Unconventional

“Holy shit,” uttered Chase.

The object was a book. Faded. Brown. But also unmistakable.

“It’s my uncle’s journal!”

The guys looked back at me in disbelief, as Julian set the desk back down.

“Your uncle had a journal?” said Noah. “You didn’t mention anything about—”

“I totally forgot!”

Memories came rushing back, of my uncle bent over his desk. Writing feverishly in the slim leather journal, that he once called his “ideas book.” I’d never once asked him what was in it. And I’d never even thought to look for it, after he died.

“Here,” said Noah. He picked it up and handed it over. “I’m sure this is probably personal, but—”

“No,” I said, waving him off. “It’s really not.” I folded my arms and smiled. “We found it together. We read it together.”

Julian was clapping his hands against his legs, wiping the dust off. Chase stretched his arms out and cracked his knuckles.

“Alright then,” he said. “I’ll put on some coffee.”

Fifty

MADISON

“Two-thousand Ryals,” Noah read aloud. He traced a page in my uncle’s journal with one finger. “Eight-hundred fifty Nobles. Six silver vessels. One cross, with emeralds, and—”

“This is crazy,” said Chase. He was sitting backwards in his kitchen chair, the glow of his smartphone highlighting the excitement on his face. “Scottish Nobles are gold coins. And the Ryals…”

He scrolled through screen after screen, calling up photos and showing them to us. The coins were ancient. Hammered silver, with imperfect edges. Elaborate depictions of a crowned king, holding a sword and shield. An eight pointed cross on the back, in beautiful, gleaming yellow.

“Your uncle wasn’t just looking for any old something,” uttered Noah. “He was trying to find a whole goddamn treasure horde.”

“No wonder he took the walls apart!” Chase exclaimed, dropping his phone to the table. “I’d be tearing the place apart, brick by brick!”

“He was,” I pointed out.

There was a moment of silence as it all sank in. My uncle’s journal had been filled with a lot of things. Details of places he’d been, random thoughts he’d jotted down while he was there. Most of it was personal, and we skipped those parts. But here, right at the very end…

“This is why he bought this property,” Julian said plainly. “Not because he liked castles, or Scotland, or anything else. But because he had this.”

Julian pointed to a piece of yellowed parchment, old and crumbling. We’d found it folded into Travis’s journal. An itemized list of the same treasures he’d copied into the pages, which Noah was reading now.

“You really think so?” I asked.

“Well you said your uncle traveled a lot. No wife, no kids. Never put down roots.” Julian shrugged. “Why settle down now?”

I couldn’t argue the theory. As far as I could remember, my uncle had never talked about Scotland. Or castles. Or buying any kind of property, for that matter.

“The thing I don’t understand is what made him think to look in that one chamber,” said Noah. He flipped the piece of parchment over. “It says here ‘Stowed, Westgate Castle’.” He shrugged. “It could be anywhere. In any room.”

“Or under it,” offered Julian. “It could be anywhere on the castle grounds.”

“Why would they hide it rather than spend it?” asked Chase. “That makes no sense.”

“Because back then castles were laid siege to all the time,” said Noah. “Armies rolled through, ransacking and pillaging. Taking everything that wasn’t nailed down, or—”

“That happened here!” I cried excitedly. “My uncle once told me. This place was razed at one point. Burned to a shell. Some of the roof rafters are still charred, you can see them from the top level.”