He stopped, looking down at her. “Remi . . .” Whatever might have been said next was lost when a car came speeding up the hill, its tires screeching as it rounded the curve toward them.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Blinded by the headlights, Sam pulled Remi to the side of the road against the low wall. The dark blue compact car sped past them to the top of the hill.
Sam, still holding Remi tight, felt her heart beating against his chest. And with good reason. Pressed against the wall, they had only to look down to see the sheer drop on the other side. Before they had a chance to even process their close call, a second vehicle drove up and stopped beside them.
Manos was behind the wheel, Denéa in the front passenger seat. She rolled down her window. “Are you two okay? It looked like they almost hit you.”
Sam drew Remi from the wall. “Luckily, we managed to get out of the way.”
“Hop in,” Manos said. “We’ll give you a ride home.”
They climbed into the backseat and Manos took off. At the top of the hill, the blue car was making a three-point turn, and the vehicles passed each other, going in opposite directions. The silhouette of two men sitting inside the other car, one tall, one short, was all Sam could see as it drove back down the hill.
“Probably tourists,” Manos said. “There’s a rental car sticker on the wi
ndshield. They’re either drunk or lost. Or both.”
“Lost?” Denéa laughed. “On Fourni? It’s not like there’s all that many places to go. Drunk is more like it.”
A few minutes later, Manos turned off into Kampi, navigating down the long drive, until they reached the stairs. Sam and Remi got out, thanked them, then took the stairs down. A litter of calico kittens jumped off a low wall, then followed them until they reached the bottom by the Kampi Beach Bar. The cats ran off, and Sam and Remi continued on, hand in hand, along the water.
Remi was surprisingly quiet. When they finally reached the cottage, she stopped him just outside the gate. “What were you going to say up there, right before the car—Before Manos and Denéa picked us up?”
Sam was going to tell her that they might be better off leaving the treasure-hunting alone. But there was something about the way she looked at him, and all rational thought seemed to escape him. “This” was all he managed to say, then took her in his arms and kissed her in the moonlight. He pulled back, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “If that’s okay.”
Remi, somewhat breathless, nodded. He reached behind her and opened the gate.
* * *
—
By the time Sam and Remi sat down to lunch the following day, Selma called with a report on the photos that he’d emailed to her the night before. “Good afternoon, Mr. Fargo.”
“No need for formalities,” he said, though he was beginning to suspect she would continue to ignore this request. She seemed to be firmly entrenched in using titles.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fargo,” she said, proving his point, then launching into the purpose of her call. “After receiving the book pages you sent—”
“Hold on,” Sam said. He put the call on speaker. “Go ahead. Remi’s here with me.”
“Working under the assumption that this story is a fictional retelling of something that really happened, it seems there are a few threads that may actually reference historical events. If the cave entrance was destroyed as depicted in the book, it was obviously an earthquake. Unfortunately, that doesn’t narrow down the time period, since the area is and has always been rife with seismic activity.”
“So we can strike any historical earthquakes as a reference?” Sam replied.
“Exactly. The next best clue is that the boys want to speak directly to Poseidon. With that reference, we can rule out anytime after Christianity firmly took hold in the area—which makes it more than likely the third century A.D. or earlier. The boys’ names were somewhat common in ancient Greece, which is no help. One name from the story stands out, primarily because it isn’t Greek. Pactyes. The spelling varies, but the name is prominent in Lydian history, especially around 546 B.C.”
“Lydian?” Sam asked.
“Turkey,” Remi whispered, “before it was Turkey.”
“How do you remember this stuff?” he whispered back.
She shrugged as Selma continued, saying, “King Cyrus conquered Lydia, invaded Sardis, the capital, and entrusted the Sardis treasury to a Lydian named Pactyes, who was supposed to take the gold back to Persia. Instead, he hired mercenaries to steal it. In short, if this Pactyes mentioned in your children’s book is the Lydian Pactyes, then it’s no wonder someone’s bent on killing over the whole thing.”
“Why’s that?” Sam asked.
Remi’s brows went up as she turned toward him. “Surely you’ve heard the term ‘rich as Croesus’?”