Treasured by Lexi Blake

Chapter Eleven

Tessa stood in front of the big mural and studied it carefully. “You think there’s something behind this?”

David was running his hands where the mural met with the wall. “Yes. I looked at the blueprints again. The lounge should be behind this wall, but the square footage doesn’t add up.”

“There’s really treasure?” Ian was standing to the side with a sandwich in his big hand. He hadn’t minded all the dead bodies. The man was hungry.

He’d also taken the whole “she was now with his nephew” news with pure Taggart calm. He’d patted her on the back and told her to make sure David wore a condom, and now she was part of the family. The man was seriously into safe sex.

“David thinks so.” Eddie stood to the side. He’d used the satellite phone to talk to Camila after Sean had gotten Grace on the phone with David.

Tessa had been the one to tell him his treasure hunt could wait long enough for him to assure his mom he was okay. He could be single-minded when he was working. She would be the one to drag her gorgeous professor back into the real world.

“You think the poem refers to the heart on the mural.” Sean stood in front of the mural, considering it. “Where the river flows.”

That got David’s attention. “You’ve read it?”

Sean nodded. “Yeah, I looked up Ricardo Montez because you’re so fascinated with him. I read up on him, and it led to the legends about the treasure.”

“Huh, that’s nice,” David said with a smile. “It’s nice that someone in my family knows about my work.”

She got the feeling Sean had done that so he could talk to his stepson.

Kyle was sitting on a chair with his leg up. “It wasn’t going to be me. That stuff is boring.”

“I’ve never heard anything about a hidden door here.” Eddie had lightened up considerably after talking to Camila and ensuring that his son was all right. They would be here in a couple of hours, and he’d already called in a cleaning team to dispose of her afternoon’s work.

All in all, not a bad day, and there still might be some treasure.

“Are we talking cash or like art and stuff?” Big Tag asked.

She’d quietly briefed her boss on what had gone down, and he’d agreed to keep Marta’s cover even from the rest of the group. They owed her. She was investigating some of the business leaders Eddie was meeting with. There were rumors the businessmen might be involved in some shady shit the government was interested in.

“I think it’s the contents of a ship.” David was back to running his fingers along the seam. “A couple of years before he died, Montez covered the costs of the recovery of a ship that sank off the coast of the island in 1763. We know he accepted several items from the ship, but they weren’t accounted for when he died and the contents of the place became Eddie’s.”

“Wasn’t there something about numbers?” She hadn’t expected to feel so comfortable with his family, but the Taggarts made it easy. Ian was distracted with food and or violence. Sean just wanted his stepson happy, and Kyle was half asleep from the pain meds MaeBe had slipped into his backpack.

“I don’t know what it meant,” David admitted. “There might be a safe we have to get into.”

She didn’t think so. The numbers had been at the beginning of the poem, so she thought they likely had something to do with the door and getting it open. The mural was painted on a grid, the lines of the grid still visible. “What if one of these squares is a button?”

David stepped back, looking at the whole of the mural again. “That’s an interesting idea.”

“So you count the squares?” Sean asked. “How do you know where to start?”

“Where the river begins,” Eddie said with a sigh. “That’s where my father would have started. He did this for me.”

David turned to his friend. “You were his heart. It was always for you. That’s what dads do. Sometimes they even do it when they don’t share a drop of blood.”

“Blood doesn’t make a family,” Sean said quietly.

“No, but sperm does, and you should remember that,” Big Tag snarked. “What? You guys know I can ruin any tender moment.”

“But he’s right about the sperm,” Kyle said with a yawn. “I’m not ready to be an uncle. I’m better at being a bad influence big brother.”

David had gone back to ignoring his family. He was intently counting squares from the center of the heart down the river.

“What kind of bad influence?” Sean asked, standing over Kyle. “I mean besides ignoring doctor’s orders and generally being a pain in the ass to your girlfriend?”

“MaeBe is not my girlfriend,” Kyle corrected. “She’s a girl who is a friend.”

“Good because Charlie’s got this cousin she thinks MaeBe should meet,” Ian offered.

Kyle’s eyes flared. “Absolutely not. Charlotte’s cousins are all Russian mob. What the hell is she thinking? MaeBe’s not going out with a gangster. And no IT guys either. She’s already too invested in her computer. She needs a guy who’ll get her outside and take her hiking. Someone who’s different from her but has the same values.”

“The kind of dude who duct tapes himself up after getting shot?” Tag polished off his last sandwich. “The kind who stows away on a private plane when he’s injured?”

“I just think she needs someone to shake her up a little. Or she’s happy on her own. You know she doesn’t need a man to make her complete,” Kyle snapped back. “She’s a fully realized person without some dude hanging around.”

Except Kyle was the dude who was always hanging around.

There was a snick, and the mural moved slightly.

“You did it.” She should have known he would find it. He was good at finding lost things. Like her.

The most beautiful smile came over his face. “I did. But not without your help, baby.”

David kissed her, seeming to forget that he’d opened a door that had been closed for years, but then the treasure didn’t really matter to her guy. It was the journey he cared about.

But she wanted to see the treasure.

“Are you going to let Eddie go first?” she asked.

David kissed her again and then stepped back, sliding the panel to the side and exposing the stairwell. “This was the treasure your dad wanted you to find. The one you can share with your son one day.”

There was a sheen of tears in Eddie’s eyes as he put a hand on David’s shoulder. “The gift was always the game, wasn’t it? Not what I found at the end. It was in the hours he put into making the puzzle, into giving us something we could share. That’s what my dad truly left for me.”

“But it could be money, too, right?” Ian asked. “I’m serious. It was a big bill.”

“Ian,” Sean admonished.

Eddie shook his head. “I promise, Mr. Taggart. After what you and David have done for me, I’ll pay all your bills.”

“Don’t offer that. He’s got five kids and a wife with a shoe addiction,” David pointed out.

“We’ll work something out,” Eddie promised. “Let’s go see what my father left for me.”

David offered her his hand, and she let him lead her down the narrow staircase.

Low lights came on, probably on a motion detector, and she found herself in a room that looked more like an art museum than a storage room. There were paintings on the walls and glass cabinets that showed off artifacts and jewelry.

“Nice,” Big Tag said as he walked in. He took a deep inhale, and his expression went from curious to predatory in a heartbeat. “Is that what I think it is?”

Sean nodded beside him. “Holy shit. That’s a bottle of Macallan Fine. I’ve never seen one before.”

“This is from the shipwreck.” David was standing over one of the cabinets. “These are Spanish doubloons. They’re worth hundreds of thousands now.”

“So it’s a bunch of old stuff?” Kyle managed to get down the stairs and looked around.

“It’s history,” David said with that look of wonder on his face she loved so much. “It’s more than just the shipwreck. It’s all the stuff he collected. This is amazing.”

Big Tag was staring at the bottle with a look of longing on his face she’d never seen before. Maybe when he looked at his wife, but there was real desire in the man’s eyes. “This is the greatest Scotch in the world. I will trade you the bill for my services for the bottle.”

“That bottle is worth almost two million,” Sean pointed out. “Don’t fall for his bullshit.”

Eddie stood in the middle of the room, looking down at the big book left there for him. “This is our family history. Everything he could find. And his journals. David, come and look at this. He took pictures. No one’s ever seen them before, and there are recordings from the meetings he conducted.”

“Are you serious?” David gasped as he looked down at the books and tapes on the table. “This is a gold mine.”

“But this is liquid gold,” Big Tag argued.

David laughed. “Well, he did mention liquid gold.” He looked back at her. “Baby, do you mind if I look through…”

She wasn’t going to keep him from his treasure. She kissed his cheek. “You have at it. I’m going to take your family upstairs and raid the Scotch that isn’t worth two million dollars.”

“Just a taste,” Ian tried.

She frowned his way. She was going to be surrounded by Taggarts. She would have to be tough. “Up those stairs, mister. We need to greet the cleaners and deal with all the bodies. In my family women do the killing and men bury the bodies.”

Sean sighed. “Yeah, that’s how it mostly works in ours, too. All right. We’ll let the professor have his fun.”

David suddenly scooped her up in his arms. “The professor’s fun can wait. I think I need to take my lady here and make sure she understands how much I appreciate the save.”

“David,” she began, “it’s okay. I know how much this means to you.”

“You mean more.” He took them up the stairs. “And I’m not done with my study.”

She wrapped her arms around him and knew they would never be done. She could study her professor forever.

* * * *

Also from 1001 Dark Nights and Lexi Blake, discover Charmed, Enchanted, Protected, Close Cover, Arranged, Devoted, Adored, and Dungeon Games.