Chapter Twelve #2
She gulped. “It seems that way. I’d like to take these things outside and get a better look at them.”
He nodded and checked the clearing before letting her walk out of the cabin. They sat on the ground nearby, inspecting the bag first and finding it empty. But several pages of the journal were filled.
By now the sun was dipping lower in the sky, leaving little light beneath the tree canopy. Soon it would be full dark, and they’d be spending another night on the mountain.
“We could stay in the cabin tonight. The roof’s solid enough.”
“Or…we stay in the tent. Outside.” Sinead picked up the arrowhead and studied it a long moment, her expression unreadable. “I can feel the ghosts in this place. People died here, Hawk. I can feel it.”
He didn’t argue. “Tent it is.”
He worked through the familiar motions of pitching camp, the practiced rhythm of it grounding him after the strange, heavy stillness of the cabin.
Sinead worked beside him, quieter than usual, the journal tucked in her pack with care.
By the time they had the tent pitched, the sky through the trees had turned violet. Though from here they couldn’t see it through the thick cover, he knew it was the same breathtaking view that had stopped them both cold that morning.
He glanced at Sinead.
Something shifted in his chest and settled there, warm and full.
It had nothing to do with legends or gold or old family history.
Whatever they’d found in that cabin, it was only part of what this trip had turned into.
To him, a small part.
* * * * *
Sinead’s stomach was too knotted up by their finds in the cabin to eat much. She cracked a few nuts and roasted mushrooms on a stick over the fire Hawk built, but she noted how he watched her with the same intensity of the bird he shared his last name with.
As he crouched before the fire, polishing off the rest of his backpacking meal, he kept tossing her looks.
“You haven’t eaten enough, Sinead. You’ve been on the trail for days. It requires a lot of fuel. I can’t have you collapsing or getting—”
“I’m fine.”
His brows drew together in a single line. “When a woman says she’s fine, that usually means she’s the opposite.”
She let out a puff of amusement. “That may be other women, but when I say it, I mean it.”
He compressed his lips but returned to his food. When he finished, he cleaned up, stowing away the pot in his backpack.
They settled beside the fire with the journal between them.
What they’d found in the cabin—the journal, the leather bag, the arrowhead—seemed like more heaviness hanging over them.
Because now all of this was real. The box buried on the ridge, the note inside.
The coordinates to this place. But looking around, Sinead believed there was more.
Her father was proud of his family history, but he wouldn’t just send her all the way out here to find her great-great-grandfather’s journal stuffed in a burlap sack.
She opened the journal carefully. The spine protested with a soft crack, and she smoothed the page flat before reading aloud. Her voice was low against the crackle of the fire.
Hawk stopped what he was doing and sat back, one arm slung around his bent knee as he listened.
She soaked in the words. Tracing a finger over the page, she met Hawk’s gaze. “He mentions the mine here. But not directly. More like he’s talking in riddles around it.”
“If he wrote it down plain, anyone who got hold of the journal would find it. Men were dying over it back then.” He leaned in, studying the page over her shoulder. “Read that last line again.”
She found her place and read, “‘Men have come sniffing ‘round again, offering coin for what I know. I told them same as always—it goes to my son when his time comes, and not a moment sooner, nor to any other man alive.”
Hawk chewed that over for a moment, firelight playing over the planes of his handsome face. Finally, he nodded. “That tracks with the legend.”
Sinead let out a breath in a trickle as the story filled her mind. “McCrae and Callahan didn’t live to tell their sons. The families only know because Eli gave them a share of the gold.”
He nodded.
She continued reading, and they pieced it together line by line, trading theories back and forth. The way Hawk applied a thoughtful logic to everything, reading what her ancestor hadn’t said as much as what he had, was impressive.
It didn’t exactly surprise her—she expected competence from the man. She just hadn’t expected this kind of sharpness…a kind that matched her own.
In all her years and travels, she had never found her match.
She studied his face as he talked, absorbed in the far-off expression in his eyes that looked like the deepest evergreen on the mountain.
“What did the last line say again?”
His question jarred her from her observations and she searched the page again. The passage was difficult to read, the ink faded.
“I think this says ‘claim.’”
He leaned over her shoulder again, his body heat rippling over her back. “It looks like it says ‘grave’ to me.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Claim does. It’s a mining term.”
“But grave fits with the ominous tone of the story.”
She cocked her head. “I thought you were a former Ranger and a bodyguard. Not a linguist.”
“I contain multitudes.” He shrugged as if he’d gotten the final word.
“They both have five letters. Unless there’s one hidden beneath this smudge. If you’re so competent, why don’t you get out a flashlight?”
He gave her a direct look. “The campfire is enough of a risk, but we’ve kept it low and we’re hidden between these trees. A light beam will carry through the woods. We don’t want to alert anyone to our whereabouts.”
At his words, her skin rippled for another reason.