Chapter 10
ten
N oah didn’t look so good.
In fact, under his pale expression, he looked almost…well, friendly . And if that wasn’t a red flag for his mental state while standing at the top of the tower, Elisa didn’t know what was.
She removed her hand from his arm and turned to evaluate their surroundings. She needed to find this clue, and fast. For Noah’s sake, of course. Not because touching his arm and standing this close, where she could fully appreciate the depths of his scruffy jaw was messing with her own head. “Do you see anything on the window ledge?”
Noah shifted, slowly, toward the frame they’d crawled from and ran his fingers around the edges. “No.”
She’d have to check it better to know for sure, but at the moment, she didn’t want to risk crowding him. “I’ll walk around the perimeter. Do you want to come?—”
His wide-eyed stare answered her unfinished question.
“Right. Be right back.” She maneuvered the outside of the observation deck, trailing one hand over the tower wall and one over the outside railing as she walked. Nothing felt out of place, loose, or otherwise messed with beneath her fingers. Where would Gilbert have put their clue? Were they looking for a note card like the first clues had been written on?
She was flying blind—and with a lame duck waiting for her, to boot.
Lord, I could use some help here. And if you could keep Noah from having a panic attack, that’d be extra helpful.
“Noah?” She lifted her voice above the wind as she made her way around the circle toward him. The sun inched its way toward the water, sending beams of light dancing across the top of the waves. Thank the Lord no other tourists had bothered to come to the lighthouse this close to closing time. “You good?”
He called something from around the curved platform, but the wind snatched his words. At least he was still on the deck and hadn’t crawled back inside. Progress.
“Remember that time I tried to get you up here?” Seemed a bit dangerous to reference their summer together outright with him, but keeping Noah calm took first priority until they found the clue. “You refused. Claimed it was a tourist trap and not worth the money.”
“Oh, I remember.” His voice was faint, but she thought she heard a hint of humor in it.
“You probably thought you were so slick, hiding your fear of heights.” She continued her search, winding her way around the platform toward where she’d left him. “But I figured it out after that impulsive trip we took to the Ferris wheel on the boardwalk.”
She completed her search and stood planted in front of him.
He met her eyes, shook his head. “Lot harder to find excuses not to go on a free carnival ride.”
“I’m just glad you made it out of the cable car before you threw up.” They shared a grin.
Then Noah’s face clouded, and he looked down, then away from her. “Any luck?”
Right. Enough reminiscing. She straightened her shoulders. “Nothing obvious. But, then again, I didn’t expect obvious.”
“There aren’t a lot of places to put anything.” Noah was clearly avoiding looking at the railing—or at her—but he did at least reexamine the window frame a little more thoroughly. “Do you think the lighthouse isn’t the right site?”
She appreciated how he phrased that so vaguely, rather than simply stating she could have been wrong. Though the nicety could be proof of his waning emotional state being up this high.
“I’ll go back in and look around the top floor. Maybe the clue is inside, out of the elements.”
Noah shrugged, one hand digging into the wall, the other attempting a casual pose on his hip. “I had my eyes on the ground the whole time coming up here, and I didn’t see a thing.”
“I’m sure it’s hidden pretty well. If it’s here, it’s obviously been up here for a while. Gilbert would have had to stash it while he was still healthy enough to come do it, but recently enough that he knew about his—” Oh, good gravy. She’d put her sandal in her mouth again.
A muscle in Noah’s jaw flexed and she wished with everything in her she could retract the careless statement. “I’m sorry.” She touched his arm. “Did you…know the cancer had come back?”
One quick jerk of his head confirmed her suspicion. Oh, Noah . She swallowed and squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry. We’re going to find it.”
He nodded, a bit of color coming back into his cheeks. He drew a ragged breath, and before she could assure him it wasn’t necessary, he swung back through the opening into the top floor. She quickly followed suit.
But he seemed better now, stronger. More focused. “Could he have left it with the guards at the ticket stand?”
“Maybe. We can ask when we go back down.” Elisa rolled in her bottom lip. “You know your grandfather best. If he was here, what would he be drawn to?”
Noah surveyed the small space. “He was quirky, but he had purpose. And he wouldn’t have made it impossible—that defeats the point. He wants us to find these clues.” He sighed. “We just have to think like him.”
Elisa had a sudden idea. “How tall was he?”
Noah shrugged. “Five-ten, maybe? Under six feet, for sure. I passed him up in high school.”
“Well, that doesn’t help me. How tall are you now?” She gestured for him to come closer. “I’m about five-six.”
He moved to stand in front of her, near enough she felt his warmth and nervous energy. “Six-one.”
His voice dipped deeper, but that was probably his phobia talking. She, on the other hand, had no excuse for the rapid increase in heart rate or the sweat dotting her palms.
“So, about…here.” She forced herself to focus on Noah’s forehead as she held one hand flat, indicating where Gilbert would stand between their two heights.
“Yeah.” His breath, warm and minty, fanned her face. “Close enough.”
Too close. She took a step back. “What could he reach easily? He would have hidden it quickly, so no one would walk up on him.”
“Yeah, and it’s not like he dragged a ladder up here.” Noah turned slowly, his eyes scanning the space. His back was rigid but his shoulders weren’t as tense as they’d been on the way up the stairs. “Maybe we should re-read the clue.”
Elisa recited the first one from memory. “One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be.”
Footsteps sounded below, faint but distinct. She met Noah’s stricken look, certain her own face reflected the same panic. She recited faster. “Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch of the North Church tower as a signal light…” The footsteps grew louder. “What words jump out at you?”
Noah ran a hand through his hair as he paced. “Opposite?”
“Me too.” Elisa nodded. “And lantern.”
“Hang a lantern…” Noah muttered.
On cue, their gazes drifted over to the Fresnel lens.
Noah quirked one eyebrow. Elisa shook her head as she considered. “It’s all beveled glass—nowhere to hide anything. So what would be opposite the lens, or the light?”
“Typically a lantern hangs from up high, right? So, maybe the floor?”
They looked down. No evidence of a trap door, secret compartment, nothing. Just smooth concrete beneath their feet.
The footsteps came closer, along with voices. They were running out of time—and privacy. “I just thought of something.” Elisa gripped Noah’s arm. “Would your grandfather have even been able to climb all the way up here? In his…condition.”
“I didn’t think of that, either.” Noah’s face paled. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
She sighed. “So it could be downstairs.”
“There wasn’t anything downstairs, remember? Only the staircase.”
Then their gazes locked as the approaching footsteps grew louder. “The stairs.”
“He could have taped the clue under one of them, and no one would ever think to look.” Noah’s brow furrowed. “But which one?”
Bless it. There were only 177. But wait. “The clues contained numbers. One if by land, two if by sea…”
Hope lit Noah’s eyes. “So the first step? Or the second?”
Adrenaline tingled through Elisa’s fingers. She loved this—the thrill of solving clues, figuring out secrets. Maybe Noah would come to appreciate it once they had a taste of victory. “Let’s try both.”
Two college-aged guys popped in the doorway, out of breath and joking with each other. They nodded at Elisa and Noah as they maneuvered around the lens to the observation deck.
Elisa jerked her head toward the door. “Let’s go.” They should have enough time to get back to the bottom and check under the steps before the men attempted to come back through.
Noah gestured for her to descend the narrow stairwell first. “I’m just glad we didn’t pass them on the way down.”
“Do I need to tell you more of my life journey stories?” she half-joked over her shoulder. But his steps were keeping up with hers this time. He must be motivated to get to the first floor—not that she could blame him.
“Thanks for that, by the way.” His voice was so low she almost missed it over their rhythmic footfalls.
Her heart stammered again, and it wasn’t from the exertion or the thrill of the hunt. She carefully schooled her words. “You’d have done the same for me.”
His silence made her wonder, but she refused to turn around to check. Probably best she didn’t see his face—or let him see hers.
They made it to the bottom of the lighthouse in half the time it’d taken to reach the top, and Elisa eagerly turned to face the first step. She knelt on the hard floor, running her hands under the rough bottom of the stair. “Nope.”
Noah squatted and searched under the second step, a hint of anticipation in his eyes. Then his face fell. “Nothing here either.”
Elisa sat back on her heels, out of breath. Dust motes floated upward in the sunbeams scattered across the circular tower. She followed their journey, thinking. “Your grandfather was always so patient at the puzzlers club meetings.”
“I didn’t inherit that trait, if you hadn’t noticed.” Noah joined her, sitting on the concrete floor by the start of the winding staircase. “Maybe your hunch was wrong.”
Maybe. She closed her eyes, running back through the clues, the conversation she heard at Bayou Beignets, what she knew about Gilbert. “He often said in meetings, when newcomers would get frustrated, that the answer was usually right there in front of them. They just had to wait until they saw it.”
“So we’re waiting on something—we don’t know what—to reveal itself.” Noah scrubbed his chin with his palm. “Seems like a solid plan.”
She shot him a look. “Do you have a better one?”
“Sure.” He scoffed. “Maybe we could count to three, say abracadabra , and?—”
Elisa grabbed his arm and sucked in a tight breath. “That’s it.”
“The heat must be getting to you.” He pressed the back of his hand against her forehead. “Grandpa wasn’t a magician, sugar .”
“Not that.” She crawled forward on her hands and knees, ignoring the intentional bait of his word choice. “Count to three. One if by land, two if by sea…Three is the next step. Literally.” She reached under the third stair, feeling the rough plank from one end to the other, hope soaring in her chest until?—
There. She ripped the envelope free and held it up with a grin.