Tyson noticed the hint of jealousy in her tone again, and now he wondered if she was jealous of him. Tyson had no idea why. She could nab any guy she wanted. By his own admission, Tyson wasn’t hard on the eyes, but he certainly wasn’t in her league.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he nearly missed her story. The bank manager had told her that there were no checking accounts associated with a number provided on one of the letters. Still, they did have a safety deposit box with the five-digit number on one of the others. The hint with the GPS information for New York City had held a five-digit number on it. So, they were able to identify the potential box.

However, she could not have access to the box. The security at the bank required the box holder to have a key. This, combined with the other key held by the bank, would allow access to the box. Both keys had to be physically present for the box to be opened. Without the key, they could not move forward in the matter.

Will signaled for another cup of coffee. “Well, it’s been fun, but we have to go back home now.” His face showed the dejection of failing so quickly.

James slapped a hand down on the table. “Don’t give up so easily. You’re missing the point here.”

Tyson thought he saw where James was going with this. “You mean that the other hints sent to me can answer part of the riddle here?”

James nodded. “If you listened to what Addison said carefully, she was able to get as far as she could because there was additional information on the hint with the latitude and longitude for the bank. The hints did not leave us high and dry. The hints are there, but in code, in a riddle. We have to solve that riddle to move forward. So let’s see if we can solve the mystery. I don’t want to leave New York without whatever is in that safety deposit box. “

Tyson smiled. “It shouldn’t be that difficult. I mean, there are only five letters in all. So, two of them have already been identified as locations, New York City, the box number, and the one for Bangor. We can scratch them out. The New York City one does not have any additional information on it. The Bangor one is just a location, nothing else. We scratch those, and we’re down to three.”

Will spoke up. “There’s one that looks like an equation as well. I suspect that’s tied to the locations and a triangle – like we discussed the other night. So we only have two more letters left. Let’s start with one of those and see if we can find anything else about the puzzle from it.”

Addison closed her eyes a second and said, “1893.”

Will looked at her. “Are you giving me the years of recessions in the US, or are you telling me you’ve memorized the numbers on the letters?”

Tyson spoke before she did. “She memorized all the letters to recall them at will.” He still did not trust this move from Addison. She had circumvented his plan to be the sole holder of the clues. There was nothing to stop her from going ahead with the puzzle on her own, cutting them all out.

James took a long sip of his coffee as if he was assessing the situation. “I think that you’re right about this. I think that one clue brings another to light, and so on. Whoever is behind us is only giving us enough information that we can get to the next step. Those five letters are just a start to a bigger puzzle that we can’t see.”

“So, what do we do?” Tyson asked, feeling the frustration at the table. “How do we know what’s next?”

Will took over. “Well, only the two clues are not associated with an equation or a particular location. So, we have to look at the numbers and see which one best fits where we are in Manhattan. I was looking on my phone and found a few buildings around here built in 1893. Perhaps one of those buildings has a clue for us.”

Addison opened her mouth and then closed it again. What did she know or think she knew? Tyson would have liked to have pulled her aside to find out, but in the movement of paying the bill and leaving tips, he couldn’t find a way to get her alone.

They ignored the subway station and followed Will’s directions to the nearest building constructed in 1893. They passed the building site and then came back. Apparently, the building was destroyed recently or abandoned earlier and demoed in the not-too-distant past. The dirt was still wet, and the hole was still raw.

“I don’t think this is it,” James said, looking around. “I mean, it could be. The person who wrote these letters and planned this puzzle likely spent months preparing for this. Something could go wrong, or a landmark could be removed in the meantime. Are there any other sites near here?”

Will gave them instructions to the next site, five blocks away. Tyson doubted that this second choice could be the right one. He was sure that the clue had to point to something near the bank—if not immediately in view, then a few steps away. Blocks away would mean that they were stretching the clue to the breaking point.

The second building had been converted into a Starbucks. The façade still held that grandeur of that earlier time, but the interior matched so many other coffeehouses. Tyson wasn’t sure he was ready for another dose of caffeine, so they stood outside and looked around. From this distance from the bank, the city looked different. This was a rather generic block of well-known stores and shops. Nothing looked like it had been here more than a decade, if that.

“So much for clues that help us find the next part of the puzzle,” Will said, looking as dejected as Tyson felt right now. While the idea had been good, the execution had not played out.

“Maybe it’s the other letter,” James suggested. “You’re all giving up awfully easy here. Hard work and thinking are what are going to get us to the final answer. Whoever did this made sure that no one would come across one of the clues and be able to jump in from there. This was specifically developed for Tyson and whoever he decided to share with. I’m not sure why that is, but the connection is to Tyson and only him. We need to remember that. So I doubt we’ll be thrown any clues that don’t relate to him.”

Tyson wondered if James was accusing him of being dense and unable to understand and solve complex problems. It wasn’t a very nice thing to say, and Tyson was annoyed to think that James felt superior to him.

“I have another idea,” Addison said.

Tyson remembered the expression on her face from before, and he encouraged her to share what she’d found out.

“I did a google on the address of the bank and 1893. There’s an antique shop, which might double as a pawn shop, and it’s across the street from the bank. I think that might be our tie-in to finding the next clue.”

Tyson looked at her and stared. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked her. “We’ve been all over the city, looking for something in front of us all the time.”

Addison looked at him with an expression that he couldn’t read. “Someone else had an idea, and I decided that we should try that first. We’re walking in the dark here. We’ve had all the clues given to us mailed to your house up to this point. Now we’re expected to find the next clue, and we have no idea what this guy –or woman thinks or behaves. Knowing what little we know, any clue is as good as the other at this point. Maybe in a few clues or a few days, we’ll get a better feel for the person's psyche behind this puzzle, but right now, all of us are guessing. When that happens, anyone’s guess can be right.”

That was the most that Addison had spoken that morning, and Tyson wondered why she’d waited until now to speak. She could have spoken up at the coffee shop, saving them a trek back to the bank to look at the antique shop.

They were standing by the curb, waiting for the light to change. Addison apparently was in a hurry to get back to the antique shop. She stepped into the street, and Tyson only had a second to pull her back onto the sidewalk. The car drove by them, missing her by inches.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“I-I didn’t see the car,” she stammered. “I looked both ways.”

James corroborated her story. “That car seemed to come out of nowhere. Not sure how fast it was going, but I’ll wager that it was well over the speed limit.”

Tyson wondered about the situation. He stood there quietly for a moment, trying to get his emotions and jitters under control. This was not the first time that he’d suspected that someone was following them; however, it was the first time that the person following them—if he or she existed—had tried to make contact. Very literal contact, indeed.

Tyson had to wonder if they were getting too close to the answer. Why else would these people be trying to kill one or more of them? There would be no reason to kill them if they were miles from the solution. Better that they let the group solve the puzzle and then take the bounty at the end.

After letting Addison catch her breath, they proceeded to the antique store. 1893 Antiques was written on the window and above the door, but the door was locked. Tyson found the operating hours and announced that they’d closed five minutes ago.

“Shit.” James’ voice was loud enough to be heard by the people down the street.

Tyson could feel the tension grow and the unspoken words that if Addison had not stepped out into the street, they might have made it to the store on time, and the next phase of the mystery could begin.

Instead, they’d be going back to the Meenachs’ house again and waiting for another night to pass.

They found the subway station with ease and headed back to Brooklyn.

The Meenachs didn’t seem surprised to see them. The table was already set for dinner for them—as if they had expected the group to fail. For indeed, if they had found what they came for, the group would have left immediately upon their return.

James went up for a shower while the others sat in the living room and didn’t speak. The normal jocularity was gone, and in its place was the awkward silence of defeat. Tyson thought about talking to Will and Addison about their next steps, but Will was obviously texting his wife, and Addison was on her phone as well.

So Tyson reviewed the day in his mind. The bank had been a stumbling block, and from the view of it, the others were likely right. Each clue would lead to another clue that had to be interpreted in order to move on.

He felt confident that the 1893 Antique Store was the next link in this chain, and he wondered what the store would have for them.

His nerves buzzed with anxiety, worrying that each step could be misinterpreted and the trail could be irretrievably lost, just as they almost had done today with the building constructed in 1893.

James came back downstairs, and the group was called into the dining room for dinner. The menu was unremarkable, meatloaf and potatoes, but the dinner was tasty and filled them up.

Tyson stayed and helped the Meenachs after dinner, cleaning up the meal and dishes. By the time he made it upstairs, Will was already in bed – and presumably asleep. Tyson wondered if his friend was still awake but did not want to talk. He resented how this trip was already tearing at the seams of good friendships, but for the life of him, Tyson had no desire to give in just yet.

Breakfast was cooking when Tyson awoke the following day. Will’s bed was empty, and Tyson wondered if he’d been left here while the others had gone back to the store. With Addison’s memory, he was no longer needed. The thought of being cut out of this adventure—his first—scared him and made him feel inadequate. The rest of them had all been to other cities, states—and even countries—but Tyson had not. They could more easily fit into these places where he was still a novice in these matters. The idea that he would be a drag on the rest of them had crossed his mind before.

He got up and was immediately relieved to see that the other three people were sitting at the dining room table. Tyson could see eggs and bacon stacked up with toast on the side. He sat down next to Will, who only gave him a nod. Even if he hadn’t been left behind, the welcome reminded him that the tension between them still existed.

After finishing the meal, they all stood up and looked down at their plates as if they were not sure what to do with them. Mrs. Meenach came out and assured them that she would take care of things.

Tyson’s watch showed that it was about 9:30, so they could be at the store by opening time. He had thought that the best idea since the store would likely not be busy so early in the morning—not to mention that he wanted to get there and learn its secrets.

They arrived at 10:08 a.m. due to an unexpected delay on the subway. Tyson counted the minutes as they waited in the metal tube. He had a momentary thought that the delay might have been caused by the people who had tried to run over Addison yesterday, but he quickly put that thought out of his mind. There might be someone following them, and this person might have even tried to slow them down by hitting Addison on the street, but Tyson and the others were not dealing with any international crime organization that could stop traffic when they desired.

“This happens all the time,” Will said, almost as if he could read Tyson’s mind. “You always add in extra time if you need to be somewhere for an appointment.”

“I’m just anxious to get in there and look around,” Tyson replied just as the train started back up.

He didn’t speak again until they entered the shop. The store had a dank, moldy smell to it that would have suggested antiques to Tyson, even without the sign on the door.

“Remember, whatever is at the store has a number associated with it,” Addison said in a half-whisper. “53826. I don’t know what that stands for, but we need to be on the lookout for it.”

Tyson made one hand into a fist. Just a little reminder that she had the same information he did—even though the letters had come to him. He decided to start thinking like a treasure hunter and less like a number-cruncher.

His idea would be to look at the products here and see if there was something that could push them along the way. By his notion, the next clue had to be in a safe place. The letter –or whatever form the clue came in—would not be able to be for sale by itself or be in public view where it could be purchased or stolen.

He knew that if others were after the same treasure – if that was the end result of this treasure hunt—they would not hesitate to steal a piece of paper or small object from the store.

So while the others took a more methodical approach to the search, he hurried along the aisles as he looked for a hiding place.

He came upon it on the fourth row, a large, solid safe. He even found the numbers that the letter had held. He pretended to take a photo of the object while he looked at the last set of numbers on that page. Six numbers, which could easily be broken into three different spins of the safe’s dial—the combination.

Tyson looked around. Will was talking to the clerk behind the desk approximately 40 yards from the safe, but he could only see the two people when standing on the balls of his feet. If he leaned down a few inches, as he would need to do to open the safe, the clerk would be unaware of what was going on. Indeed, Tyson was going to be one of those fortune hunters to steal from the store.

James and Addison were out of sight, but at that moment, he didn’t care. He wanted to learn what was inside the safe. His mind ran to stacks of cash or perhaps stock certificates.

He spun the wheel and quickly twisted the wheel for each of the three numbers. He only took a few seconds before he had the door cracked open.

Peering inside, Tyson saw nothing at first, and the anxiety gave way to disappointment. He opened the door wider and saw a key, a single key dangling from a piece of string in the middle of the safe. Nothing else met his eye.

Tyson snatched the key and quietly pushed the door shut. The hinges had been oiled, so he had little doubt that this particular clue had been set up for them.

Once that was done, Tyson walked to the door. He didn’t want to make a fuss, so he stepped outside of the antique store and took a deep breath. That had all gone off without a hitch.

Chapter 8

Still feeling excluded by the announcement of the numbers by Addison, he took a picture of the key, and then he looked it over, flipping it softly in his hand.

The key, with its long thin frame, was quite possibly a safety deposit key. Tyson didn’t have such a box, but he’d seen photos of them before. Now he Googled them to see if he could find a likeness. They seemed similar.

So they had been right. One solution led to another puzzle which then led to another solution, and so on.

Part of Tyson wanted to run over to the bank and use it now, but that seemed unwise. He’d gone in as a potential customer, and if he returned, Miranda might want to complete the account creation process—as well as a flirt.

He would need to enlist Addison’s help again since she had already presented herself as the law enforcement officer interested in a box. Addison was the known entity at the bank.

He texted the other three members of the group and told them that he was waiting outside. In less than a minute, all of them had met him on the sidewalk.

Tyson showed off the safety deposit box key and explained how he had found it.

James gave him a slap on the back. “Good thinking,” he said. “I wish I had thought of that sooner. It makes sense. No telling when this scavenger hunt was created, but even if it was last month, the clues would need to be intact four weeks later. So we’re going to look for more stable locations.”

Will put a hand on Tyson’s back, too, and smiled. “Good job man,” he said, but his tone was less enthusiastic than James’ excitement. Tyson wondered if Will was getting homesick, missing his wife, and this time before she gave birth. He was still shocked that his friend had left her alone in Raleigh. Tyson wasn’t sure that he would have done the same.

Addison hadn’t spoken, and at this point, Tyson couldn’t read her mind. Was she annoyed that he’d gotten to it first, or did she mind that he hadn’t suggested her for the bank contact?

He stretched out a hand and slid the key into Addison’s palm. “This is for you,” he said. “You’ve already presented yourself to the bank manager as a member of the police. He’s not going to be surprised if you’re back with the means of opening the box. I think it would look very suspicious if I showed up asking to be let into a safety deposit box, even if it is the same day.”

“But, you and Miranda,” Addison said, stretching out the last word.

Tyson wondered for a second if this was jealousy raising its rather green face, but he quickly returned to the key and what the box might hold.

Chapter 8

“Yes, it would look odd to switch from opening a checking account to looking for a specific safety deposit box. You’re the only one who can do it. Plus, you can pull off the law enforcement persona. You’ve still got it. I wouldn’t know what to say.” Tyson tried to explain his rationale as the other watched him.

Seemingly accepting the rationale, Addison wrapped her fingers around the key and nodded. “Meet me at the coffee shop. I don’t want to look up and see a bunch of people waiting for me on the street. That would look very suspicious, and no cop ever had a bunch of friends waiting for him after a job.”

She walked towards the bank, checking both directions before crossing. Despite her bravado, Tyson thought, Addison was still unnerved by the accident yesterday. Tyson was glad to see her playing it safe now.

The three men headed down to the coffee shop, where Tyson ordered a carafe of coffee for them. None of the three were necessarily in need of caffeine since they were all anxiously waiting for the next step in the puzzle. Tyson thought about all the movies and news programs where the safety deposit boxes were filled with jewels or stacks of currency of all denominations.

While they waited, Tyson sipped the coffee and wondered what he would do first. He wouldn’t rush to return to nursing, he thought. The profession was important work, and he appreciated the patients and the help he provided them, but the burn-out rate was high. Tyson still felt exhausted at times, and he had no desire to hurry back to that routine.

Perhaps he would travel more. The highlights of New York City, a metropolis that he’d seen on film so many times but never in person, enthralled him. He couldn’t imagine what the views of London – or Paris would do to him.

The time passed slowly, and at least on seven occasions, Tyson caught himself staring at his watch. He knew that Addison’s actions were not strictly legal, posing as an officer. She had pretended that she was here on business.

Even in the best of cases, Tyson could argue that he’d been given the key via the strange letters, but Addison had nothing to do with the receipt of the letters. She had only been a friend who had tagged along for the adventure. She had no standing, however weak, in the matter. Tyson should have been the one who talked to the bank.

Looking out the window, Tyson started. He rubbed his eyes, but what he’d seen had vanished.

“What’s the matter with you?” Will asked. “What did you see? Is Addison okay?” Will looked out the window, but Tyson knew that he would see nothing, for the figure was gone now.

Will turned around and looked, but Tyson knew that he had seen something. The moment unnerved him. Addison hadn’t come back yet, and a person who had to work in Raleigh was on the streets of Manhattan, only feet from where they sat, drinking tea.

He knew the odds of seeing another person who looked like Mandy were slim, but what else could it be?

James didn’t say a thing, making Tyson wonder if he’d seen Mandy, or worse yet, if he had planned with Mandy to come to Manhattan to spy on them – or perhaps run them down as the car had nearly done yesterday.

However, before he could discuss the matter with James, Addison entered the coffee shop and gave them all a big smile.

She took the seat next to Will that he offered her and gave them all a big smile. The waitress took Addison’s order, and the stress of not mentioning the treasure nearly ate through Tyson. He wanted to know what she’d found and how much was it worth.

Finally, when the waitress had brought Addison a coffee and gone away again, Addison reached into her purse and pulled out something.

She threw the treasure down on the table, where it clanked against the plastic surface. The “treasure” was a key—another key. Along with it was a fifty-dollar bill.

“What the hell?” Will said. Tyson was beginning to suspect that the treasure hunt was getting to his friend. Will, who typically was relaxed, had an edge to him. His words were coarser, and his temper flared quickly.

“Another key?” James asked, looking at the shape on the table. “This one isn’t a safety deposit box. It looks more like a house key.” He didn’t even reference the cash on the table.

Tyson put his head in his hands for a minute and tried to relax. The thought of starting another quest was daunting to him. After all, he should have expected that. There had been five letters, and they had only used two of them as references. No one would send three additional letters unless they were to be clues to the next step – or a smokescreen to confuse them.

He had been so sure that this would have led them to riches, but at the moment, the fifty dollars didn’t even cover their gas from Raleigh.

He lifted his head and looked at Addison. “So tell us what happened. Don’t leave out any details, okay?”

She nodded as if his statement was a police command. “I went into the bank. I didn’t see anyone I knew, so I asked for the bank manager. He was in his office, and he came out to see me. I explained that we’d found the safety deposit box key. I showed him the key.”

All of the men were captivated by her words. She stopped to take a drink of coffee and continued. “He got out a notebook. He made a notation in it. I tried to read the words and see what else was in the book, but he made sure that I didn’t see anything.”

“That’s too bad. We might have been able to learn who rented the box or who was last at the box. It would have helped.” James gave her a smile.

“Well, he made sure that I didn’t, so I’m not sure how we could have found out anything more. We went into the safe. He found the box, and we both put in our keys and turned. The box came out, and he left me to open the box in privacy.”

“That’s all that was in it? A key and a fifty?” Will looked impatient again. He was definitely stressed. Tyson wondered if he had received a call from Bethany that disturbed him. Maybe she wanted him there for a pregnancy appointment or other baby-related needs. “No letters like the ones that Tyson received?” The words were quiet but sounded like an accusation. Had Addison taken something from the box that would have helped them? The only reason would be that she needed the money, not unlikely since she was also unemployed at the moment. Tyson had no idea what her finances were like.

“Nothing else. You’re seeing what I saw. I wish they’d made it far easier than this,” she said.

James pushed his hand into his pocket and came out with a ring of keys. “Take a look at this,” he said. “It’s pretty similar.” He held up a key that appeared to match the one on the table. “Not all keys are alike, and the one I’m holding up is a house key, the typical door lock that you’d find on the house. So I think it’s safe to say that we’re looking for a house.”

Tyson sighed. “That’s not all that helpful. Are there any houses in Manhattan that we could search?”

James laughed. “There are houses all over the five boroughs, but most of the ones around here would be businesses. The few that are private residences are not going to be easily opened with a single key. Many of the doors have multiple locks and security systems. So even if we found a residence around here, we’d set off the alarm.”

“But we could use a code from one of the letters,” Will said, sounding a bit more like his old self. “That might let us in.”

“We only have one letter that could apply, and I don’t think that it’s going to be a security code. Even if it was, there are more numbers than are usually used in a code, so we’d have multiple codes. Most of these systems don’t allow you to guess all day.”

Addison picked up on what James was saying. “Yeah, after so many tries, the code sends a message to the police, who will come out and try to find out why someone is trying to guess the code.”

“These clues are far too advanced for that. The game is over if you get arrested for breaking and entering.” James looked at the key on the table again.

“So Manhattan and its high-tech security systems mean that we’re not looking around here,” Tyson said, trying to sum up the discussion. He wanted to move on and get to the following location to find the treasure he knew was waiting for him.

“So, where do we go? We could go to Bangor, that was the location on the third letter. So that would put us that much closer to being done – only two letters after that.” Will’s impatience could be heard in his words.

“Or Medina,” said James.

“The post office?” Addison asked. “Why there?”

“I just keep thinking that the letters had to come from there for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is yet, and so I keep wanting to make it understandable.”

Addison took a sip of coffee before speaking. “Well, I understand you wanting to do that, but there’s one big problem with Medina.”

James sat up straight, and his chin now protruded a bit. Tyson hadn’t seen this stubbornness so much before. Now it was too obvious. “What’s that?”

“We have the exact location in Bangor. They were given to us, just like they were given to us in Manhattan. We don’t have a similar pinpointed location in Medina. I can’t honestly believe that we’re to unlock the post office there, and if it’s not the post office, we don’t have a clue that would tell us where to go. At least in Bangor, we can go to this location and see if we find anything.”

The others didn’t speak for a moment. The plan, though not everyone seemed on board, had been set. They’d be off to Bangor for another adventure in the morning.

That night, the Meenachs had planned a small party for them. Mrs. Meenach had gone all out on them. She’d made several homemade dishes that Tyson had never had before. He’d grown up on the southern cooking from his mother, and this new cuisine was tasty—but different.

He tried everything with gusto. He sampled some of each of the dishes and went back for seconds on the ones he liked best. Will seemed shocked by Tyson’s appetite and only nibbled a few things. He wanted to pull his friend aside and see what was going on, but too many people mingled around for him to talk privately. It would have to wait.

They’d splurged on bottles of red wine too. Mrs. Meenach had bought at least six bottles, one for each of them. The division of the bottles made him wonder if they would be drugged—or worse yet, poisoned. If they knew what was at stake, who knows what this couple could do. They could poison the travelers, dispose of their bodies, and claim that they’d headed to the next stop of the quest.

The party didn’t last too late. They had to leave in the morning, and they wanted to be there before nightfall so that they could case out the house and see what it was like. Addison had mapped out the route and found that the trip would take them about eight hours.

Will was still standing outside, nursing a beer, when Tyson finally had a chance to approach him. “What’s up with you?” he asked, not starting with any small talk. “You seem out of it.”

“Eh, things at home aren’t going all that well,” he confessed. Will didn’t make eye contact with Tyson as he spoke. He took another slug of beer, but Tyson could only see Will’s Adam’s apple from this angle.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Tyson asked, feeling sorry for his friend. At least in being single, Tyson didn’t have any schedule to keep or anyone to report back to. He was on his own—but that was also the downside to being single.

“Yeah, but there’s not much you can do about it. Bethany didn’t want me to come, and now that it’s going to take even longer, she’s raising a fuss.”

“Did you explain what happened?” Tyson asked. He had also known Bethany to be an easy-going kind of person, but perhaps she wanted her husband at home at this juncture in her life. Tyson honestly could understand that.

“Yeah, I did. She doesn’t care,” Will said. He put a hand on Tyson’s shoulder. “Man, you have a good life, you know?”

Tyson took the bottle from Will’s grip and set it down. “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. It’s not easy being single either.”

Will laughed, a harsh sound that broke the air around them. “Man, you’ve got that wrong. I’ve seen the way that Addison is looking at you when we’re talking. She likes you. I’d bet you a $1000 of the treasure that you two will be more than friends by the end of the trip.”

“That’s a wish—just like the treasure,” Tyson replied. He knew that Will had drunk too much at this point. He was imagining things and just wishing for the way things used to be.

“Right. You wouldn’t be here if it was just a dream. You want this as much as I do.” Will looked around for the beer but didn’t see it. Tyson was glad of that.

“I think I’m here for different reasons than you are,” Tyson said. “I needed to get out of town – expand my horizons. I mean, I was stuck working twelve-hour shifts for months. I didn’t go anywhere or do anything. I was trapped in Raleigh. This feels so great to get out of town, see places I’ve never been, and have a real-life adventure.”

Will stopped for a second. He didn’t speak, and he ceased looking for his bottle of beer. “Seriously, this is all just a way to have fun for you?” He sounded surprised that doing something just for the fun of it was an option.

“Yeah, I was really burned out. It’s great that I’m able to take the time and see part of the country. I’ve never been to New York. I’ve never been to Maine. This is all new to me.”

Will laughed. “Sorry, that just sounds so easy. I wish I could be in your shoes.”

Tyson wanted to yell at him, but he wasn’t sure of the root of Will’s misery. He seemed more unhappy than he’d seen him in a long time. This should be an exciting time—an adventure of another sort, a wife and a new life coming in the next few months.

“Well, I wish I was in your shoes,” Tyson said. “I think I’d be a great dad. I know you will be too.”

Will didn’t speak, and Tyson wondered why. Was there something Bethany had told him? A problem with the baby—or their marriage?

Tyson waited for a response, but none came. He downed the rest of his beer and headed inside, leaving Will to his own thoughts.

Chapter 9

One thing that Addison had not anticipated was traffic. The traffic from Brooklyn to upstate New York, even on a weekday, was mind-achingly slow. She sat on the brakes more than the gas pedal, and Tyson could tell that she was getting frustrated. He offered to drive instead, but she argued that she’d be the best driver for some reason. Tyson wasn’t sure that he wanted to ask why, especially when she was in this mood.

It was nearly noon before they left New York and started the trek through New England. Tyson had never seen any of these states, and as they drove, he was amazed at the site. He’d known that the area had mountains, forests, and acres of unoccupied land. He hadn’t expected the beauty of the land.

The miles flew by now, and he could barely keep up with the small towns flying by.

They stopped at a rest area, but instead of heading off to the vending machines or restrooms in a pack, each of them headed in a different direction. Will slumped and made his way to the dollar machines that would spew a tiny piece of chocolate or candy. James went to the nearby bench and sat down as if he’d not had enough of sitting today.

Addison, of course, had a reason to head in another direction, but Tyson noticed that as she approached the restroom building, she too veered off to a small wooded area with picnic tables and trash cans. Out of earshot, she took out her phone and began to dial a number.

Tyson decided to walk toward the restroom so that he might be able to eavesdrop on the conversation. He could understand Will calling home to check in on his pregnant wife, but Addison had no one at home to worry about her. She was on her own. Given that she was currently out of work, Addison also had no reason to call an office. So who then was on the other end of that call?

Tyson went into the restroom, and from there, he could hear bits and pieces of the conversation while he played with his hair. From the few words he could listen to between flushes and hand dryers, Addison was talking to law enforcement with an unknown person. He could hear “breaking and entering” and a few other phrases that he certainly would not use in a general conversation.

Tyson now wondered if she had really quit the police. Here she was, talking about a case and various crimes being committed. What purpose could she have unless she was still associated in some manner with the police?

Tyson gave up on trying to listen to the conversation. He was getting paranoid with the questions about each of his traveling companions. What was he to make of this? Was Tyson worrying too much, or were the other three really suspicious in their actions?

“It’s only about an hour to the house,” Addison said after they’d been on the road another hour. “We’ll still have some daylight to use when we get there. We can take a look at the house and see if there’s anyone living there.”

Will cleared his throat. “I would have been happier to make hotel reservations in Bangor and then go to the house tomorrow.”

James started talking and nearly interrupted the last of Will’s sentence. “No reason for us to waste another day. If there’s something to be had here, we can solve the puzzle and get to the next step – if there is the next step. I don’t want to be like we were in Manhattan. We lost a day because we missed the closing time of the store.”

Tyson wondered if James was running low on funds. He retired at a young age, and he lived next to nothing on the farm, so maybe he was struggling to get by.

James continued. “The mysterious person realizes that you’re not made of money. I mean, that’s why they left the $50 for you in the safety deposit box. Not only does it help with expenses, but it also gives us an idea that the end of the road will have some money for us as well.”

Addison laughed. “$50 in Manhattan doesn’t pay for parking, much less a meal or a place to stay. We’d have been way out of luck if Mandy hadn’t told us that you had friends who lived in New York.”

The mention of Mandy brought back Tyson’s memories of the previous day. Had Mandy been in New York? If so, what was she doing there? Why didn’t she make herself known?

Addison abruptly turned onto a side road just outside of Bangor. The road slowly morphed from four lanes to two and then to a single-lane road. Tyson was waiting for some horse-drawn carriages to overtake them at any moment. The evergreens loomed high overhead, and the sun could barely break through at this point.

“Where are we?” Will asked, sounding a bit panicked. He looked at his phone and grimaced. Tyson suspected that the expression came from the fact that they’d lost all wireless connections a few miles back. Another downfall to being in the backwoods.

“Just outside of Bangor, but a bit off the beaten track. Not sure how we’re going to find the latitude and longitude without any cell phone connections.” Tyson rechecked his phone just to be sure.

James laughed. “That’s what paper is for. I printed this all off last night after you all turned in for the night. I suspected from the site that it might not be connected to the outside world. If we go down this road for another half-mile, then we should be there.”

The house appeared out of nowhere, a dilapidated structure that had seen better decades. Tyson knew this was the house as soon as he saw it, a sort of dread and excitement tied into one. Addison stopped the car, and he jumped out, wanting to investigate what was inside.

The yard, such as it was, had grown up to a level that Tyson had trouble finding the sidewalk, but when he did, he trampled some of it so the others could follow that path to the front door.

The key fit perfectly. This was definitely the house indicated by the letter and the key. He opened the door and pushed it open. The dusty smell made him sneeze twice and then cough. Nothing had been cleaned in years, and the dust on the floor indicated that no one had walked on these floors in a long time.

Tyson turned around and waited for the rest of them to catch up.

They had an immediate problem, and he suspected none of them, with the possible exception of James, would be pleased with it. The house was not habitable as it was. They could use their camping gear and stay inside the house or outside of the house, but the structure certainly didn’t have running water or electrical power.

So they’d either have to camp indoors or out. To get a wireless signal, they’d have to retreat several miles and hope for a hotel. In the meantime, if someone was following them, Tyson and his cadre had brought these people to the doorstep of the next clue—only to abandon the chance to find what came next.

They hadn’t gone more than a few steps when Tyson heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. He turned slowly and looked at the source of the noise. A man, tall and rangy, was pointing a shotgun in their direction. His age couldn’t have been more than forty, even though he looked like he hadn’t seen a razor recently. His hair was nearly shoulder-length, the type of cut that came from not seeing a barber for a couple of years. His thin lips were pressed tightly together as if he was expending every ounce of energy on his focus.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. His voice was soft but raspy, tinged with a note of apathy to the answer. His finger was on the trigger, and the barrels were pointed directly at Addison.

Tyson didn’t know if his aim was deliberate, having realized Addison was a law enforcement officer, or if he’d chosen the woman in the group as the most sympathetic choice for the men. In either case, she didn’t stand much of a chance if he decided to shoot first.

“We’re friends. We were invited to come here,” James spoke first. “I can show you the key to the house.”

Tyson held up the key, which he hadn’t put in a pocket after opening the door. The key was still in his hand. He’d been gripping it tightly after hearing the man speak.

The man held out a hand, and Tyson recognized the gesture to throw the key to the man. He caught the key without moving the barrels by a millimeter.

“Yeah, this is one of our keys. How did you get it?”

Tyson debated the right approach to the question. Should he try to lie or tell the whole story, which would sound more like fantasy than reality? However, Tyson had no tale made up for the occasion. It would have to be the truth.

Before he could decide where to begin on this quest, Will spoke up. “Well, it’s like this,” he began. “We got these letters in the mail.”

A few minutes later, Will finished his summary, which covered all the main points. Tyson was impressed. A few hours ago, Will had looked like he was going to call it quits. He seemed downhearted and unresponsive, but his mind was still working at full speed. Tyson appreciated his presence here.

The man grunted and put down his weapon, which surprised Tyson, given the far-out nature of the story. He would have put money on the guy laughing at them.

“I didn’t know you were on your way,” the man replied. “Nobody tells me a thing around here.” He sniffled and wiped his nose across his sleeve.

“We didn’t know we were on our way until yesterday, and we didn’t know anyone would be waiting for us,” Tyson said.

“Didn’t even know what we were getting ourselves into,” Addison added. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the man since he’d pulled a gun behind them. Tyson couldn’t read her thoughts, but knowing her, he suspected it was a mix of suspicions and regret that she hadn’t caught him prior to being surprised by him.

Tyson decided to try again with this man. Sticking out a hand, Tyson said, “I’m Tyson. I’m the guy who received the letters. This is James, Will, and Addison. They came with me to find out what’s going on with this.”

“And how’s that working out for you,” the man asked in return. Now that he’d put the gun down, he seemed almost at ease. “You’re in the middle of nowhere outside of Bangor, Maine. It doesn’t seem like this is a lot of fun.”

James finally spoke up. “Well, if it’s all the same to you, we were hoping to stay here tonight. We didn’t realize that there was so much—dust,” he added.

“Yeah, I wish someone had told me in advance that you all were coming here. I’d have cleaned and gotten things ready. As it is, I’ll have to hustle to make it presentable. And I’m Bennet Dunn if you need me. Most people around here just call me Dunn, and that’s fine with me.”

Dunn walked away, leaving them standing in the wilderness. Tyson wasn’t sure if they should follow him into the house or what was expected from them. He decided to stay with the original plan of roughing it here tonight. If nothing else, they could camp in the lands surrounding the house here.

Addison caught up to him and walked beside Tyson. “That was weird,” she said. “He knew about us, but not when or why.”

Tyson nodded, not sure where Dunn was now. He didn’t want Dunn to hear them talking.

“At least this gets us in the house, and we can have a look around. Presumably, our next clue is on the grounds or in the house. My first guess would be in the house; otherwise, there would be no reason for us to get a key to the house. The coordinates would have been sufficient.”

Even in the midst of having guns pointed at them, Addison was still on the ball. Tyson was impressed with her cool under pressure. “So, where do we start?”

Addison smiled. “I’m going to clean that house,” she said. “And for the record, that’s the only time you’re going to hear me say that.”

Tyson laughed and turned around to see if James and Will were still behind him. They were pretty far back and whispering as they made their way to the front door. Tyson wished he knew what they were talking about. Was it a plan to find the next clue without him? He tried to remind himself that he and Addison had been talking as well, but they’d been loud enough that most people could have heard them if they had tried. James and Will were not audible to those around them.

He waited until the two men had come to the door. As they approached, they looked at each other and then stopped talking. Tyson’s paranoia grew. Will was his good friend, but something was up with him—and now he was clearly talking about Tyson.

“Don’t know if you heard us, but we’re going to do enough cleaning so that we can stay here tonight – and so we can find the clues that might be here.” Tyson tried to smile at them to let Will and James know that they were all a team.

“Clues?” James said. “Is there anything that would indicate that there’s more than one clue here? Did you see something in the key that gave you that idea?”

Tyson shook his head. “No, just a turn of phrase. I mean, we did get money and a key the last time, so maybe the guy behind this left something more for us here.”

Will shot a look at James that Tyson couldn’t interpret. Did they think he was lying?

“Anyway, we’re all going to do some cleaning and see if we can find anything that might be a clue—singular.” Tyson walked inside with them, and the three of them stood in the foyer, a large entrance with Italian marble flooring and a rather large staircase opposite the front door.

James let out a whistle. “This had to be something in the day. I wonder why the owners let it get so run down. It’s a damned shame. Maybe this is your treasure, you know? A big house that just needs some work.”

Tyson looked at him and rolled his eyes. “Work, which requires money. The letter writer would need to include a big box of cash to make this place whole again. If that’s all it took, the letter writer didn’t need me. Any contractor would take on this job for enough cash. There has to be some link between us and the letters.”

“You, not us. You were the one who got the letters,” Will reminded him.

“That’s right, but I think of us all as a team.” Tyson looked in the mirror to his left. The image was askew, which made Tyson wonder about how the others saw him.

“Well, on that lovely note, let’s get to work. Do you have a plan on where each of us should work?” Will asked. There was a touch of sarcasm in his voice that was new to Tyson. He wished he could get a few minutes alone with Will to find out what was up.

“I think Addison took the bedrooms upstairs, so if you want to take another area, I’ll take what’s left.”

They nodded. Before Tyson could see where they went, he heard a crash in the kitchen. He went to see what had happened.

Dunn was in the room, looking at what had been a plate on the floor. The shards are spread across the room, and for a second, Tyson wondered how accidental the plate smashing had been. Was Dunn aware of what they were doing? Did he already have a clue that they needed to move on?

“If you point me to the broom, I’m happy to clean this up for you,” Tyson said. It would also give him access to the cleaning supplies, which likely had not been used in ages.

“Thanks,” Dunn replied, and he gave Tyson directions.

Four hours later, Tyson looked as grimy as the rest of the house. He had definitely cleaned the bathroom, which he thought they would all need tonight. Dunn had spent the time in the kitchen, which was the other area he felt sure they’d use tonight as well.

Dunn had offered to go out and get some essentials to eat. For the better part of two hours, he’d been gone to some carry-out. Dunn had come home with snacks, soft drinks, Gatorade, and some instant coffee. He’d managed some crackers and cheese as well as a coffee cake for tomorrow morning. Tyson wasn’t sure it would last that long.

The one thing he hadn’t found was a clue. In all the cleaning, he’d been sure that he would locate something that would lead them to the next town or building that they needed to visit – however, nothing had appeared.

Tyson had widened the search for the clues too. He had figured that the lack of foot traffic would mean that the letter writer could have put the hints anywhere and not feared that they would be found. Judging from the dust and dirt, no one had been in this house for months, if not years.

Addison had taken a break at one point. She had found Tyson cleaning the bathroom. Shutting the door, she gave Tyson a rundown on what she’d done in the bedrooms. All the work of new sheets, dusting, and cleaning—but still no clues.

The most worrying part was that he’d not seen Will or James, and he’d not even received a text as to their location or what, if anything, they’d found. At one moment, Tyson was worried that they’d left the house altogether and taken the car.

However, a quick check showed that the car was still outside, which meant that they were still here somewhere. What if they had found the next clue and gone to check it out themselves? Tyson didn’t want to think that they would break away from the group, but their recent comments and behavior made him suspicious.

Tyson decided that he needed a break as well, and he went for a walk around the house’s expanse of yard. He didn’t see any signs of the others, but he found what had to be Dunn’s cottage.

The building was set off to one side, nearly adjacent to the garages. The overhead doors to the garage were closed and locked. Tyson wondered why. Did the owner happen to have cars in storage? It seemed unlikely, given the state of the house.

Before he could try the cottage door, Dunn came out with the shotgun. While he was carrying the gun barrels down, it was clear that Tyson would not be receiving an invitation to enter.

“Whatcha need?” he asked.

“Nothing, really. I just needed to stretch my legs for a bit. All that cleaning wore me out.” He gave a small laugh as if to lighten the mood.

“Between the grounds and the errands, I don’t get to go inside too much. I don’t think the boss minds too much, though.” His expression didn’t change at all while he spoke, and Tyson couldn’t read what the man was thinking.

Tyson paused for a second. They hadn’t really thought much about the man who owned the house. Their last clues had taken them to commercial businesses, not residences, so there was less of a personal feel to those places. Now, this had been somebody’s home. Perhaps the clue was nothing more than who the owner was. The puzzles mainly had been related to numbers and codes, but Tyson had seen nothing that said it wasn’t possible to be a name.

However, Dunn shook his head. “Not supposed to give you any help,” the man said. “I don’t know if names are a help or not, but in any case, I’m not helping.”

Tyson wanted to know precisely how much Dunn knew. At some points, he seemed all-knowing, but at others, it was as if the owner of the house had not trusted him with the most basic of details.

“Well, thanks anyway,” Tyson said. He turned and didn’t look back, not wanting to know what Dunn was doing with the gun. He knew that his thoughts were on the paranoid side, but he couldn’t help it now. What were all of the rest of them up to?

James and Will showed up in time for the snacks that were substituted for a real dinner. Dunn had turned on an outside generator which had provided light and a bit of heat for the still-cold evenings. After that, the caretaker left, not to be seen again.

“Where were you two this afternoon?” Tyson asked, wanting to be somewhat blunt about the situation. “I was thinking that maybe you found something.”

Will looked around the room. They had chosen to eat in the dining room, a space with a sizeable highly-polished walnut table with ten chairs around it. For some reason, they’d all taken seats apart from each other, putting distance between them.

“If we found something, don’t you think we’d have told you?” Will asked. “It’s not like we want to stay here a moment more than we need. This place gives me the creeps.”

James set his cola can on the table, ignoring the cost of the furniture—even if it had been in a damp house for years. “We were looking around. Will covered the north side of the property, and I took the south. I thought we’d look to see if the dirt or the trees or bushes had been moved. Our last clue depended on something that was pretty much right in front of us, so I thought that upturned dirt might hold our clue.”

Addison shook her head but didn’t speak until she’d finished swallowing her food. “The problem with anything outside is that anyone could get it. We were given a key—a key to the house. Why? Because the clue is inside the house, and the doors were kept locked to keep others out. So the clue will be something that is in sight – if we look at things correctly. The antique store was in plain view of the bank, but we weren’t looking for that at first. When we did look for that, it was right there. Same with the safe. We could see the safe, but it wasn’t until we applied the clue that we were able to open it. That’s why I spent so much time cleaning. I thought that the clue might be somewhere we could find it easily. We just needed to look closely at what we saw.”

Tyson went over the clues again and tried to apply those to the house they were not sitting in. He couldn’t come up with any similar hiding places here.

Addison stood up and picked up the trash she’d collected from her snacks. “I’m going to head off to bed,” she said. “All this cleaning is something new. I have muscle aches like you wouldn’t believe.” She laughed as she walked out of the room.

Tyson headed upstairs about fifteen minutes later. The conversation had waned, and without Wi-Fi or television, there was little left to do. He’d found a small room that seemed to double as a library. Tyson had cringed at the idea that they would need to go through every book in that room in search of the clue. That would be saved for another day if it came to that. Tyson hoped that they’d find the clue tomorrow when they were fresher than they were now.

However, they would be on their own this time. The only unaccounted-for clue was a series of numbers that meant nothing to them. So they had to play it smart and keep their eyes open.

The home had four bedrooms. The first held a hospital bed with a variety of medical equipment. Their assumption was that the previous owner, who perhaps doubled as the letter writer, had passed away in that room. No one spoke up to stay in that bedroom.

That meant that they’d have the same division of sleep areas that they had at the Meenachs’ home. James in one, and Addison in another, which left Will and Tyson to share.

One of the bedrooms held two double beds with goose-down mattresses, and that had been assigned to the two men. Tyson had begun to look through his bag for clothing for tomorrow when Will came into the room. The other man didn’t speak for him, but he grabbed some toiletries, which indicated that he was going to get a late shower. Tyson was relieved to know that he could make some deductions, even if they were simplistic.

Will returned wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. His hair was still damp, and he looked tired, even though he and James had only walked around the estate.

“Hey, I wanted to talk to you,” Will said, throwing his shampoo on the bed. The bottle rolled back and forth, probably the result of the last person to sleep in it.

“What about?” Tyson asked. Part of him hoped that he’d learn what was going on with Will, but he winced at the thought of hearing what he’d done to upset Will.

“Yeah, James and I did walk around the land here, but obviously, that didn’t take us hours to do. We finished in about an hour.”

“So what were you doing then?” Tyson asked. The confession angered Tyson and his sore muscles.

“Talking to James. Bethany told me yesterday that I needed to come home now. She told me that I was going to be a shit father, running off and leaving her. I think it’s just the hormones talking, but I felt bad after that conversation, so I’ve been out of it.”

Tyson sat on the edge of his bed. The down’s softness tempted him to lay back and close his eyes. He couldn’t do that to his friend.

“And now I’m not able to talk to her because there’s no service out here. I was hoping that we’d go into town so I could text her at least.”

“You can do that tomorrow if we haven’t found the clue.” Tyson wondered about the clue again. He didn’t know why it hadn’t come to them yet.

Will flopped down on the bed. “I hope so. It’s killing me. That’s why James and I weren’t very helpful. I was bending his ear the whole time on the Bethany situation and her accusation.”

Since Will had hit the bed, Tyson decided that he could follow suit. The mattress was so soft that it nearly enveloped him, and Tyson sighed with delight and exhaustion.

“Why does your bed look so comfortable, and mine is a brick?” Will asked, sitting up and staring at his friend.

“I don’t know why, but it’s comfortable.”

Will walked across the room and sat down on Tyson’s bed. “No comparison. This one is a cloud to mine.”

“We can cuddle if you want. Just don’t tell Bethany!” Tyson said, with a chuckle and his eyes already shut.

Will laughed. “I was actually going to ask you if you’d help flip the mattress. I think that’s why yours is so soft. It’s been flipped. Mine has been on the same side for ages, and it’s been pressed down by the people who slept on it and whatever those people put on the bed that compacted it.”

Tyson groaned, but he sat up. “Can’t you do it yourself? I’m killed.”

“It’s a two-person job for sure,” Will said. He slapped Tyson on the back and simultaneously gave him a shove forward.

“Why wouldn’t they do both mattresses at the same time?” Tyson said.

Will elbowed him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? There’s a reason for that – something that would be visible to us if we came here and stayed in the house but not to the casual observer.”

“So one of these beds has a clue?” Tyson asked. “On the bed?”

“It would have to be. Why flip one and not the other? It’s a two-person job, so the caretaker and any other person coming by. They’d have to stay here, and they’d have to have more than one person.”

“Okay,” Tyson replied. “You have my interest. So now which one—and where?”

Will looked at the bed where they sat. “I think that it’s the flipped bed. The underside would be ideal for a hiding place as no one is likely to flip it again for ages.”

The two men stood up, and both lifted the same side of the bed. Underneath the bed was a small slit in the middle of the mattress. Will reached under the bed, holding his share on his back now, and pulled out a sheet of paper from the slit.

As soon as the bed was down again, he handed the paper to Tyson. “This is your quest, you know.”

“It’s all of ours,” Tyson corrected. However, he did unfold the paper and read it. “I think it’s another set of coordinates.”

Chapter 10

They didn’t bother to tell the others. Tyson would need a working phone to determine the location of the new site, and right now, that wasn’t possible. Since he’d already suggested that Will go into Bangor, he could catch a ride with him and determine the site of the next clue.

Even with the discovery, Tyson felt as though there was more to learn here, but he was damned if he knew what else could be realized. The caretaker had been instructed not to tell him anything, and the man followed orders well.

Perhaps the trek into Bangor in the morning would help them.

Tyson woke early and began to make coffee for the group. He wanted to share the news and get them on the road to their next adventure. Tyson was nearly bouncing off the walls when Addison and James came downstairs.

“Why are you so bouncy?” Addison asked while pushing her hair out of her eyes. Tyson wasn’t so excited that he didn’t notice how attractive she was in the morning. Tyson wondered if he could push past the friend zone into something more meaningful. He’d hoped that trip would provide some time for them to be alone, but that hadn’t happened yet. He’d spent more time with Will than Addison.

“We found it – we found it last night.”

James looked up from his cup of coffee. “The clue? Where was it?”

Tyson went through the explanation of where it had been and how they found it.

James looked around. “Where is that caretaker? I’d rather he not be privy to any of this. You never know what side he’s on.”

Tyson thought back to James’ talks with the Meenach family. How much had he told them? While James might have felt them safe and trustworthy, he didn’t know them. They could have been in touch with Mandy, which would have explained her presence in Manhattan.

Of course, no one could sneak up on them here in the woods outside of Bangor.

“We need to find a café in Bangor or a hotspot somewhere. We have the coordinates, but we have no idea where we’re headed next.” Tyson was still excited about the news, despite the somewhat muted responses from the others.

“There’s a coffeehouse about twenty miles from here,” Will said. “I saw the sign for it on the highway—before we came back into the woods.”

“Great, pack up and meet at the car in fifteen minutes. Can everyone do that?” Tyson would have told them to get into the car immediately, but he didn’t want to return to the house. The more time they spent here, the more chances the caretaker had to know what they were doing or where they were going.

If they left directly from here, he would not know their destination—because they didn’t know it.

James already had his phone out by the time they pulled into the coffeehouse parking lot. He and Will were in the backseat again. Will was holding the folded paper they had found last night.

“Lake Placid,” Will said.

James looked at the front seat and then at Will. “Where is that? I know it’s a movie, but I have no idea if that’s far away or not.”

Tyson had consulted his phone as well now. “It’s about an eight-hour drive from here. Another day lost to travel.”

Addison shrugged. “We could have flown, but you’d be on your own. I don’t suppose there was money in the mattress with the coordinates?”

Tyson shook his head. “Nothing this time. I’d hoped for it too.”

“Too bad I’m getting tapped out.” Addison gave him a wan smile.

Tyson wasn’t sure if she was hinting for a loan—or just looking for a sympathetic ear to listen. He still had his funds to get him through another six months at home, but the trip had definitely taken a toll on the cash he’d brought. He didn’t want to withdraw any more than he had to.

“So we’re on to Lake Placid,” Will said with more enthusiasm than Tyson had heard over the past few days.

James held up a hand. “Before we get started, let’s talk about this. We have some options.”

Addison turned back to talk to the guys. “You mean like Medina?”

James nodded and said, “Exactly. Just because the map tells us to go to Lake Placid doesn’t mean we have to go. We have a clue that is more organic than these folded papers. We know that the letters were mailed from Medina. We know that someone involved in this scavenger hunt went to the post office and mailed the letters. There’s no flummery involved?”

Will laughed. “Flummery? This isn’t an eighteenth-century novel. This is real life, and the clues tell us to follow a particular path. I say we follow that path.”

James’ face grew hard. “Of course, you would. You found the paper. Addison and I don’t even know if it’s real. We just found out this morning.”

Tyson wanted to stop the fighting. He hadn’t come on this trip to generate bad blood among his friends. Tyson was glad that he and Will had worked things out last night. Otherwise, he’d be battling against three other people instead of two.

“That’s pretty premeditated,” Tyson suggested. “There wasn’t any Wi-Fi last night, so I would have had to create those coordinates before we left Manhattan. So I had planned to run us all over New England—for what?”

“So your confederate could head to the real location and find the treasure.” James' words were as cold as the morning air.

“My friends are in this car. I don’t have anyone else to run around to different places and find a ‘treasure’ that may or not be here.” Tyson had worried slightly about this before. The man who lived in a guarded compound might be more inclined to believe a conspiracy theory about the people he knew.

“So you deny it? I don’t know you well enough to know who you know. You could have a girlfriend—or a boyfriend. I don’t know, and that person could be on the road right now to get the gold at the end of the rainbow.” James’ face had flushed, and his anger filled the small space in the SUV.

Tyson could also feel it spilling over to the others. Addison kept her eyes on Tyson, and it wasn’t a look of infatuation. She watched him like he was a felon who might escape.

“Why would I invite all of you to go with me and then cheat you out of whatever this is? That seems rather counterproductive.”

“Because we could help you with the clues, and then we could get to the end of the rainbow and find nothing because your friend got there first.”

“I could make the same claims about the Meenachs—or Mandy. I thought I saw Mandy on the streets of Manhattan, looking around the bank.” Tyson had not planned on mentioning it, but in the face of the accusations and the suggestions that he was less than honest and fair, he had grown angry too.

James laughed now. “Mandy is working at her job in Raleigh. Unlike some of you, they wouldn’t let her off for a week or more.” He gave an accusing look to Will.

“I vote that we head to Lake Placid. I feel like we’re getting close. We’re not done by a long shot, but I feel like we’re getting closer to a solution.” Will raised his hand as if he was voting in an election.

Addison kept her hand down. Tyson felt the betrayal and turned away for a second. “Look, it’s been a note, key, key, note so far. Oh, and fifty dollars. What if that’s all we’re going to get? Twelve dollars and fifty cents apiece. That’s hardly worth the time and the cost of a trip.”

Tyson turned back to her. “I’ve seen you enjoying yourself here—so far. It’s like being in law enforcement. You’re looking for clues, trying to figure out the mystery man’s next step and purpose. Why do you want to stop that now?”

Addison sighed. “I’m running out of money. Yesterday was a full day of cleaning and then sleeping on a lumpy bed. Not all of us slept on a clue last night. And now, today is another day of travel. How long do we give this before we head home? How do we know enough is enough? I thought if we went to Medina, we’d be on the trail we set. We’d find out who was involved and what was at stake. If we go to Lake Placid, we’re playing his game, where he sets the rules. If we go to Medina, we set the rules.”

Tyson gave her a long hard look, wondering about her financial situation and disappointment. “Well, it’s two votes for Lake Placid, and the second vote belongs to the guy with the car.”

Will said from the backseat, “Take I-85 South.”

Chapter 11

“Just where the hell are we going?” James asked.

“Lake Placid,” Addison said with some derision in her voice. “I thought you knew that when we voted?”

Tyson could see that James was quite literally rolling his eyes as the woman spoke. Even those on the same side for voting now started to snipe at each other. “I meant, overall, holistically – where are we going?”

Will turned to look at him. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.”

“We’re running around from place to place to place. We’ve been in Manhattan, where we found a clue to take us to Bangor, where we found a clue to take us to Lake Placid. What’s next? We’ll find a clue, and then we’ll go to that city. My question really is, I guess, when do we call this quits?”

Tyson could see the two members of the group in the backseat. Addison raised an eyebrow at the question. “I would think it’s when we don’t feel like we’re making any forward progress in the matter.”

“Do you feel like we’ve made any progress now?” James retorted. “We’re three cities in, and we have no idea what the goal is. I hate to sound crass, but what’s in it for us? I’ve spent far more than I’ve earned out of this quest.”

Addison nodded, and Tyson wondered how her finances were again. She seemed to have enough to eat and stay in hotels, but at the same time, she had made a few comments that made Tyson wonder precisely how much money she had.

Today’s adventure would not have any sleeping arrangements made for them. Will used the coordinates to look up Google Maps. From that, he could look at the building in that location. Will found that they were heading to a hospital. He had tried to call the phone number listed for the facility. Still, the line was disconnected, which was not a good sign for the overall health of the hospital.

If he had to guess, the hospital had closed from time to time, especially in smaller communities where the latest testing and diagnostic equipment would be at the more extensive facilities in the bigger towns.

Tyson and Will had both seen that happen. Raleigh was a college town at heart, with a wide range of learning hospitals and equipment not available to the outlying areas of North Carolina. So doctors from the smaller towns frequently sent the families to Raleigh for the more accurate –and expensive tests. They had talked about the possibilities for those remote hospitals and how their time was likely short.

Now they’d be visiting the corpse of what cities like Raleigh had created. Tyson felt a bit guilty to see what his own work had done. Would there be anyone still there who would blame them for shutting them down?

Will looked back at the backseat and then turned around quickly. “How long has that SUV been following us?”

Tyson looked in the rearview mirror and then back at Will. “I wasn’t paying that much attention to who was behind us. Why? Are they following us—are you sure?”

Will nodded. “Pretty sure. I’ve been looking back whenever I talk to James and Addison, and the last few times I’ve looked back, the same SUV is behind us.”

James cleared his throat and looked over at Addison. “Do you have a compact mirror in your purse?”

She laughed. “This is a hell of a time to powder your nose,” she said as she reached into her purse.

Tyson couldn’t see what they were doing until James raised the compact and looked into it. He was obviously trying to observe the SUV without turning around to stare at them. He used the little mirror inside to see what the other car was doing.

“Don’t do anything suspicious—yet,” James said. “Just pretend like you haven’t seen a thing.”

Tyson took the instructions quite literally and proceeded to drive without looking back. Will would look over at him from time to time to ask what he planned to do, but Tyson had no idea what he would do. He’d never been in a situation like this before, cars following him to a new destination. Neither of them was sure if they knew Tyson’s final destination, so losing them would do no good. If not, perhaps they could shake the tail in some way that would allow them to go to Lake Placid in peace.

Almost five minutes later, James spoke up again. “You’re going to follow my directions to a T. When I tell you to cut over to the exit, you will. Not before, and definitely not later. Trust me that no one will be in the way. You’ll just do what I say. Will’s going to take your phone, and we’ll get started.”

Will picked up Tyson’s phone. It made Tyson a bit uncomfortable that Will knew his passcode without even stopping to think. Will could look at the photos any time he wanted to. Just like Addison, he had access to all the information, and he could at any time leave them in the dust and finish the quest by himself. Traveling with four people—or three if one left—took far longer than moving alone.

“Now, Will, I want you to turn on the flashlight app. You know how to do it?” James asked.

Will nodded his head and turned on the app. The light shone into the car brightly.

“Now you’re going to shine it in my direction. Just hold it still, and I’ll do the rest.” James took the compact and held it up at an angle. The flashlight reflected off the mirror and out of the back window.

Tyson looked out of the rearview mirror, and he could see the driver put an arm up to block the sudden burst of light. There seemed to be a discussion, which to Tyson only indicated that the SUV held multiple people following them.

When Tyson looked back in the mirror, the SUV had changed, now one lane to the left of where they’d been. Yet they still stayed about the same distance from Tyson’s vehicle. Will and James now contorted themselves to manipulate the flashlight's light into the mirror. The reflection fell against the SUV’s windshield again, and Tyson wondered what the car would do now.

James yelled, “Now, exit now.”

Without thinking, Tyson swung the car to the right, where the vehicle followed the exit ramp to the traffic light at the cross street.

The SUV continued down the highway. Tyson could no longer see the figures in the windshield, though he suspected that they’d be angry with the trick.

He looked in the rearview mirror and asked James. “What do we do now?”

James laughed. “Get back on the highway and head to Lake Placid.”

Will started to say something, but James interrupted. “They’re miles ahead of us by now. They’d either have to pull off to the side of the road or continue on at a normal speed. If they pull off the road, then we’ll know for sure that they’re following us. I don’t think that they want that. Otherwise, we’re on our own, which is what we wanted.”

Will got a word in. “Will they come back for us?”

James shrugged. “They might, which would likely mean that they have a tracking device on the car. We’ll look when we stop for lunch. Otherwise, they’ll have to pick us up at some point, or others are tracking us as well. In either case, I’m going to expect to see them again before we’re done with this trip.”

Addison sighed. “This is when I wish I was still on the police force. I could have run the license plate numbers on the SUV and found out who they were. As it is now, we have no idea what we’re up against.”

“That is if it’s their car. It’s quite possible that they stole the car or are using stolen plates. Then you’d still be in the same boat as we are now. Someone is following us, but we don’t know who,” James added.

“If someone was following us,” Tyson reminded them. “All we saw was a black SUV that had followed behind us for several miles. I’ve had instances where I’ve followed a car for miles, only to realize that we live in the same neighborhood. Coincidences happen.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” James said. “Everything happens for a reason.”

Tyson didn’t want to hear a lecture on the conspiracy theories by James. Mandy was a great friend and had lots of fun, but her father was not quite normal.

He turned the satellite radio on to listen to soft music. Tyson focused on the tunes and not on James, who had begun talking about how the four of them had met and taken this quest for a reason—and how they needed each other to complete the journey to whatever treasure waited for them in the near future.

Tyson looked over at Will, who seemed to be eating this up. Tyson wondered again why Will had opted to go with them and leave Bethany home alone and pregnant. It seemed an odd choice for Will, who had always been rather conventional. Had the couple fought, or had Will just needed one last adventure before settling down to fatherhood and the traditional path of marriage and children? He wished that he’d had more time to talk with Will and learn what was going on.

From Tyson’s calculations, they were nearly halfway through New Hampshire, on Route 2, when they stopped for lunch. James insisted on a window seat at the diner that Addison selected. He stared out the window, presumably looking for black SUVs stopping for lunch as well. Tyson couldn’t believe that anyone would be that obvious about their surveillance of the four adults, but James was sure that they’d show themselves again soon.

At lunch, James took two phone calls where he left the table. Of course, Tyson thought, James wouldn’t let anyone listen in on his business.

“What’s that about?” Will asked, looking at both Addison and Tyson.

“Mandy’s been calling. She wants him to come home. She’s tired of taking care of his compound, the animals and working her own job as well. It’s a bit much. Not to mention that he apparently didn’t leave her any cash to cover those expenses.” Addison gave a chuckle as she finished speaking.

Tyson looked at the two passengers at the table. “So you don’t think that Mandy’s been following us?” He told them about seeing someone who looked like Mandy in Manhattan and his concerns that she might be following them to get a part of the treasure.

Addison laughed loudly and then realized where she was. She put a hand over her mouth. Pausing for a few seconds, she finally said, “I could see Mandy doing something like that, but no, she’s been in Raleigh the whole time.”

Tyson raised an eyebrow. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Easy. She and I have software that allows the others to find out where they are. Women can’t be too careful when they go out. This is just a way to keep track of each other and make sure we’re both safe. Anyway, it’s a habit for me to check on her. I’ve done it each day of the trip, so I know she’s been in Raleigh every night. There’s no way to get to New York City and back, all while keeping herself in the Raleigh area every night.”

Tyson could have argued about the ability to travel from North Carolina to New York and back in a day, but James came back at that moment. “Sorry about that. I had to take care of some things.”

Will sputtered with a bit of breathlessness in his own voice. “Do you need to go home?” The question was almost anxious, and again Tyson wondered if his friend needed to head home soon—before they had come to any prize at the end of the journey.

“Nope, I don’t need to go home. I just had to wire her some cash. Those animals need some feed, and that doesn’t come cheap.”

Tyson looked at the older man. “So, do you really think that we’re being followed?”

He shrugged. “I’ve tried to maintain a low profile, and we haven’t known where we’re going, so it’s difficult for us to leave much of a trail, but it’s definitely possible.”

Will looked surprised at the answer. Had he been thinking that James was just being paranoid about the SUV or overly cautious? “Do you have any ideas on who it could be?”

James sighed. “I hate to start naming names, but there are a few people who could be involved in it.” He pointed a finger at Tyson, which surprised him. “This one here was flirting with the assistant at the bank. I have no idea how much he told her, but she could easily have passed the word on to others.”

Tyson’s mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”

“Do you know how easy it would be for the bank to get an inkling that something was going on with that particular deposit box? They’d just need to keep a watch on the people who come in for the box, and when someone does, pump him – or her – for information. Easy as pie.”

Tyson thought back to the interview at the bank. He’d had to give information for the checking account he didn’t open. He did mention Raleigh and visiting friends in New York, but had he said more than that? He couldn’t recall how much more he’d revealed. In either case, he couldn’t have possibly mentioned a trip between Bangor and Lake Placid because he didn’t know that they would be visiting either town.

“Who else?” Addison asked. Tyson was surprised to see that she wasn’t guiding this conversation. He nearly cringed to think of her telling James that Tyson suspected his daughter.

“They’re my friends, but the Meenachs. We stayed there. They could easily have overheard any of our discussions on the bank or the keys. That might have piqued their interest, though again, they wouldn’t know where we were going. Hell, we don’t.”

“Tyson suggested that he saw Mandy in New York,” Addison added to the conversation.

James looked at him for a moment and then laughed. “I’m making a believer out of you,” he said, still snickering. “She could be at that. You thought you saw her in New York. Where?”

Tyson explained that he thought he’d seen her while they were waiting for Addison to get back from the bank with the second key. She’d been outside, seeming to wait, while they’d had tea and coffee waiting for the next leg of their adventure.

“That’s pretty specific—and you thought it was Mandy, eh?” James paused for a moment. “I could see her showing up at the Meenachs’ house or a more general place, but she’d have no idea on how to find us outside the bank.”

“What if she’d followed us?” Will added to the conversation. “Then she would have been in the vicinity.”

“I’m pretty good at keeping an eye out for people who are where they shouldn’t be. I don’t think she followed us.”

Addison cleared her throat. “What about the guy with the gun in Bangor?”

Will chuckled. “I’ve always found that the guys with the guns are not the ones you need to worry about. They’re all talk and no bullets.”

James didn’t say anything in response to that. He just looked out the window. Tyson wished he knew what the man was thinking.

Chapter 12

They pulled into Lake Placid a few hours later. The light was still good, so they decided to head directly to the hospital. Addison had made a point of suggesting they hurry since the four had already wasted days in New York City and Bangor. The money situation must be getting worse for her, Tyson deduced. He wondered when Will would need to go home as well.

That would only leave Tyson and James, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could handle the survivalist—especially on his own.

The hospital was further gone than either he or Will had imagined. The front door was askew, looking as though someone had broken into the hospital months or even years ago. Moss had grown up on the side of the building and covered the white walls with a green hue.

As they got out of the car and headed to the entrance, a whiff of mold and disuse floated through the air. Tyson gagged a little as they walked into the lobby of the building. He recalled all of these odors, except the mold, from his time as a nurse. They were not fond memories as he thought of the patients and the staff who had contracted a disease – and later died. The weight of those memories came back to him and dragged him down.

“You okay?” Addison asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah. I’m not sure what we do now, though? What are we looking for here? It’s too big for a goose chase. The house was bad enough.”

Will held out his hand. “Let me see your phone again. Tyson gave it to him, and Will quickly typed in the passcode and began swiping through the photos. The task only took a few seconds, and then he held up the image of one of the letters. “This one.”

Tyson looked at the code on the phone. 1961-00762-58.

His brain clicked, and his eyes widened. “Case number, right?”

During his time as a nurse, Tyson recalled the case numbers for each patient. Even as they converted to an all-electronic system, the case numbers stayed the same. The first four digits were the birth year of the patient, followed by a case number that was a mixture of the department number and a sequenced number. So this would have been a person born in 1961 who spent time in the hospital in the department related to 00762 and the 58th patient in that department that year. The problem was that Tyson had no idea how many patients a small-town New York hospital would have in a year. He could estimate the number of Raleigh, but that was far different from here.

Will took a deep breath. “So I am going to make some massive assumptions here. I have to assume that the hospital did not have any digital recordkeeping. If they did, then we’re out of luck because none of us is a hacker, right?” He looked around before going on, but no one spoke up.

“So then there have to be paper files. We’re going to be looking for a file storage space that contains the records. Tyson, do you have a crowbar?”

Tyson nodded and walked back to the car. If he’d been asked, he would have likely agreed that none of the keys they’d been provided would fit into the locks of the hospital. The door to the records rooms would probably be locked with a deadbolt and doorknob lock as well. The chances that the two keys fit a safety deposit box and a door at the hospital were slim to none.

He brought back the crowbar and handed it to Will. “Where to?”

“Let’s spread out and look for the administrative suite. The records will either be there or nearby.”

Tyson agreed with Will, who worked in just such a suite in Raleigh. The records were close to the higher-up and not the nurses and doctors who needed them daily. That was the way the system worked.

If the hospital was designed like most of the buildings, the lower floors would be for patients. The emergency room was on the main floor, and then the floors above that would be for patient rooms and testing sites. The upper levels, the floors where there were better views and less noise, were reserved for the administrators.

Addison was not convinced, and James wanted to search the hospital floor by floor, which would take hours. Tyson worried about the fact that if Will wasn’t here, then the other two would outnumber him, even though he’d been the one who worked in a hospital for years.

Will and Tyson took the stairs. Neither was sure that the elevators would work in the dilapidated building, and they didn’t want to risk being trapped in the elevator or, worse yet, having the contraption plummet the height of the building.

When they reached the top level, they split up and began to search for anything that looked like a business suite. Tyson took the left side of the floor, looking into the open rooms and trying to find any doors that were marked for patient records. He found nothing that would be helpful. The offices looked like they belonged to the upper echelons of the company, and the records would not be there.

Without waiting for Will, Tyson walked to the floor beneath this one and began the process again. He looked in offices and read the doors, which were mostly conference rooms and custodial services.

Even though Tyson had years of experience in reading a patient’s chart, he worried about finding the file in question. First, he would feel uncomfortable violating the privacy of the patient. The federal government had imposed penalties for violating the patient’s medical privacy. No one had authorized them to view these records.

He also knew that it was also very likely that the records had been transported to other medical sites where the security would be far more stringent – what then? They had a file number, but they didn’t know the patient’s name or any other identifying information. No one would hand over a file just because you had the file number from an anonymous letter.

Tyson also worried that Addison and Will would be more vocal about going home at this point if they found the file. The patient records would include the person’s name and information. So they could contact him or her next and learn what this was all about. However, what would come after that? Would the quest just be over? Or would the person be able to tell them about the treasure that they suspected would be available to them?

He was on the third floor from the top when he saw a locked door with a large sign saying “Records.” While it wasn’t exactly like the room at their own hospital, it was close enough to be recognizable. Tyson’s hospital only used storage for the older records, the ones that had not been transposed to electronic files yet. He had a hunch that all the documents here would be paper. This hospital had a rundown feeling as if no one had ever taken enough care of it.

He looked around for something to pry open the door. The lock was sturdy, and another deadbolt sat above the first lock. However, the door opened outward, which meant that the hinges were on the outside. That wasn’t the best form of security available.

A toolbox sat in the corner of one of the offices, and Tyson found a screwdriver and hammer. He should be able to take the pins out of the hinge and then perhaps bend the door out enough to get inside the room.

He shouted for Will. Tyson had fears of the door sliding back into place and not being able to get out. Even with three of his friends here, the wait to escape could take hours. With Will available, he’d be able to run in moments.

Will came down the stairs and entered the hallway that held the door to the patient records. He was trotting along, rushing as fast as he could while taking the time to scour each floor. The shout must have worried him.

“Sorry, I just think that we’ve found the room we want,” Tyson said, pointing to the door. “The hinges are on the outside, so I should be able to pop the pins and get the door out. I just am going to need some help.”

Will nodded. He took the screwdriver and hammer from Tyson and popped out the pins in no time. Both men grabbed onto the hinges and pulled away from the frame and away from the locks. The door slid a little, but not enough for either of the men to fit in the space.

Will made a motion for Tyson to stay where he was and continue to hold the door open. He took the screwdriver and pushed it into the gap between the doorknob lock and the frame. Nothing happened at first, but after a few seconds of pushing, the lock retracted into the door, leaving no contact with the frame.

With only the deadbolt in place, the two men were able to rock the door back and forth until it came loose. The gap between the door and frame widened until a person could easily slip between the two. Tyson slid inside the room and began to look.

On the bright side of their situation, the room was jammed full of file folders. So that likely meant that none of the folders had been moved when the hospital was closed. The file they were searching for would likely still be here.

However, the folders were everywhere. The jumbled mess was certainly not in any order that he could discern. It could take hours for him to find the proper folder.

Will stayed outside the door. Even though the door had made no moves to slide back into its original space, he worried that the door could trap him or both of them if they weren’t careful.

Tyson began looking through the long filing cabinets that lined the wall. In some cases, he would find a year or two that seemed to be entirely sequential. Then it would be followed by a random scramble of forty or more files in no order at all.

He’d nearly finished the 1950s when he found a cabinet that included all of 1960. Tyson knew that he was close to the answer and persevered. He began in 1961 and quickly found 00762-58. Tyson’s hopes dropped immediately as the middle five digits represented the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. The chances of talking to that person had fallen dramatically.

Chapter 13

Tyson and Will decided to notify their other two partners in the venture before going any further. They discussed it briefly and thought that opening a vital piece of information, the first time that a person’s name had been given to them might buoy their spirits and get them to go along to the next destination.

James and Addison hurried to the floor and were breathing heavily by the time they arrived at the door. “What did you find?”

Tyson held up the folder. “Just what Will predicted. A patient folder,” he said, holding up the file over his head in triumph.

“Have you opened it?” James asked, taking a few steps toward Tyson and the folder.

Tyson brought his hand down and held the manila file close to his chest. “Not yet. I wanted us all to be here when we looked inside.”

Addison looked at the file. “Too bad you’ve already put your hands on it. We could have taken some fingerprints to see if they match anyone in the criminal databases.”

“How would you do that?” Will asked with a bit of snark. “You’re not a part of that system anymore.” He looked away from her without looking at her expression. Will’s words had struck a nerve with Addison.

“I still have some friends. We’d be able to learn a bit more about what’s going on here. I still don’t like the idea that we’re being dragged around by our noses. I want to take another path to get some answers that the person behind this scavenger hunt doesn’t want us to get. We need to be looking for our own clues, not the clues that he wants us to find.”

“Well, like you said, it’s too late now,” Will shot back. “Tyson, open the file and tell us what’s inside.”

Tyson opened the file and began to read. “The patient’s name was Oliver Price. He was admitted to the hospital for chest pains.”

Addison sighed. “Is there any information on his demographics?”

Tyson looked at the page for a second. He paused in surprise but in pleasure as they had begun to put the pieces together. “Well, he was born in 1961, but we knew that from the case file number. So he would have been in his 60s. Get this, though. His address is the same as that house in Bangor. That house gave us a clue to come here to Lake Placid.”

All three of the others circled around Tyson so that they could more easily see the folder. They scanned the page, but nothing else seemed to strike them—or they kept it to themselves.

“So what do you think this means? Price is somehow involved in all of this?” James asked impatiently. “Is he the person who sent you on this adventure—or is he the guy who is following you?

“I would think so. That name sounds very familiar to me for some reason. I can’t place it, though.” Tyson knew that if he let the memory fester, the answer would come back to him in time.

“Doesn’t ring a bell for me,” Addison said. Tyson wasn’t surprised. If he’d heard the name, then it was unlikely that the name had something to do with crime.

“Keep reading,” Will encouraged him.

“He was here for three days in the ICU. They ran tests on him, but they were inconclusive. The blood tests came back negative for all the typical reasons. He didn’t have any blood pressure issues or any blood-borne diseases. So that was ruled out.”

“What else?” James encouraged. The man was as anxious as a kid at Christmas. Tyson wondered if James knew what the prize was at the end of this journey? It would make sense to be this impatient if he knew what was at stake. Given his attitude, there must be a great deal at stake here.

Tyson continued to read through the medical records. “The records show that he had an infarction. He had a CT scan and an EKG that showed this. However, the incident was relatively mild. I’m not sure why he’d be in intensive care.”

Will looked over Tyson’s shoulder and read along with him. “You’re right. We wouldn’t have him in ICU. We might have him in the cardiac unit while we ran tests so we could keep an eye on him, but it looked like a fairly mild heart attack, just a warning to get it together, or the next one would be worse.”

Addison perked up. “Was? So he passed away.”

Tyson flipped the page. He was curious why Will had gone to the past tense as well. “Well, actually, yes, he did. On the fourth day of his stay, he had another heart attack and passed away.”

Will looked at the page again and then reached over Tyson’s should flip the page. “Where are the notes on the second heart attack?” he asked.

Tyson flipped through a few pages, worrying at first that someone had beaten them to the hospital and had taken the most pertinent information. He found the sheet folded in half and shoved it in the back of the folder. For a second, the folded paper reminded him of the pages he’d received in the mail, and he got a cold shiver run up his back. He was more confident than ever that they were on the right track. This folder was tied directly to the house in Bangor, so it couldn’t all be a coincidence.

“Let me go back and read this in order. It will make more sense if I do,” Tyson said. He flipped back again to the second page. Reading through the information on Oliver Price’s insurance, he paused again.

“Addison, could you look up the information on the pawn shop in Manhattan? I need the address, please.” Tyson waited silently for her to Google the information. She gave him the address, and Tyson took a deep breath before continuing.

“And now I think it’s official. This is all tying together.”

Addison looked at him while James tried to read the documents.

“The insurance is a self-employed policy, and from my readings, Mr. Price owned a pawn shop. The same shop that we visited in Manhattan, where we found the key that took us to the house in Bangor, which led us to Lake Placid, where we found a name for our mysterious benefactor.” Tyson gave them all a smile.

“But we’re no further than before on what we’re looking for here,” James said. “What is the prize at the end of this puzzle?”

Tyson read from the papers. “Mr. Price had no emergency contact. He had no next of kin to make medical decisions for him. He had no medical power of attorney. So I’d say that it’s safe to assume that he didn’t have any family. He did, however, have a thriving business in Manhattan, multiple homes, and no heirs. So I think we’re looking at the estate of Oliver Price as the ultimate prize here.”

James whistled. “That’s quite a bit of money. Real estate in Manhattan does not come cheap. But I have one question that these papers haven’t explained yet. Why you? Why did someone send you a bunch of letters with gibberish on them? Why not me—or Will—or Addison—or anyone else?”

Tyson shook his head. “You’re not going to find that answer in here.”

Addison still looked at him. “Didn’t you say that the name sounded familiar? Maybe that’s the answer.”

“I think I’d remember someone who was going to give me a great deal of money. I saw a lot of patients when I was a nurse. Besides, it’s not ethical for me to take a bequest from a patient.”

Will cleared his throat. “The patient died here, not in Raleigh. You were nowhere near this place when he died. So unless you’re capable of magic, then you weren’t able to kill him by proxy. So there would be no rules against a person you didn’t interact with at the time of their death.”

Tyson looked directly into his friend’s eyes for a minute. “I got to tell you. I’m not altogether thrilled with this. It’s making me uncomfortable.”

Addison looked at him. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think Oliver Price died of natural causes,” Tyson replied.

They had decided to stay in town and see what else they could learn. Will had booked rooms for them with the same structure as their stay at the Meenachs’ home. Will and Tyson took one room, Addison the second, and James in the third. Will had ignored the pleas of the others to pay or that the accommodations were far too expensive for all of them. Tyson could afford his half of the room, but he wondered how Addison would have afforded the cost. She seemed to be watching her pennies as the trip became extended.

The Mirror Lake Inn, which was only a short distance from Lake Placid, had accommodations for three rooms, and they decided to meet for dinner to discuss what their next steps were.

Tyson’s plan was to talk to a few of the locals and see if they could find out the name of the nurse who worked in the ICU. They had several sets of initials, but even in a town the size of Lake Placid, they needed more to go on than just the initials of a nurse.

Tyson started with the clerk at the registration desk. He’d shaken his head when Tyson explained that he’d wanted to talk to someone who worked at the hospital before it had closed. The man shook his head, but he offered to call one of the housekeeping staff, who had been at the inn for years.

The appointment was made for later that evening. Tyson thought that the housekeeper wanted a free meal out of the encounter, so she suggested meeting in the more expensive restaurant at the hotel. She ordered an appetizer and an upscale glass of wine before they even began to talk about the hospital.

The other three had agreed to wait upstairs in their rooms. Four people looking at one older woman would feel far more like an interrogation than a conversation, and Tyson was sure that she would have something to say that could help them.

Myrtle took another sip of her wine and smiled at Tyson. “It’s not every day that I get to have a dinner with a nice-looking man,” she said as an introduction. “Harry, behind the desk, told me that you’re looking for someone who used to work at the hospital. Is that right?”

Tyson shared the story that the group had developed that would be most likely to get information. “My uncle passed away at that hospital, and I just learned he had passed a few days ago. We weren’t close as adults, but he had taken me on some incredible trips when I was younger. I still remember them. Anyway, I just wanted to talk to someone from the hospital who might be able to tell me a bit more about what he was doing here and how he passed.” Tyson did his best imitation of a sad face for Myrtle.

The older woman got up. “Excuse me for a second.” She left the restaurant. Her purse was still here, so Tyson knew that she hadn’t skipped out on him, but he couldn’t determine what she was doing.

In a few minutes, she returned. She sat down without speaking and then took a long sip of her wine.

“I called my granddaughter. She worked at the hospital during the time your uncle was there. She remembers the case, and she said that she could talk to you if you want.”

“Thank you. That’s great!” Tyson replied, amazed at the quick response. “A nurse probably remembered more and was more involved with the patients than the doctors,” he added, remembering his own days at a hospital.

“You wouldn’t have any luck with the doctors anyway,” Myrtle replied. “One moved to the West Coast, and another passed away last year. So it’s a nurse or nothing for you.”

Tyson wondered if the doctor who passed away had been older or if this was another blocked step on the path to the fortune. For now, after learning about Mr. Price’s wealth, Tyson was sure that money would be at the end of the trail.

A young blonde woman approached the table, and Myrtle scooted over so that the woman could sit. She was older than Tyson, but by less than a decade. She had long blonde hair and a slim figure that looked like she worked out frequently. Tyson considered asking her out or asking for a private conversation, but he stopped. He wouldn’t mix personal with this quest. Perhaps when he was rich, then he’d come back here and talk to her over dinner – without Myrtle.

“So, what do you want to know about your uncle?” the nurse asked. Tyson wondered if she hadn’t given a name or if he’d been too busy looking at her to hear it. Myrtle signaled a waitress to the table, and the nurse ordered a drink, and a soda, which might indicate that she had work later this evening.

“I was interested in what happened. I mean, I thought from my relatives that he was getting better, and then he passed away.”

The nurse nodded. “Yeah, you don’t usually forget the ones you lose like that. I don’t know what happened, really. He was in for a heart attack. He was in bad shape. Oliver, who made everyone call him that, was happy and cheerful during his stay. Oliver was going to beat this and invite all of us to his house to celebrate.”

“I worked as a nurse too—until recently—and I know that kind of patient. They’re always the ones that light up the ward.” Tyson smiled, quickly recalling some of the patients he’d tended over the years. He felt a pang of reminiscence for his old job, even though he knew that those days were behind him now. The job was far different now than then.

They spent the next few minutes talking about similar experiences and laughing over some of the less friendly patients that they’d known over the years.

“That’s why it was tough. I saw him one evening, and when I returned the next morning, he’d passed. The bed was empty, and the charts were already filed.”

“Was that normal?” Tyson asked. He rarely recalled anyone being that efficient at their hospital. The files came last since they could wait for a spare moment. The confession almost felt like someone had wanted to forget about Oliver Price as quickly as possible.

“Not really, but it’s a small hospital with a small staff. If they had a slow night, it could have all been cleaned up and filed before we got into work.” She shrugged.

“Was there an inquest or autopsy completed on him? I would think there might be one if the death was unexpected.” Tyson had seen the procedure done in cases that didn’t match the expectations for the patient, but he’d also seen the process skipped if the person was older or in bad shape. Oliver was over 60, which might have made them skip it, or the death could have stemmed from the damage done to the heart by the infarctions.

The nurse shook her head. “No, nothing was done. That was odd at the time, but it got stranger soon after that.”

Tyson furrowed his brow and looked at her. “What happened?”

“A few days after Oliver’s death, a man came into the hospital, wanting to talk to the people who took care of him. He gave us gift cards, brought in some coffee and donuts, and generally wanted to thank us for all that we’d done.”

Tyson had known of similar encounters with people after a loved one passed away. The family would come in and be thankful for the kindness shown to the deceased. It certainly didn’t seem odd to him, but perhaps being in a small community, those types of events didn’t happen as often.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“He started asking questions – a lot of questions. Detailed questions about medical procedures and medicines given to Oliver and that sort of thing. Usually, the family wants to know that the patient was cared for and didn’t suffer. This was more like a review of the medical procedures given to the patient. It was creepy.”

“So what ended up happening with that?” Tyson was curious about the situation. Who would want to know that? As far as he was aware, Oliver Price had no family and no one to take over his estate. So why would they care about the care given?

“He was escorted from the hospital and thanked for his concern. You can bet I didn’t have any of that food he’d brought. No telling what would have happened to me.” Her face had grown concerned during the last part of this conversation, and she appeared very serious now.

After a few more minutes of general conversation, Tyson thanked them for all of the information and went upstairs.

Will was waiting for him when Tyson opened the door. “I think I’ve got something,” Will said. “I think I have something pretty big.”

He practically pulled Tyson into the room by the arm. Will pointed to the bed, and Tyson sat down. He looked at the papers and the scribbles across the pages. He wasn’t sure what Will had found, but apparently, he had put a great deal of time and calculations into it.

“Remember when I told you that the last letter looked like an equation? Well, it is. I found the equation while I was waiting for you. It’s the centroid of a triangle. We couldn’t find the answer before because we didn’t have three data points. When we got the coordinates for the hospital, we got that third point.”

“So Manhattan, Bangor, and now Lake Placid? Those are the three points?”

“Specifically, the bank, the house, and the hospital, but yeah, pretty much it. So now we have the three points, and I was able to plug them into the equation.”

“And the equation finds the middle of the triangle?” Tyson asked. “How does that work?” He was adept in conversations about medicine and patient care, but the math being used here was lost back in the recesses of his high school mind.

“Well, you can do it manually,” Will said, holding up one piece of paper. It depicted a triangle with a number of lines through it. “You take the midpoint of one side of the triangle and then draw a line to the opposite angle of the triangle. That’s called a median. If you do that three times, you get the centroid of the triangle. Like this,” he said, pointing to the middle of the triangle.

“Drawing by lines seems a bit inaccurate,” Tyson said, thinking of driving all over New England to find the middle of a triangle. “I mean, one little slip, and you could be one hundred miles away from the exact location.”

“And that’s why we have the equation. If we use the equation, then we get a more precise solution, and that’s what I have here.” Will held up another sheet of paper, where all three latitudes and all three longitudes had been added together and then divided by three. He had a unique set of coordinates that he’d circled on the page.

“That’s the new destination?” Tyson asked, feeling his heart rate rise. “That’s where we go next?” He thought about telling Will about his conversation with the nurse in the restaurant downstairs, but the thought of putting a damper on this moment of excitement felt mean.

“It’s actually a cabin rental facility, a bunch of cabins, and they’re all for rent. From what I can tell based on my GPS, it’s a place on the White River in Eastern Vermont.” Will looked pleased with his own ability here.

“That’s great. I guess we’ll head there in the morning,” Tyson said.

“There’s one more thing that we haven’t taken into consideration yet,” Will said with a grin.

“What’s that?”

“This was the last clue.”

Chapter 14

The ride to the cabins was far shorter than the other trips. Rather than a full day of sitting in the car, the four had made it to the cabins by lunch. Will wanted to be the one who asked about the cabins since he was the person who had used the last clue to find the location. The others wandered about the open land while they waited for Will to return.

Tyson sensed that Addison was feeling anxious again. Rather than staying reasonably close to the offices, she walked off further to the edge of the cleared land, and then she would return. James was content to sit on a bench, watching the birds chirp. Tyson wondered if there would be any larger animals in the area that they’d have to look out for. He didn’t know what the wildlife would be around here.

Will came out of the offices with a set of keys. He motioned for them to come closer, and they all headed for Tyson’s car. When they’d all convened there, Will spoke. “Believe it or not, there’s a cabin that sits right on that set of coordinates. It couldn’t be a coincidence.”

They loaded back into the car and drove about a mile to the cabin. The site was cleaner than Tyson had expected after the Bangor home, which had been run down. The cabin was two-floors with a massive kitchen, a deck overlooking the river, and a hot tub big enough for all of them and some friends.

“Wow,” James said as he looked around the living area. The cabin was furnished with mid-century modern furniture, which only seemed to add to the old-fashion air of the place. Whoever had decorated the house had paid dearly for it.

Addison took the stairs two at a time. She looked around upstairs and indicated that they had three bedrooms again. “How could this person have known that there would be several of us here?” she asked. “No one knew that we were coming until we actually set off on this adventure. Yet, we’ve had ‘remarkable’ luck on having enough room,”

Tyson wondered about that too. The original letter writer had only sent the letters to one man, yet the adventure had been able to accommodate more than one person every step of the way. Had the person just assumed that the job was too big for one person? Or was it just a coincidence? Tyson refused to let his mind go to the idea that someone was watching them and knew how many people were traveling together.

Will shouted from the kitchen. “I’m going to make us all some lunch, and then we can split up the cabin to see if we can find any clues to what’s going on.”

Will had referenced the clues again, but to Tyson, he had repeated that they’d used the last letter clue. Will was convinced, as he shared with Tyson, that this was the last stop on the journey. They had no more clues from the letter writer, which meant that they would need to find the treasure now or go home.

None of them had expressed any interest in going home. The mood was lighter, and James had made a comment about being home in three days. The bravado and confidence seemed to fill the cabin with confidence.

However, the self-assurance didn’t last. By dinner, none of the four were smiling. Tyson had opted to search the outside of the cabin for any signs of disturbance. A few places in the flower beds had been overturned, but none of those holes had turned up any clues.

From there, he looked at the outside patio, the hot tub, and the plants by the door. None of those had been productive. Tyson tried to think of other places where there might be a fortune stored.

He remembered the guidelines they’d used at the house. Look for something small. Look for something that would not be disturbed by a casual observer. So honestly, that scratched the outside of the house from the potential hiding places. Any of the furry creatures that shared the surrounding areas would have run off with anything stored outside the cabin.

The cabin had three flagpoles on the land surrounding it. The US flag flew on one of them, and Tyson assumed that the flag for Vermont waved on the second. The third flagpole was empty, and Tyson wondered for a second if he should look for that third flag. Maybe it was necessary. He thought of the places in the cabin that might hold a spare flag.

However, the cabin itself was problematic. The building was a rental, which meant that hundreds of people could go through the cabin during any one year. People weren’t always honest, and it would just take one of those hundreds to find and take the treasure the four friends had spent so much effort trying to find.

There was still a final twist to the matter as well. According to Will’s logic about the last clue, this likely meant that this clue would be the most difficult to solve. The others had grown progressively more difficult. The first clue had only been across the street from the bank and had provided a key—which had easily offered another clue. The second clue had been at the house and had counted on Tyson staying the night at the house. That led to the hospital and the folder with the information about Oliver Price. Now they’d used the final clue to develop the centroid of a triangle of all things and come to this cabin in the woods, and Tyson suspected that this last location would not give up its secrets easily.

Having gone around the house for a second time and found nothing, Tyson went inside. Will was hard at work, taking out everything from the cabinets in the kitchen. Addison could be heard working upstairs from the occasional thump or thud.

Tyson couldn’t see any sign of James. He was supposed to be searching the living room and dining room, but Tyson saw no action in those rooms. “What happened to James?” Tyson shouted to Will, who had practically crawled into one of the floor-level kitchen cabinets. He could only see his legs and feet from this angle.

“Not sure. I saw him leave the cabin a while back, but I’ve seen nothing since then. I’ve been too busy to play babysitter to a grown man.” Will pushed deeper into the cabinet and then slowly extricated himself. “We can just take it out of his share, right?” Tyson’s friend had a cobweb on the edge of his glasses, which made Tyson less sure about cooking dinner here tonight.

Will stood up and put his hand on Tyson’s arm. He wasn’t sure what was going on now. Will looked so grave at the moment. Gone was the joking of a minute ago, like a sudden shower that turned the skies gray.

“What’s up?” Tyson said, looking into Will’s eyes. “You seem pensive all of a sudden.”

Will took a deep breath and then said, “I need to leave tomorrow morning, man. I talked to Bethany after we got here, and she’s had enough. She’s talking about going home to her parents’ house. She’s angry like I’ve never seen before.”

Tyson’s eyes widened. He’d seen the couple fight over small things before, but this felt serious. No wonder Will had pulled himself aside to talk like this. He likely wouldn’t want to admit this to people who hadn’t known him for ages. It would be too awkward.

“I don’t blame you a bit,” Tyson said. “I’d do the same thing.”

“Yeah, but we’re so close. I can feel it. We’re at the right place, but we just need to figure out the clue. It could be over in minutes—or even hours, and I’d miss out.” Tyson began to wonder if Will was more worried about the state of his marriage or the fate of the treasure that might be here at this Cabin.

“Don’t worry,” Tyson told the other man. “Even if you go home and we find it a week later, I’ll share my portion with you. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

“That’s not right,” Will stammered. “It should still be split the same way as now, four ways, equal pieces for each of us.”

Tyson wasn’t sure that he could get the others to agree to this. They hadn’t discussed the division of the treasure. Of course, if the reward was a business, like a pawn shop, then they’d all have to continue to work together to get their share. He couldn’t see James, an older man who wouldn’t want to return to work from retirement, putting forth the effort. However, cash or gems could be easily split up as many ways as they wanted. Would they give some to Mandy or the Meenachs? Tyson didn’t know.

“We can talk that out. I’m sure that we’ll come up with the fairest distribution. I don’t even know if it will just be four pieces or if we cut Mandy into the dispersal. And all of this depends on us finding something. So get your ass back to work. I’m going to go find James and see what he’s up to.”

Will nodded and went back to the cabinets with renewed effort.

Tyson decided to talk to Addison and see if she knew anything about the missing man. She was in the bedroom farthest from the stairs. The bedding had been pulled off the bed, and she’d gone as far as to take the pillowcases off the pillows.

“Find anything?” Tyson asked with more hope in his voice than he’d expected. This was getting to all of him as well, apparently.

She shook her head. “Nothing yet. I got to tell you. My job here seems to be useless. I have to say that I don’t think Oliver—if he is the letter writer—would go so far as to hide two clues in the same part of a house. That’s not his style. He’s into numbers and codes, and the clues have shown that.”

“He did use two keys in a row at the start,” Tyson reminded her.

“That was for security. The first rounds had to exclude anyone who did not have the specific knowledge to move forward. In this case, that was the safety deposit box key from the pawn shop and the box number from the letters. This was foolproof in many ways.” Addison looked at Tyson for a long second, and he immediately worried that she would be telling him that she needed to go home tomorrow.

“What’s the look for?” Tyson asked, preparing himself for the worst.

“I’m going through these rooms like I would have for a crime scene, and I can’t help but wonder if this is all legit,” Addison said as she turned back to the disheveled room.

“Legit, you mean legal?” Tyson asked.

“Yeah, I’ve had to shave a few corners in this quest, and maybe it’s just starting to get to me. I’ve pretended to still be the police. I’ve helped break into a hospital and take patient records. I’ve walked into homes and cabins and undertaken searches of the premises. You took a key from a pawn shop. I’ve just been ripping this room to shreds and wondering what’s behind it. What if there’s a load of cash at the end of the rainbow, but it came from a bank robbery or a scam? Then what?”

Tyson shrugged. “Then we report it. I doubt that’s going to happen, though. If you think about it, we’ve gone through the proper channels to get things. The first clue was in the bank. The letters were mailed. It’s been difficult, but I don’t think it’s been illegal by any means. If it turns out that the treasure came from an illegal act, we’ll turn the money in and call it a day. We’ve still had fun doing this.” Tyson added the last sentence, though he had begun to doubt if any of the four of them were actually happy at this point.

Addison added to his feelings on the matter by snorting. Apparently, she wasn’t having much fun at all.

“If we do get money, I’m going to get the first ticket I can get to a beach with the warmest sands and the bluest waters. Something remote and quiet, where I can just enjoy myself—but definitely will have to have room service and drinks on request.” Addison looked out the window. She turned quickly, and Tyson wondered if she had seen something that upset her.

She looked him in the eyes again. “Maybe you can come with me. It would be nice to spend some time with you without being asked to strip the beds and hunt through the garbage.”

She leaned toward Tyson and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“That sounds nice,” he added. “I could use a break after all of this. It’s been a tough two weeks between the letters and the trip.”

Before Tyson could continue, he heard James’ voice from below. “Get down here. I think I found something.”

Addison and Tyson headed down the stairs as quickly as they could. James stood at the bottom of the stairs, wearing an old-fashioned three-cornered hat. From what Tyson could see, there were no papers or other clues in his hands. So he had to be referring to the hat.

“What’s up with that?” Tyson asked, frustrated that James was playing around instead of being serious about the quest. Why would he think it was necessary?

“I found this out in the storage shed for the unit. I had to do a bit of finagling to get into the shed, but I couldn't find anything other than some bags of cement and a few hand tools. This hat was on a hook by the door.”

“And you think it’s important?” Will asked, looking at James.

Tyson thought the notion was ludicrous; how could they get a clue from an old-fashioned hat? The style was from the Revolutionary War era, but Tyson could think of nothing at this cabin that would apply to that time. The cabin was relatively new, maybe forty years old at the most. The facilities were upgraded to give the guests a more pleasing experience. There was nothing that reflected a time two hundred years ago.

They were all discussing the hat and its possible meaning when Tyson looked up. A man was standing in the doorway.

Tyson didn’t ask the man to come in, but he walked into the foyer without an invitation.

He recognized the man as he grew closer to them. It was the caretaker from the house in Bangor.

“What are you doing here?” Tyson asked. The others looked up, and all stared at the man.

“Do you have a clue for us?” Addison asked. Tyson saw the bright sparkle in her eyes as if this adventure was over. He didn’t think that it would be quite that easy.

The man pulled a gun from his jacket, a handgun of dark metal. He pointed the gun at the four adventurers, moving it slowly from one to the other.

“I think you have a clue for me,” he said with a laugh.

Chapter 15

“Dunn, right?” James said, looking at the man. “You’re the caretaker at the house in Bangor. The house that Oliver Price owned.”

The man nodded with a smile. “You have been doing your work here. I’m impressed. Yes, that was Oliver Price’s house before he died.”

Tyson did not like the way that Dunn ended his sentence. Those final words had a malice to them, making Tyson suspect that Oliver Price had not died a natural death.

“It was one of the clues,” Will added. “We found it out when we went to the hospital.”

The man’s eyebrows raised, and Tyson suspected that Dunn had killed Oliver Price even more. He was now guessing that the foursome had learned more about Price than he had.

“Where did you find that clue?” Dunn asked. The gun was still pointed at them, and the barrel shook a little in his hand. Tyson was concerned that the man was going to lose his nerve. He’d either relinquish the gun or grip the pistol too hard and perhaps fire off a few rounds that might or might not harm them.

“Under the mattress,” James said calmly. “One mattresses had been flipped for comfort, and the other had not. When the guys went to sleep in that room, they realized that one had not been moved, so they looked underneath it and found a piece of paper. That paper gave us the coordinates to the hospital.”

Dunn grimaced, and Tyson wondered if the man had looked under the beds in his own search. “So you weren’t the caretaker at all?”

“That’s right. I told you that I was the caretaker, so you wouldn’t be suspicious. No one ever looks at the help; they dismiss caretakers and gardeners and go on about their business.” Dunn stood a bit straighter as he spoke, and Tyson had to reassess the man he saw. The caretaker now looked more upscale than he had. He still wore the same grungy clothes and old boots that he had worn, but Tyson could now attribute that to following them for the past few days.

“So, who are you then?” Addison asked. “Someone else looking for the treasure.”

“My name is Bennett Dunn, and you’re talking about my fortune,” the man snapped. “Not yours.” His voice was petulant, and he sounded like a frustrated toddler at the moment.

Tyson hoped that Addison would not aggravate him more than was needed. He still didn’t trust the man’s aim or weaponry skill at this moment.

James cleared his throat. “Your fortune? Did Oliver Price steal it from you?”

“I guess I can tell you the story,” Dunn said. “It’s not like you’ve got anywhere to go.” His head turned to the door. “For the record, I flatted two of your tires. They’re not punctured, but you won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

Addison gripped Tyson’s arm. He could understand her fears; she was the only woman in the group, and one member planned to keep them here while carrying a gun. Any crime was possible.

“So yeah, it’s my money,” Dunn continued. “Stolen from me by that bastard, Oliver Price. Everyone else saw him as a friendly guy, quirky, funny, and easy to get along with. But they weren’t in business with him.”

“You were business partners?” James asked. Still, the man seemed calm and collected despite the gun pointed in his direction. Tyson couldn’t understand why; perhaps it was because James had used his own weapons to protect his property.

“For nearly twenty years, we ran a business together.”

“The pawn shop in Manhattan,” Will said firmly.

The man pointed the barrel of the gun at Will. “Stop interrupting me. I’ll tell this story my own way.”

Will took a few steps back as if a yard or two would save him from a bullet.

“Yeah, the pawn shop. Oliver had received a couple of bad reports from his doctor. He was getting older and wasn’t expected to last much longer. He had heart trouble, though I doubt the doctors ever found a heart in that bastard.”

Dunn ran his hand, the one with the gun, across his brow.

“So we decided to sell the store to a third party. I agreed. I’m getting up there, and I had thought about retirement. There's nothing like quitting early and having enough to live the rest of your life.”

Tyson thought about that money and how much it would be. A business – along with the building and the land—in Manhattan would go for millions, perhaps tens of millions. Tyson began to realize that the fortune would be gems or something small. Millions of dollars in cash would take up the entire cabin, so they wouldn’t have been searching the building for it.

“Turns out that Oliver arranged that the proceeds of the sale would go entirely to him—with nothing to me. I’d worked decades in that building, going to work every day and being nice to people trying to talk you down in price to buy or talk you up in price to sell. Oliver told me that the sale date was two weeks later than the date actually was. So he’d signed the documents and left town before I learned the truth.”

Tyson watched as the man talked. He was growing more agitated, and Tyson wasn’t sure if continuing the story was the best idea. However, given his reaction to Will’s interruption, Tyson was not convinced that stopping him again would be a good idea.

“So I tracked him. He’d been somewhere before I found him at his home in Bangor. I couldn’t get too close to the house because he would have seen me, but I could get close enough to see him working on the home. It seemed odd for him to do any hard work on his own. He didn’t have that long to live, and why waste that time cleaning up a house you’d never see again. He did a few things at the house, and then headed to Lake Placid.”

Tyson realized Dunn was describing how Oliver Price had set up the puzzle for them. He had gone from place to place on his own in the last weeks of his life and set up the plan.

However, there was one thing that didn’t make sense. If Tyson wasn’t mistaken, Dunn had killed Oliver in Lake Placid. That would mean that Oliver could not have completed the puzzle layout. Yet it had been in perfect form for Tyson to follow the steps. Someone – a third party—had set the plan in motion with the letters to Tyson and the other loose ends left by Oliver’s untimely death.

“In Lake Placid, things made a turn for the worse. He got sick. I think he had a heart attack or some sort of heart problem. I was worried that he would die before I could learn where he put my part in the sale. So I went to the hospital and talked to him. I had waited until after visiting hours were over. I’d found an extra white lab coat and thrown it over my shirt. So I looked as much like a doctor as anyone could. Only one nurse stopped me, and I told her that I was Mr. Price’s personal physician. They believed that because the staff all seemed to know he was loaded.”

Tyson didn’t want to hear the next part. Nor did he want his friends to listen to the next part, either. When a person confesses to murder, it’s not an altruistic gesture. It meant that Dunn had no inclination of letting the foursome —who heard the confession— live. If Bennett Dunn told them this story now, they were all doomed.

“I confronted him,” Dunn continued. “I told him that I didn’t want it all. I just wanted what was due to me, my half. Oliver just laughed. He told me that he would leave some clues and that I could find the treasure easily if I tried. If not, he would give the clues to someone else, and it would be lost forever.”

No sounds were in the room as the group listened to the story.

“He didn’t care that he’d taken my money. He just wanted to create a fun puzzle out of the money I would need to live. I didn’t have a job, a business, or money to live on, and he just laughed. There was a vial of digitalis by his bed and a syringe. I filled the syringe and stuck it into the IV. I didn’t have to touch him, and he died. If he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know, then he had no use to me.”

Tyson’s gut clenched. This situation had become much more severe now.

“So, what did you do with the fortune? My fortune?” Dunn asked.

The others looked at Tyson. Will felt frustrated that Tyson had led them into this mess, and the others watched Tyson for signs of guidance.

“We don’t have the clues from the cabin—yet,” he said, emphasizing the last word to let Dunn know they hadn’t given up hope. “We’re looking, but we haven’t found it yet.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dunn roared. He moved the gun slightly. The blast of a gunshot shattered the quiet room. “That’s going to happen to you if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”

Tyson looked at the wall, which now had an ugly hole where the bullet had hit. Maybe someone would hear the shot and notify the police. He could hope that they could get out of this predicament alive, unscathed.

“If you don’t have it now, you’d better start working,” Dunn said. “We’re not going anywhere until you find it.”

Chapter 16

Tyson looked at his watch again. He was sitting in the bedroom that had been allocated to him and Will at the beginning of their stay in the cabin.

After Dunn had shot a hole in the wall, Tyson had hoped that a neighbor would hear the sound of the shot and call the police –or at least the rental management company. However, no one had come to question the sound.

The reality of being alone with Dunn, who wasn’t afraid to use a weapon, depressed him. This quest was supposed to be fun, a lark. Yet, even from the beginning, there had been squabbles and disagreements about transportation, lodging, sharing information, and knowing when to call it quits on this search for nothing.

Last night, after Will came to bed, he announced that he had to go home. Bethany had put her foot down and demanded that he be home in time for the sonogram next week. Will’s demeanor had changed. He was willing to give up all the work and the fun to go home. Tyson wondered how much Will wanted to be married – how much he wanted to have a kid. His concern over the treasure seemed to far outweigh the desire to make his wife happy.

Right now, he wasn’t sure where Will was. Will had left the room around 3am and hadn’t returned yet. Tyson wondered if he’d found the treasure and went. Given that Tyson had deduced that any prize had to be small, Will could quickly have taken the loot and left.

He wasn’t sure if Will could be trusted with the money. If the money was found while they were in a group, then Tyson was convinced that it would be divided equitably.

However, Dunn had not put any restrictions on the foursome. He had taken Tyson’s keys but hadn’t confiscated their cellphones. Coverage was weak here, but still, he could wander around and get a signal. What was the game here? Were they allowed to use their phones, or was it a trap where Dunn would kill anyone who tried to make contact?

A knock came at the door. Tyson yelled that it was open, and James went into the room. “Why aren’t you looking for the gems?” James said as he entered the room. “Everyone else is working overtime like a pack of Chechen rebels to figure out where the money is, and you’re upstairs sitting alone.”

“I’m thinking,” Tyson said quietly.

“Oh my God Tyson. Can’t you do that and look for the gems?” James asked.

“So, you think they’re gems too?” Tyson asked, interested to know why the other man kept referring to them as jewels, not cash.

“Have to be,” James replied. “Nothing else could be portable enough, especially if Dunn is telling the truth about where he got the money. If it’s millions, it’s either bonds or gems. Bonds would take up some room, and I think we could have found it by now. Gems would be smaller and could be hidden almost anywhere.”

Tyson sighed. “That’s the problem. They could be almost anywhere. Do you have any thoughts on things?”

James opened his mouth to speak, and Dunn walked into the room. “What are you two planning to do?” the man asked. The gun was in his hand, but his arm dangled by his side. At least it wasn’t the barrel following their every move like last night.

“We’re not planning anything,” James said with a smile. Tyson wasn’t sure how the man could switch personas. One minute, he was contemplative; the next, he was all courtesy and friendship to a killer.

“But you’re not looking for the treasure. I want to find it fast and get out of here,” Dunn said. His behavior was more manic than yesterday, if that was possible. He wanted to dig up all the grounds and rip up the floorboards of each room. He wanted to find the gems today so he could leave with the loot.

“I understand,” James said. “We want to leave too. We have lives to live. I think we all want the same thing.”

The man squinted his eyes at James. “Are you saying we should join forces and look for the treasure together? Do you think the others will go along with that?”

James smiled at him, still playing a part. Tyson could see the wariness in James’ eyes. Still, he doubted Dunn would be able to discern that contradiction in his sentence. “I certainly do. We all get things done faster when we work together. We’d split the house up before and had been making progress. Tyson had the outside, Addison had the upstairs, and Will had the downstairs. You could take the basement? No one claimed that yet.”

Tyson wanted to tell James that he’d suggested taking the basement after the outside of the house had turned up nothing.

“What happens if one of us finds it?” Dunn asked, hitting the central point of contention today.

“We split it,” James said. “We’d always planned on splitting it four ways. Now we’ll split it five ways.”

The man smirked as his fingers stroked the gun. “Except my part will be half—the half that Oliver Price stole from me.”

Tyson flinched at the deal as if he’d been struck. He still didn’t speak as Dunn kept touching the gun in a rather sick way.

“That’s fine with us,” James said. “If you look at it from our point of view, we’re not losing anything by sharing. We had no expectations of a fortune, so anything we get is gravy. On the other hand, you are trying to recoup what was stolen from you.”

Dunn was listening intently, and from the other man’s expression, Tyson could tell how obsessed he was with the notion of getting back what had been taken.

“Would that work? Obviously, if we only found a few thousand dollars, we could still split it half for you and half for us, but the idea is that everyone comes out ahead on the matter.”

Dunn motioned for James to come with him. The two men left together and walked downstairs. Tyson wasn’t sure what he should do now. Would going to the basement provoke the other man, making him think Tyson was after the money for himself? Or would he take it just like Tyson helping out the team?

Rather than destroy the notion that they were all working to the same plan here, Tyson decided to find Addison and see how she was holding up. She had looked beat at the breakfast table, not enough sleep presumably, and he was concerned about the state of her bank account and her health.

He quickly inspected all the upper-level bedrooms, but Tyson couldn’t find any sign of the woman. Tyson’s nerves were a bit frayed too, and he wondered if Addison had just chucked the whole thing and decided to walk to the nearest highway and catch a ride to town.

Tyson thought about that for a minute, but that idea seemed far more dangerous than just dealing with Bennett Dunn and his weapon.

He got to the head of the stairs when he heard voices. At first, he thought it was the two men who had just left his room, but one of the voices was softer and higher pitched. That had to be Addison.

He looked around the corner of the stairs and saw that Will was with her, and they were talking intensely. She had her hand on his upper arm. The pair were so close that they could have kissed.

Tyson froze. How could she do this? She stroked his bicep, and immediately Tyson recalled the strength of his friend when he’d seen Will lift at the gym. Maybe that’s what Addison wanted, and the flirtation with Tyson had been just for show. Will had left the room last night, and now Tyson wondered where Addison had been after they all went to their rooms. Had she gone to meet Will somewhere?

He didn’t’ know how far that relationship had gone. Maybe the reason Will wanted to come away with them was Addison. After all, Addison knew Will well and had sat next to him at the bar that night when they all decided to start this trip.

Walking back upstairs to his room, Tyson couldn’t believe how this trip had evolved. The want of money and the desire to be more – and have more—than they possessed had put them all on edge. The group of erstwhile friends were now forming alliances and individually planning their fates. Tyson doubted that he would have come this far if he had known that this was their journey’s real reward.

Tyson pulled out his phone and began rereading the messages he’d sent. He sat down to think again. Who could have sent those letters if Oliver Price had died in Lake Placid? Maybe Addison and James were right; they should have gone to Medina to track the letters’ origin rather than following the puzzle trail left for them.

Someone else had been involved, and that worried Tyson. He thought at this point, he knew most of the major characters, but if someone else had mailed those letters, then someone else had a role in this puzzle that he and the others had missed.

Far more than that, he worried about the solution to the clue, or rather the lack of a hint, they’d been given. He couldn’t imagine Dunn putting up with three or four more days of their lack of a solution. He would get frustrated and take it out on them. If Dunn killed all four of them, who would hear a thing? The four of them were sitting ducks, doing what Dunn commanded them.

He wondered if Will and Addison had made plans for their share of the money – or their future.

Will walked in and looked at him. “What are you doing up here?” he asked. “I thought you’d be in the basement, solving this puzzle.”

Tyson shook his head but didn’t speak.

Will was filthy now that he was closer. Tyson wondered if Will had already checked the basement or if he’d rechecked the outside areas that Tyson had investigated yesterday. Either way, Will was trying to find the treasure before the others. He was not working where he should be in the first-floor area.

Stripping down to his underwear, Will grabbed a towel, cargo shorts, and a different shirt. He was far more casual today, and Tyson wondered if that was because he had not planned to stay this long. Will had to be home for his wife, and Addison had to leave due to a lack of funds.

In both cases, Tyson had seen no proof of that statement; he’d only heard from the person telling the story. Maybe they were telling lies to get the money and leave separately, only to rendezvous later.

“Are you okay?” Will asked. “I know you didn’t get much sleep.”

Tyson shrugged. “You didn’t get much sleep either.”

Will smiled at him. “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and went out to dig around. I didn’t find anything, but at least I was active—rather than spending the time in my head.”

“I’m assuming that you didn’t find anything?” Tyson wondered what else was going on. Will had seemed off for several days now, and besides the arguments with Bethany, Will appeared to have other issues on his mind.

Will laughed. “I discovered I’m not as young as I used to be. The muscles began to protest, so I stopped and walked down to the river. Very peaceful and quiet. I needed some time to think.”

“Anything come to mind?” Tyson asked. Given Will’s vague responses, he assumed his friend would keep the troubles to himself.

“I was wondering if we were prisoners of our own minds here. I mean, he was asleep. Any of us – or all of us—could have left, and he’d have been none the wiser for it. We’d have been miles away by the time he woke up.”

Tyson sighed. He’d been over the same ideas in his head all morning, but he’d come to a very different conclusion than Will. “First, if we decided to leave, that would mean giving up on the treasure. You heard Dunn. It’s worth millions of dollars. Can you just walk away from that after all this time?”

Will’s face looked pained. “Yeah, I’d thought about that. We could come back with the police who could get rid of Dunn, and then we could finish the job.”

“So we’re going to go to the police, and we’ll tell them that we are looking for a fortune, which was reportedly stolen from the guy at the cabin. We need their help to arrest the guy for murder and get him out of the way so we can take his money? How well is that going to go over?” Tyson wanted to make the case that working collaboratively would keep the police out of the situation, especially since Dunn had said half the money had been stolen from him.

“If he didn’t find the money, he’d leave, and then we could come back?” Will said. “We’d be out of danger.”

Tyson nodded. He had seen the way that Dunn held the gun, the tremble in his grip, and the tension on the trigger. He was definitely a timebomb waiting to go off. Could they persuade him to put the gun away? Tyson didn’t think so. The man was paranoid about the situation. Who could blame him? Four people had come to the cabin together to find and take home the money. The gun was the only thing keeping the group from finding the money and leaving him with nothing.

“No telling when we could all come back here together,” Tyson said. “Other people coming here for a stay. Plus, we’d have to find the time when we could all come back here. That will be more difficult for me with the baby.”

Will nodded. Tyson noticed again that he didn’t seem happy about the situation. “Yeah, Addison and I were talking about it. She doesn’t think that we should work with him either. I mean, he admitted to killing Oliver Price. Nothing to say that he wouldn’t kill one – or all—of us if he saw the need to do that.”

Tyson bristled. So this is what they were talking about when Tyson had seen them together. They had been conspiring to convince the group to work without Dunn.

“She really likes you. You know that, right?” Will added.

Tyson thought about it for a second. He has seen her with Will, flirting and putting her hand on his bicep. She had an odd way of showing that she liked him.

“It’s not exactly the place for a relationship,” Tyson laughed. “Is it the real thing or just a way to get more of the money? One-fourth of a fortune isn’t as much as half of it.”

“Yeah. I would agree. I mean, if you weren’t my friend, I’d be worried that you would take my portion of this treasure when we’re done.” Will gave him a look that didn’t calm Tyson’s nerves. The words didn’t match the look on Will’s face. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Do you know what’s for dinner?”

The evening meal was about what was to be expected. The refrigerator had been stocked for a few days' visit. They’d found all the staples: pasta, sauce, eggs, vegetables and fruits, milk, and bread.

Tyson and Addison had agreed to serve as the chefs for the evening, and they’d begun to chop up the vegetables for omelets for everyone. Addison had wanted to exclude Dunn from dinner. He wasn’t one of them and had threatened them with a gun. To her mind, that made him the enemy, the bad guy.

“He’s already killed, someone. You realize that. If I was still on the force, I’d be arresting him about now for murder. Think about that.” Addison’s voice raised a bit, and Tyson put a finger to his lips to indicate quietness. The last thing he wanted to do was to raise the enmity of the man against them.

“Look, we’re just making him dinner. We’re not going to be accomplices to murder over a couple of eggs.” Tyson wanted to convince her to go along with Dunn. He felt that working together might get them to the solution faster, and then they could all leave. “I’m not sleeping well, and I know that’s because of all this. If we resolved this, we could all focus on finding the clues and the treasure.”

Addison stared at him. “Do you really think it’s that easy? Maybe I spent too much time in law enforcement, but have you ever seen two people rob someone and then argue over the loot. It’s ugly. One of them usually ends up dead.”

“There’s no honor among thieves?” Tyson asked.

“It’s a cliché for a reason—it’s true. People do crazy things for this much money.”

Tyson smiled at her. “Would you?”

She laughed. “Define crazy for me. I came on this trip with no money—certainly not enough for a vacation, yet here I am spending money like I had it. I’m not sure what I’ll do if we go home empty-handed. I’d need at least a few thousand to cover the bills. Does that meet your criteria for crazy?”

Tyson’s grin broadened. “I’m glad you did, even if it’s going to hurt your checking account for a while.”

She turned away, but Tyson thought he’d seen her cheeks flush. “Thanks, I’m glad I did as well. So what about you? What craziness would you do for some hot cash?”

He smirked. “Nothing like what you mean. I’d lived in Raleigh my whole life, and nothing exciting ever happened. I just wanted to see the world – have adventures. It was all rather dull.”

“You worked as a front-line nurse in the ER during a pandemic. That’s not enough excitement?”

Tyson shook his head. “That was not the type of adventure I wanted to experience. It was more like watching a horror movie. Those months were just watching people come in sick. I couldn’t change what was happening. And working that kind of hours made it worse. I thought I’d never get any semblance of a life back. It would just be all work and no play until I died.”

“Well, it’s definitely not like that now,” Addison said and put a hand on his arm. Tyson wished he could enjoy it entirely, but he kept thinking about how he’d seen her do the same thing to Will. Had she said the exact words?

“Enough of that and get to cooking,” said a voice from the doorway. Dunn was standing there, gun in his right hand, watching them. “You can do all that stuff after we’re done here. Until then, we’re only looking for the money. That’s all there is.”

Chapter 17

Tyson barely slept that night. He had recurring nightmares where Dunn shot them as he commanded them to make dinner. Combined with that were the questions about Addison. Whose side was she on? Did she like him, or was she trying to convince him to side with her? He felt like a teenage boy with his first crush. He didn’t know what to say or do—and he certainly didn’t know what to do with the treasure hanging over them.

Will had gotten up around 2am again and left the room. That only served to make Tyson wonder about what he was doing. Was Will really going to sit by the river? Was he with Addison? Or was Will trying to find the treasure first so he could leave with it? Tyson wished his friend was more honest with him. He didn’t know what was going through the man’s head.

James seemed to be the only one unaffected by the situation. He was working alone, trying to locate clues to the treasure. He hadn’t complained or whined about losing some of the money. In fact, Tyson had seen James and Dunn walking around the acreage after dinner last night. They were talking. At one point, Tyson even though he’d heard the former caretaker laugh. Perhaps James and Dunn had known each other before—or maybe they had talked more at the Bangor house. Could he have even informed Dunn of their movements?

Tyson rolled out of bed and went to get a shower. It would be another long, exhausting day, and he wanted to be fresh for it. He came back to the room, but Will had not returned yet. Tyson remembered the man’s words about leaving the cabin and walking away last night. Would he have really left the fortune to go home?

By the time he came downstairs, Tyson could smell the coffee. He followed the scent to the kitchen and poured himself a mugful.

For a flash, he considered that the coffee was tainted somehow. Perhaps the others had added a sedative so that he would sleep while they looked for the fortune. He shook his head. He knew that a lack of sleep led to delusions which could include paranoia. Tyson wouldn’t fall prey to those thoughts since he was a nurse who had studied such things.

Tyson knew that he couldn’t hold out like this much longer. He would need a sedative to help him sleep, even if that meant taking down his guard with others in the house who wanted what he did. He drank the coffee and felt better for it.

James came out into the kitchen, humming a tune. He gave Tyson a smile and poured himself a cup of coffee. He offered to top off Tyson’s cup, and Tyson allowed him to do so without questioning his motives. Perhaps a step forward.

“I ran out of clothes today,” James said. Tyson assumed he was just trying to make small talk to fill the void between them.

“Those look clean. Did you do laundry here?” Tyson asked, not recalling having seen any signs of laundry facilities in the cabin.

“There are laundry facilities here, but I didn’t do that. There were some spare clothes in one of the closets.” James gave a dramatic spin for Tyson to watch.

“That’s odd. Tyson didn’t like the thought that no cleaning was done here. You’d think the rental agency would clean this place between customers.”

“Nah, they cleaned the place fine. It’s just that things got left in the hall closet there, and no one took them out. I’m not sure if the owners just leave things there for each new client to find or what, but some of the stuff has been there for ages.” James tugged at a sleeve. “Of course, you have to take what you can get. I don’t think there are clothes enough in there for everyone.”

“Is that where you found the hat?” Tyson asked, thinking back to that awkward three-cornered hat James had worn the other day.

James nodded. “Sure was. Are you planning on wearing it today? I’m not sure it matches your outfit.” He laughed at his own joke.

“Can you go get it?”

James returned in less than five minutes. He wore the three-cornered hat on his head at a jaunty angle. “I might just want to keep this,” he said with a smile.

Tyson held out his hand, and James put the hat into his hand, clearly not understanding why Tyson wanted the tricorn. Tyson looked at the hat, grabbing each of the corners in one hand while he searched the rest of the hat. Once he’d finished that, he turned the hat over and stopped. In the center of the hat’s underside was a bright red dot.

“That’s it,” Tyson said. “This is our clue.”

“A hat? What purpose does a hat have?”

Dunn came into the room, still clutching the gun in his right hand. “Yes, what purpose does a hat have in this matter?”

Tyson hadn’t wanted to talk about this in front of Dunn, who was armed and showed his willingness to shoot to make a point. He wanted this moment to be shared among the four friends exclusively.

Tyson hated that their trek had come to this. He tried to play down what he’d found, but the excitement in his voice had not been masked when he told James. Now he would have to tell Dunn or likely face some consequences.

“Can I at least call the other two people down here?” Tyson asked. “I’m going to need Will’s help to solve this.”

Dunn snatched the hat and held it in the same position that Tyson had gripped it. “I don’t see the solution here.” His tone was angry and upset. “That’s just like Oliver Price, the lousy know-it-all. He always thought he could outsmart me with those puzzles. Especially the ones with math. I hated those math puzzles.”

Will and Addison came into the kitchen at the same time. Tyson wondered if they’d been together elsewhere in the house.

“What’s up, Tyson?” Will asked, trying to take in the entire scene at once.

“I think we found the final clue. Well, actually, it was the final clue, but Oliver just repurposed it more than one time.” Tyson was nervous, and the pressure of explaining it while Dunn held the hat and the gun made him mangle his ideas.

“You mean the centroid calculation that led us to the cabin. How was it repurposed?” Will’s brows furrowed, trying to understand the situation.

Tyson held out the hand for the hat, and grudgingly Dunn handed it to Tyson – who then gave it to Will. “Look at the underside of the hat. There was a red dot, just like the centroid of a triangle—except on a three-sided hat. So we need to be looking for a three-sided figure here that we can find the centroid of.”

“The flagpoles out front,” Addison said. Tyson wished that the others would remember that Dunn was here, and he could be dangerous if they weren’t careful.

Tyson nodded. “That’s what I thought too. It seemed odd that two flagpoles were in use, but the third one was not. It does make sense if the centroid was to be found.”

The group all walked together as they headed to the three flagpoles. Will had insisted on bringing string and a measuring tape. While James had pointed out that they could use their phones to find the coordinates, Dunn had stopped them from pulling out their phones. “Not now. Not after all this time and work,” he’d said. Tyson wasn’t sure what that meant, but he could hear the greed in each word he spoke. He didn’t know if Dunn would be able to keep this avarice in check throughout the last legs of the search.

Will took the measuring tape and placed one end on the first pole. He marked off the end of the tape and then pulled the tape up so that the end beginning of the tape was on the mark. He did this once more and bent over. “This is exactly fifteen feet. So the median of the line segment is seven and a half feet. We take a string and go from the opposite angle to the median and draw the line.”

He made Tyson stand at the median, and James stood at the opposite angle of the poles' triangle. Then Will took a large stick he’d found and drew a line in the dirt with the stick. They repeated this twice more. The line segments between the poles were not the same length, but they could all be precisely measured in feet.

When they were done, the three bisectors crossed each other at one point in the middle of the triangle. “That’s it,” Will said. “That’s where the treasure should be.”

James walked off to the shed and brought back some shovels. “No telling how far under the surface this will be. If it was my money, I’d bury it nice and deep so no one would find it accidentally.”

James and Will began to dig, making a pile of dirt that grew as they explored. They went down two feet and then three, but they’d found nothing.

Tyson stood alone on the far side of the triangle from Dunn. He could see the man’s hand shaking and wondered what the man would do if they found nothing. Would Dunn be able to handle the disappointment, or would the man lose it? Tyson couldn’t tell at the moment, but he feared the worst here.

The pile of dirt grew more before he heard the sound of the clunk of metal against metal. The group moved in closer. James and Will picked up the pace. When they could dig around the edges, they pried up the box and lifted it to the surface.

The box didn’t look like a rectangle. The top of the box was free and clear, but the sides and bottom had been covered in cement, making for a rough side around most of the box. It also made it impossible to put a key into the box and unlock it. The common place for the keyhole was covered in cement.

“How do we get into this?” Will asked. His voice was soft as he still tried to catch his breath from digging the hole.

Dunn took the lead. “Was there a sledgehammer or pick ax in the shed?”

James nodded and went back to the shed. Returning with a sledgehammer, James dragged it behind him.  Tyson wondered if James’ age was showing. He’d been working hard today and likely had not had enough sleep over the past two nights.

James held out the sledgehammer, and Will snatched it before Tyson could make a move. Will brought the tool back and hit the box hard. He hit it again and again until the box had split open. Even then, Will had brought the sledgehammer up before Tyson stopped him.

Inside the mangled metal box was a smaller box that was still intact. The box didn’t have a lock on it. Tyson picked up the inner box and opened it. The sparkle of diamonds shone in the afternoon sky.

Tyson wasn’t a jeweler by any means, but he recognized a fortune counted in millions.

Everyone gathered around and looked into the box, but no one spoke. The realization that the quest had ended so profitably began to sink in. The group would be going home wealthy people.

Will bent down to pick up something else.

“What is it?” James said, looking at the item in Will’s hand.

“A plaque,” Will said, nothing else. Tyson wondered if the plaque had a hidden clue or inscription to it. Was there more to this plaque, like there was to most every other thing they’d found?

“A little kindness can go a long way,” Addison read. “Does that mean something to any of you?”

Each of them shook their heads. The plaque was just another mystery to them.

Chapter 18

“That was just like Oliver Price. Him and his stupid platitudes,” Dunn spoke first. “He’d steal from you and then talk to you about kindness.” Dunn laughed in a high-pitch giggle that concerned Tyson. He’d heard that laugh a few times while he was a nurse, and the patient who laughed like that usually ended up in the psych ward for a seventy-two-hour hold.

“This will do nicely,” Dunn said. He extended his arm, so the gun pointed at the four other people. “Just hand it over, and none of you will get hurt.”

Tyson froze for a second. He didn’t know what to do. The others would hate him if Tyson merely handed over a fortune, but his options were limited. He could hand it over and hope that Dunn would keep his word. Yet if he refused to give it over, he expected the man would shoot him first.

Giving him the box would give them the most amount of time to hatch a plan. They’d all come so far for this.

Tyson held out his hand with the box, and Dunn snatched it away. He looked at the diamonds again and laughed. “And now I’m on my way,” he said. “You were too busy to notice, but last night while all of you were trying to sleep and filled the tires back up. So I’m ready to go.” He held up the keys to Tyson’s car and dangled them in the air. “Before I get through, I’ll need your phones too.”

Tyson began to worry. This sounded less like a getaway and more like a slaughter. At the very least, they’d be miles away from anyone else. One or more of them would have to spend the better part of a day walking to get help.

James said, “I don’t have one. Surveillance and all that.”

Addison handed hers over gently as if he was going to hurt her as soon as the transfer was made. Tyson handed his phone over as well, thinking of the consequences of agreeing to work with this man. Rather than helping them to get to safety with part of the treasure, Dunn would be the one who trapped them alone.

Will reached into his pocket, but instead of his phone, he drew out a gun. The pistol was nothing like the weapon that Dunn had. It was sleek, platinum, and Will’s hand was steady at the moment.

“I don’t think that you’ll be going anywhere,” Will said with a determination in his voice that Tyson had rarely heard.

Dunn looked back at him. His hand shook. Yet Dunn could do nothing about it since he had cell phones and a treasure in his hands. There was no way for him to brace his hand to get a better grip.

“Now, just put down the gun down, and we can all go home,” Will said. His voice was calm and collected as he repeated the commands.

Addison looked from one of them to the other as if she wanted to be a part of this. But she couldn’t help because she didn’t have a weapon to give them the advantage. James took a few steps back and to the left, getting himself out of the line of fire. Tyson wanted to do something, but he was afraid that any action he made would bring gunfire, and he desperately wanted to avoid that. No telling what Dunn would hit with his shaky hands.

Dunn obviously refused to put down the diamonds. He looked at them for a long moment and then raised his gun again. Tyson could see the man’s hands shaking as he stood there.

“Just give us our share, and you can go home. We all can go home,” Will said, almost as a plea. “We don’t want any trouble. This was all supposed to be fun.” Will’s hand was steady, and his face was stone.

“Fun?” Dunn said. “I had to see this man run off with my fortune—my money, and you idiots have been the only way to get it back. I’ve had to follow you and put up with your bickering—just so I can take these diamonds home with me.”

“Nobody’s stopping you. We just want our share.”

Tyson panicked. He had not had a chance to tell Will about the deal he’d made with Dunn, the agreement that Dunn would get half of the treasure and the four friends would share the other half equally. What if that came out now? Would it make the situation even worse than it had been?

But no words were said. Dunn started backing away from the group. His hands were still full, and he continued to vaguely point the gun in their direction. However, it was apparent that his plan was to get in the car and drive away, leaving them here alone—and poor.

“You’d better stop,” Will said. “You’d better stop and split those diamonds with us.” He had his finger on the trigger, and even from here, Tyson could see that his finger was pressed against the trigger. He was ready to shoot.

Dunn beat him to it. The man pressed the trigger, and the loud report shocked all of them. Will let off a shot as well. Dunn seemed unbothered by the report of Will’s gun. Tyson wondered if the man was so far gone with greed that he didn’t care if he’d shot another man. Dunn fired his weapon again. Seconds later, Will fell to the ground.

Tyson ran over to him, unaware of what Dunn was doing or anyone else. He had to see what was wrong with Will and handle the situation. Tyson prayed for a flesh wound missing all the major organs. He could save him quickly if it was only a tiny wound.

The cause of Will’s drop to the ground was immediately evident as the bloodstain began to spread across the front of the man’s shirt. He’d been shot. Tyson ripped open the shirt and looked at Will’s chest. The bullet had hit him just below the heart. Dunn’s wild shot had hit its mark. The blood was squirting out, and Tyson used the shirt to staunch the bleeding. This was only a temporary move; Will would be dead in minutes unless exceptional measures could be taken to get this under control. Will’s eyes fluttered, and he looked at his friend. “Make sure my share goes to Bethany,” Will said, staring directly into Tyson’s eyes. He couldn’t deny Will a request like this. Bethany would be able to live for years from the proceeds.

“You’re going to be fine, buddy. I’m taking care of you,”

Will smiled at him. “Liar. We both have seen wounds like this, and we know what happens. You will be the one to tell her, to tell Bethany, what happened.”

He shouted to Addison. “Go in the house and get the kitchen utensils. Anything you can get. Now!”

Addison sprinted across the open area, but Dunn didn’t make a move against her. Tyson was glad that the other man was paralyzed by what he had done.

James hurried over and got down to his knees. Tyson tried to think of something for the older man to do, but James had other plans. He picked up Will’s weapon and fired it in one swift movement. At such close range, Tyson flinched at the noise, but Will didn’t move or even flutter his eyes.

Dunn went down without getting a shot off. Tyson didn’t care if he was trained to save people in this situation, Bennett Dunn had killed his friend, and Tyson would focus his energies on one person only. Dunn could rot for all he cared.

Tyson tried to talk to Will, but the man’s eyes were now closed, and his breathing was very shallow. He looked back towards the house, and he saw Addison running as fast as she could. However, it was not going to be enough. Will would be dead in less than two minutes. Tyson had seen too many of these gunshot wounds to pretend it would end any other way.

He looked to see Dunn on the ground and James standing over him.

“What are you doing?” Tyson asked, watching the man’s actions. He was concerned that neither of them knew how critical Will’s condition was.

“Making sure that he’s not going to hurt anyone else,” James said. He carefully leaned over Dunn’s body which was not moving from what Tyson could see. James put his fingers on the man’s wrist, waiting for a pulse.

James shook his head. “We’ll need to call the police,” he said.

Addison had come back with the kitchen utensils, but Tyson knew it was too late for Will. His breathing was now jagged, and he’d begun to spit up rivulets of blood. Tyson put his head on the man’s shoulder and wept.

Addison had ended up calling the police. James had taken control of the situation. Tyson wondered if he felt more empowered because more was on the line for him. James had been the one to pick up Will’s gun and shoot Dunn.

James did not seem particularly upset by the death of Dunn—or by Will. As soon as Tyson had indicated that Will had passed, he began to bark orders.

Addison was to wait five minutes and call the police. That would give James enough time to look at the crime scene and see what was needed to change—if anything. “The more we can keep it as is, the better off we’ll be.”

Ending the call, Addison said that the EMTs and the police would be here in about twenty minutes. Far too late to do anything about the two men who were now dead, but James had wanted to hide the jewels.

“Two sets of things that we need to hide. The first is that box and the cement. Tyson, you can take care of that. The cement can go in one of the rock gardens. The metal box can go in the trash. Got it?”

Tyson started his chore. It was probably better that he didn’t know where they had stashed the diamonds. Tyson wasn’t sure he could keep his thoughts together for very long. If he didn’t know, Tyson couldn’t slip and tell the police.

Finishing his own chores, he came back to the flagpoles. The diamonds were gone, but little else had changed. James had even left the cellphones so that he could share what Dunn had planned to do.

With the sight of the cell phones, Tyson remembered Will’s phone. He would have to call Bethany and tell her what had happened. He dreaded it to the point he thought he would throw up before the police arrived.

James and Addison came back to the flagpoles. James ran a foot over the place where they’d dug for the box and stamped it down. “That’ll have to do,” James said as the first ambulance pulled down the long drive.

The interviews with the police had ended quickly and decisively. The local medical examiner had indicated that Will’s gun had been fired once into Dunn and that Dunn had fired twice. He’d shot the wall in the cabin and then hit Will with the second shot. Between the gunshots and the fact that Dunn had all of their cellphones with him, the situation did appear that it had been dire. The police did not ask many questions of them, judging more from the crime scene than the explanations of the three survivors.

At one point, the sheriff had been called away by one of the officers and the two men had huddled together for some time. When the sheriff returned to the three friends, he had a grim look on his face.

Tyson tried to calm himself, telling him that the sheriff could not have learned anything that would put them in jeopardy. He continued to run the scenario through his mind, wondering about any details that might have been missed.

“Do you people know anyone named Oliver Price?” the man asked.

Tyson felt his stomach lurch. How had the man come up with that name so fast? Did they have a complete list of the cities they’d visited or the things they’d done there? Could the sheriff have heard about the letters mailed to Tyson?

“Name sounds vaguely familiar,” James said. Tyson wondered what the man was thinking. James had not shed a tear or expressed any emotion since the shootings had occurred. He’d spent the time getting things ready for this moment, and now he was as calm as could be. “What’s he got to do with Dunn? Is he a criminal too?”

“Not unless you count victims,” the sheriff said. “Bennett Dunn here was wanted for the murder of Oliver Price. About a year or so ago, Price had been in the hospital in Lake Placid, not too far from here. The guy died while staying in the hospital. They didn’t conduct an autopsy back then, but someone left an anonymous note and suggested that Price was murdered.”

Tyson perked up at the mention of anonymous notes. That’s how this entire business had begun. Was there a tie-in between those notes and his notes?

“Anyway, one of the nurses had seen a man walking the halls that night. She’d been on maternity leave, and she’d just been in to pick up her check. She saw this guy walking the halls near Price’s room. She gave us a description, and it matched Dunn.”

Addison looked at the sheriff. “How did you know to look for Dunn?”

The sheriff sighed. “You folks are lucky. That man’s got a record the length of my arm.”

“I’m assuming since you’re talking about the murder of Price and what happened here, that it’s a long list of violent crimes.”

Addison let out a whistle. “I guess we were lucky. So what was he doing here?”

The sheriff looked at her, judging to see if she was worthy of trust. Given that she was a former law enforcement officer, he apparently decided to share what he knew. “The guy had some real issues. He’d been partners with Oliver Price at one point. Price had bought him out years ago for a reasonable price, but nothing special. As the real estate prices rose in Manhattan, the land became worth more than the pawn shop. Dunn got mad, said that Price had stolen his half of the business. Of course, no such thing happened. It had been a reasonable deal made decades ago. So when Price got sick, Dunn showed up. He wanted his money again, but Price had sold the business and cashed in most of his assets. No one knows where that money went, but Dunn was on the hunt for it. He had a few nasty run-ins with people who knew Price, but nothing like this. He must have really needed help by this point.”

Tyson was having difficulty keeping up with the story and his thoughts. The money did not belong to Bennett Dunn at all. He’d never owned it. Price had not stolen from Dunn. He had no claim to half the money. He had no entitlement to anything. He’d trapped them, shot them—all for something he had no right to.

The futility of it all hit him hard in the chest, and Tyson began to cry again. They’d lost Will to someone with no claim. Tyson had chosen to work with the man, reason with him, and share wealth. Now he wondered at every step—had he partly been responsible for Will’s death? Will had wanted to call the police, not take the man in, and Will had paid the ultimate price for being right. He looked down to his shirt and pants. They were covered in Will’s blood, and Tyson knew that the life force of his friend had soaked all the way to his skin. He desperately wanted a shower to get the blood and memories away from him.

“You okay, son?” the sheriff asked. “You look like you might be in shock. We can get an EMT to look at you.”

A medic came over and began to ask Tyson some questions, the same types of questions that he would have asked a patient who came in with these symptoms. He went through the answers with the man slowly, trying not to lose control of his emotions again.

The last thing Tyson wanted at the moment was to be stuck here in Vermont. He had a longing to go home, back to Raleigh, back to the place he had wanted to leave a week prior. Now he wished he’d never left.

A few tears rolled down his cheek as the EMT asked the last of the questions. He wiped his face and tried to give the man a smile. “Sorry. I just lost a friend. It’s a lot to take in.”

The guy nodded and then returned to the sheriff, where they had an extended discussion. When the EMT returned, he was holding a syringe.

“Look, you’ve been through a lot. This is just to calm your nerves. I would not recommend driving in the next ten hours, but there are no side effects.” Tyson nodded, and the man injected him with the contents of the syringe. Tyson was exhausted to the point where he didn’t even ask what was being given to him.

Addison strode over and looked at Tyson. “What was that?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“Just nerves and exhaustion, I think,” Tyson replied. The drug had left him unaffected by the actions of others at the moment.

Addison leaned close to him and kissed him. She leaned forward to get her mouth close to his ear. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? We still have questions to answer here.”

Tyson nodded again. “Yeah, I’m just sleepy. I think that the sheriff okayed it, so the EMT could give me something to calm me. That had to mean he was about done with asking me questions.”

“Not necessarily,” Addison said. “They like the timeline, but they still want to know how four people were held by a single man.”

Tyson snapped to an upright position, making Addison move her head quickly.

“Because if we didn’t go along with him, someone could have gotten hurt—which is exactly what happened when we didn’t go along with him.”

“James is doing a pretty good job of convincing them. I think he’ll have us in the clear in another twenty minutes or so.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Get some rest.”

James walked over to him a few minutes later. He handed Tyson the keys to the car. “I swiped these before the police got here. They were still in Dunn’s hand. That was one last thing we didn’t need to explain today.”

Tyson was relieved that he wouldn’t have to explain one more thing to the police. They’d be able to leave when the police were done.

After five hours of questioning and reviewing the crime scene, the police agreed to let them go—and let them go home. The sheriff looked at them and said, “Given that this Bennett Dunn was a wanted criminal holding a gun on you, there’s no reason to keep you. The deputy here will get your names and addresses. If we do call, you’ll need to respond.”

Chapter 19

Three weeks had passed, and the police hadn’t called any of the three remaining adventurers. Tyson still cringed with every ring of the phone. Still, the majority of the calls had been from well-wishers and those who painted a veneer of concern over their nosiness.

Bethany had called – more than once. Tyson had been thankful that the police had taken care of the notification. He wasn’t sure that he would be up to seeing her grief on top of his own. She’d called for specific details about Will’s death and how he died. Tyson had pointed out that he’d died saving his friends from death. Bethany did not seem much consoled by that news.

While he’d texted back and forth with Addison and James, the information had been superficial and avoided all mentions of what had happened.

They had made an appointment with each other for today to decide on what to do with the diamonds and divvy up the loot. Addison showed up first. She gave Tyson a long hug, and he wasn’t sure if that was out of concern for him or something more. There had been hints that she was interested in him, but the last three weeks had been barren of mentioning those feelings.

He knew at some point that he would have to talk to her about the situation, but at the moment, it felt like a betrayal to Will to move on so quickly.

She knocked on the door again, and Tyson hurried to open the door. “Hey, how are you?” he asked as he stood to the side so she could enter.

Addison took no time in sitting down in the living room. “You still got the diamonds?” she asked with a smile. The group had given them to Tyson for safekeeping when they came home. He had hidden them behind a row of books on his shelves, and he walked there now to pull them out.

He pitched them on the coffee table and sat across from her in a chair. “All there and accounted for,” he exclaimed. In reality, he had actually counted the jewels on the second night he’d been home. He used the number of diamonds for each person to calculate the approximate money they’d be receiving from the trip.

James knocked on the door before Tyson could sit down again. “I have some news for you,” James said as he entered the room. He was carrying a stack of papers under his arm, and Tyson assumed that he had been doing some sort of research.

“Take a look at this,” he said, throwing down the papers. They barely missed the bag with the diamonds. Tyson had a momentary vision of the diamonds flying all over, never to be found again.

The news clippings had headlines about Oliver Price and Bennett Dunn. Tyson saw six unique articles about the two men from his count. However, James had made copies – presumably to allow them to read the stories simultaneously.

The local newspapers had not reported on the deaths. The police had kept their three names out of the press, though Will’s name had been reported as one of the deceased. He felt sorry for Bethany, who would have to suffer through this, not knowing the truth of what had happened and why.

Tyson picked one up and saw the face of Bennett Dunn, and the memories of that afternoon in Vermont all came rushing back. “Let’s deal with the money first, and then we can look at this—if that’s okay?”

James nodded his head as though he understood what Tyson was going through. “Are these those gorgeous little stones?”

Tyson picked up the bag and opened it so the diamonds sparkled in the sunlight.

“So, what are your thoughts on this? The biggest question is three ways or four ways,” James began.

However, before he could finish, Tyson and Addison said, “four ways.”

James smiled at them. “I’d actually thought about suggesting that Mandy get a share. After all, if she hadn’t been the one to hear the story, she wouldn’t have introduced me to all of you. What would you have done without me?”

Addison laughed. “I thought about asking her to be included, but I wanted to give as much as we could to Bethany. She’s young, pregnant, and she’s going to need that money more than Mandy would.”

James nodded his head. “I had a feeling that you’d want to share with your friend. That’s fine. I’ll give Mandy a cut of my diamonds instead. If my calculations are correct, we still each have a pretty incredible fortune here.”

Addison looked at him and asked, “Define ‘pretty’.”

James swallowed and said, “According to my calculations, it would come to about six million apiece. The stones are flawless, at least the ones I showed my friend. He said that they would be worth a great deal of money.”

Tyson felt his face grow pale and cold. “You took one of the stones. You can’t just take one of them and go trotting around town like that, showing it to people. Raleigh is not that big a city. Word will get around.”

James laughed. “I took one stone. You can take it out of my cut. The man I went to see won’t talk to the police—ever. I know too much about his business for that to happen. I told him I had one stone and only one stone. So he’s not going to come after me for that.”

Addison must have recalled something because she bit her lip and waited for James to finish. “So, how do we get rid of these diamonds? I can’t go to the grocery store and give them a diamond. They have to be converted to cash in some way.”

James pursed his lips for a moment. “Well, I’ve been giving this some thought, but I wanted to wait and see how we were going to divvy this up. My thought is that I’ll cash out Will’s portion of the stones. Turn it into cash. Then we can give that to his widow. I don’t want her to know about the diamonds. I think that’s a good way for us to bust open this criminal investigation again, and we don’t want that.”

Addison nodded, and Tyson added, “That’s fine with me.”

“We can tell her that we found part of the treasure and that we’re giving it to her to help with funeral expenses, the loss of Will’s income and the baby.” Tyson cringed again at the thought of losing Will. His heart hurt every time he realized that his friend was gone.

“If that works, I’ll take his share with me today and get that taken care of. Tyson, I’m going to leave the task of telling her what happened to you. She knows you best, and you were a good friend to Will. It will be best if it comes from you.”

“I’ve been thinking about the letters a lot lately,” Tyson said, changing the subject away from Will. “If Price was already dead, how could he have mailed all those letters? Especially the first one that I threw away, and it came back to me.”

“Keeps you up at night, eh?” James said with a smile.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Addison said. “That means there has to be another person behind the letters.” She shuddered slightly at what that meant—another person with knowledge of the letters and the diamonds. “I could get someone from the force to look into the breaking and entering side of the matter.”

James shook his head. “No reason to do that. I have it figured out. There are actually two people who were involved. The first person was hired in Medina, New York, to mail the letters. Oliver Price gave her a large sum of money to mail one letter each day until the letters ran out. She did her part, and that was that.”

“How did you find all this out?” Tyson asked.

“I made some phone calls. I started with the post office and talked to an old-timer. She gave me the name of the person, and I made a call to her. She told me the whole story, though she was worried that she’d lose the money because of that.”

“No chance of that,” Tyson said. “We don’t want any more fuss of this than there already has been.”

“And who’s the second person?” Addison asked. “The one who broke into Tyson’s house and left the letter.”

James looked out the window for a second. Herman, the mailman, was walking up the driveway. James walked to the door and called him in.

“This is the second person,” James said, putting a hand on Herman’s shoulder. The man hadn’t changed a bit while they’d been gone, and somehow that comforted Tyson.

“What are you talking about?” the chubby mailman asked.

“When Tyson threw away the first letter, he wasn’t very careful about it. The letter actually fell out of the trashcan. Herman here saw the letter on the ground by the street and picked it up. He saved it, and when he remembered, he brought the letter back here.” James looked like he’d solved the meaning of life as he presented his theory.

“Inside the house,” Tyson asked. “Why not the box?”

Herman looked aghast. “You can only put official mail in the mailbox. It’s against the law to put other things in there. I wasn’t sure if that would be considered trash or a letter, so the back door was unlocked, and I just put it down in here. You’d been inviting me in every day to see if you’d received another letter, so it didn’t seem like a stretch that you’d want that one back.”

Tyson laughed—for the first time in a very long time. “No, you did fine. It just surprised me, and I thought that someone was watching me. Instead, it was just you doing your job—I appreciate that very much. Thanks.”

The mailman, who had turned bright red during the conversation, seemed to calm down now. “I’m glad you’re okay with that. I didn’t want to get in trouble with that.”

“Not at all, Herman, not at all,” James said.

The man left before the conversation began again. All three of them seemed to recall later that the bag of diamonds still rested on the table as they’d talked to Herman. A tremor of fear ran through them as they realized this.

James stood up. “I need to get going. Can we split up the diamonds?”

They quickly agreed that each person should count the diamonds in each portion; that would allow all of them to be sure that the division was equitable. Tyson noticed that when it came to the money, the easy camaraderie quickly evaporated, leaving them where they’d been in Vermont.

After James left with his own portion and Will’s portion to be sold off, Addison and Tyson began to go through the papers that James had brought with him. The news articles were rather lurid in their descriptions of the events, and Tyson hoped that Bethany would not see these discussions of her husband’s role in the events.

Addison read a passage first. “This says that Oliver Price ran the Manhattan pawn shop by himself for decades. He didn’t have a partner, so Dunn lied about being his partner. If he lied about being his partner….”

“Price didn’t steal a thing from Dunn. That was all a lie. The cops hinted around at that when they were questioning us.” Tyson looked down the page at the rest of his article. “This says that Price sold his business in the past year because he had cancer. Doctors had given him less than a year to live.”

Addison cleared her throat. “You might want to read the rest of the paragraph. The store and the property went for just over $50 million.”

Tyson did the math quickly. If James was right, then only half of that treasure had been accounted for. The rest of it was out there somewhere. Tyson wondered if Oliver Price had invested that money somewhere or if he’d made other arrangements for the funds.

“You don’t think that there was another set of puzzles out there that we missed, do you? Addison said. “I’m going to have to give this some thought. What if we missed another $24 million in cash or diamonds that were left for us?”

“Don’t get greedy,” he said. “We have more than enough to last us the rest of our lives.”

“This is something we didn’t know,” Addison said. “Price used to live around here. He lived in Raleigh a few years ago. He’d moved down here to get away from the notoriety of banking so much money.”

Tyson paused for a long time. Addison watched him but said nothing. Deep in thought, she left him to his own thoughts.

“I knew him,” Tyson said finally. “I just didn’t put everything together. He was a nice old man. He’d just been diagnosed with cancer, and they were doing tests on him. None of his family came down to see him. He had a kid or two, but they didn’t come down. His wife was dead.”

Addison gave him an odd look. “You certainly seem to know a lot about him for someone who had never heard of him up until now.”

“The photos of him and the talk about him having cancer and living here. That all added up to make me remember him. I’d go check up on him after my shift was done. He always had a story about some adventure he’d had when he was young. I loved to hear his stories, but I doubted that they were true. They were so wild that it seemed unlikely.”

“Anything like your stories will be now?” Addison said with a smile.

“I didn’t have any stories then. I was just a guy who’d never left North Carolina, and I’d never had an adventure before. I guess he remembered that about me when he went to make a will, eh?”

“You remembered him too. You must have made quite an impression.”

“Yeah, so he had to have a bunch of tests. He wanted to go north for the Christmas weekend, but the hospital refused to release him. He could have gone, but they made it plain that he would not be welcome back—millions or no millions.”

Addison smiled. “So Tyson to the rescue, eh?”

“Not rescue, but I did a little act of kindness, like that plaque in the box at the house in Vermont. I went out and bought him a few presents. Nothing special, just a pair of slippers, a robe, that kind of thing….”

Before he could finish his sentence, Addison was standing before him. “He set this whole thing up because you’re a good guy, Tyson. Twenty-four million dollars for an act of kindness.” She moved closer to him. “I do think that acts of kindness should be rewarded.” She pressed her lips against his.

James returned the following week with a suitcase. He handed it to Tyson with a smile. “That’s Will’s portion in cash. She’ll have to be careful. Nothing like that can be deposited into a checking account. The police would want to know where it came from.”

Tyson had been dreading the moment. He pulled up to the two-story house that Will and Bethany had recently purchased. After taking several deep breaths, Tyson left the car’s safety and went to the front door.

Bethany opened the door immediately, almost before he knocked. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said in a tone that reminded him of old horror movies. Her appearance wasn’t much better. She had dark circles under her eyes and the ashy skin tone of someone near death. She wore a blouse and dress pants as if she was going somewhere, but the blouse was wrinkled, and the pants’ button was undone—as if she had come home from a hard night of partying.

“I wanted to come by, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me,” Tyson replied. That much was true. He had picked up the phone several times to call her, but he stopped just before pressing the dial button on each occasion. It would be raw for her—and for him.

“Come on in,” she said.

He followed her into the living room and sat down without asking. She sat on the loveseat opposite him. Tyson pushed the luggage over toward her as he began to speak. “This is for you. We were successful in our adventure, and this is Will’s share of the money.”

She looked at the suitcase as if it might hold a bomb. She made no move to open it. “This doesn’t replace Will or what happened,” she said softly, making Tyson lean forward just to hear her.

“I never said that it would. Nothing would replace my friend. Not all the money in the world. But this was his. We found it largely because of him—and it’s only fair that you get it now.” Tyson felt the moisture in the corner of his eyes and knew that he’d have to stop now or begin to cry.

“You need to tell me more than that,” Bethany said. “I need to know how he died. I need to know why he’s dead and you aren’t. The other two are still alive too. Why them and not him? I’d give all that money to you three if I could have him back.” She did not attempt to stop her tears, which ran down her face as she spoke.

Tyson’s heart squeezed with pain. “We were on the last leg of the adventure,” Tyson began slowly. His voice didn’t sound like his own as he spoke. “We were all at a cabin in the woods of Vermont. We were having a difficult time solving the last clue. A man with a gun approached us. He flattened my tires and told us that we had to give him a part of the money we had found. We agreed.”

“And this was the man who shot Will?” she asked. The silence made Tyson realize that he needed to continue.

“Yeah, eventually. We all looked for the treasure and finally found it on the third day. I won’t go into the details, but we solved the puzzle. The other man took out a gun and told us he was taking the whole treasure. He had shot a hole in the wall the night he arrived. The shot had missed Will by a few feet. Will was certain that the guy was going to kill us all. He had a gun on him. I guess he’d brought it from home?”

Bethany nodded. “I was worried. I noticed that it was gone a couple days into your trip. We had a big fight about that over the phone.”

Tyson nodded, remembering that fight and Will’s reaction after that phone call. “Yeah, Will pulled out his gun, and the other guy fired and hit him. He missed his friend. I tried to save him,” Tyson said. He couldn’t finish that sentence. He hadn’t been able to finish that sentence since they’d come home.

Bethany waited. The room was silent as they sat there, mourning the dead man.

Finally, Tyson took a deep breath. “I tried to save him. I did everything I could,” he said.

Bethany nodded. “I know you did. That was never a question in my mind.”

“Anyway, the man started to aim again, and James shot him. That was it. The police came and told us that the man had killed Oliver Price, who set up the adventure and gave us the money. He was a patient, and I know he never meant for any of that to happen either.”

Bethany sniffled again, but she didn’t cry. “So all this is for me?” she asked. “What do I do with this type of cash? This is the sort of thing that Will would know. I have no idea.”

Tyson tried to explain the situation, suggesting a safe in the house for the cash and using the money in small amounts—as needed—to pay bills or for service. “You could hire someone to do the lawn. Things of that nature.”

“The things that Will would have done,” she whispered.

In the end, Tyson tried to explain everything James had imparted to him. Still, the words seemed inadequate for the situation. Bethany avoided a hug when Tyson left. He sat in his car and cried again.

Chapter 20

Tyson waited for several weeks to trade any of his diamonds for cash. James had been concerned about flooding one city with too many diamonds. Bethany’s plight had been first in their minds, so they had agreed that her diamonds should be converted to cash first.

Since James was taking care of Bethany’s diamonds, he took the opportunity to convert his own simultaneously. After all, he pointed out, he had no trust in banks or investment firms. James wanted nothing to do with traditional banking in this country. So he would need cash for his needs.

Addison apparently had been on her last dollar before they left Raleigh. James agreed to give her a small loan that she could pay back when she converted her diamonds. This left Addison and Tyson to wait for their payout.

When the day came to visit the jeweler, Tyson and Addison agreed to go together. Tyson saw this as another adventure. Even though the last adventure had ended horrendously, he still thirsted for more adventures – maybe here in Raleigh and less dangerous.

They rang the bell on the door of the shop, and Tyson told them they were James's friends. How the older man knew these types of people was beyond Tyson?

The jeweler buzzed them into the front room of the building. The jeweler looked at them carefully. Tyson felt sick when he realized that the man was checking them for weapons. It would be years before Tyson would want to carry a weapon.

“How can I help you today?”

Tyson explained how they wanted to convert some polished diamonds into cash.

The jeweler gave them both a smile. “Are you looking perhaps to find a bigger stone? Something for a ring, perhaps?”

Addison blushed in a way which Tyson had not seen before. He stammered for the words to explain that today they would only want cash.

“Perhaps another time,” he said with a smile as he got out a jeweler’s loupe and rolled out a piece of cloth on the counter. “What do we have today?”

They each put the stones on the cloth and waited. The man’s first words were, “This is an excellent grade of stone. Do you know where this came from?” He took off the loupe to better see them.

“No idea. They were actually a present from a long-lost uncle,” Tyson said. He’d found that this was a much easier explanation than the truth. People didn’t ask too much about family separations.

“He had exquisite taste,” the man said. He went back to work examining the stones.

When he got to the eighth stone, he moved it to the side and continued. Tyson was now worried that the stone was fake. Tyson would not want to have to explain the situation to the police.

He let the man go through three more stones before asking, “Why did you push that one stone to the side? Is it flawed?”

“An anomaly,” the man replied.

Tyson took him at his word and let him continue. As long as it wasn’t the start of the phony diamonds, he would be okay. As he stood there and watched, he wondered if James had anything similar happen. He’d cashed in half of the gems, and he hadn’t mentioned a thing about “anomalies.” He had just brought back the cash. Tyson felt his anxiety rise as they waited for the man to go through Addison’s gems.

When he was finished, he looked up at them. He named a price for Addison’s diamonds and a very similar price to Tyson. “If you decide to keep the one diamond instead of selling it to me, the price would be lower, obviously.”

Tyson started to talk, but the jeweler interrupted him. “I know you’ve been curious as to why I put that single diamond aside. I told you there’s an anomaly, and there is. Why don’t you come here?” the man asked, motioning Tyson to go behind the counter.

Once there, Tyson took the jeweler’s loupe and put it on. The surroundings were suddenly very magnified.

“Look down here,” the man said, pointing to the cloth.

Tyson found the stone beautifully sparkling in the overhead lights by moving his head.

“Pick it up and look at it. I want you to take your time and see it from all possible angles.”

Tyson did as he said. The jewel moved in his oversized fingers, and he wondered what he was supposed to see here.

Finally, he turned the diamond slightly, and some numbers appeared. “I see it.”

“Someone has etched those numbers onto this stone. None of the rest have this. So I have to ask, why someone would etch numbers into a single diamond out of a batch?”

Tyson thought he had an answer. The numbers appeared just like the numbers on the letters he’d been sent. They were coordinates to a location. A new adventure and a new set of coordinates perhaps meant that they were meant to have the rest of Oliver Price’s fortune. After all, they’d only found half of what Price had sold the pawnshop for by his count.

“Could you take this down?” Tyson asked Addison. He looked up at her, but it was hard to see her face in magnification like that.

He read the numbers to her twice, and after the second time, she told him that he had the numbers.

“I think I want to keep this one,” Tyson said. “Where would I buy a loupe like this?”

“I can let you borrow one if you promise to bring it back?” the man replied.

Tyson agreed. He and Addison took the large sums of cash and left along with the loupe and the diamond with another set of coordinates.

He looked at Addison and said, “What do you want to do now?”

THE END