Something Wilder

“Duke was famous in treasure-hunting circles.” Lily turned the journal over in her hands. “He kept everything he knew in here. He’d been adding to it for years. Maps, notes, riddles, codes.”

“How on earth would Terry know about it?” Walter asked.

“I keep this with me all the time because I know people think it’s valuable.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t really know that until after Duke died. Apparently he had a big following online and his fanboys assumed he’d leave it to another treasure hunter. But he didn’t.”

Lily felt Leo go still behind her. Right, they hadn’t finished that talk; he wouldn’t have known that her father died. “People have contacted me over the years wanting to buy it or trying to convince me to give it to someone in that community,” she said. “But no one has ever actually come for it before.”

“So there’s information about treasure in there?” Walt asked. “Do you think Terry was trying to find where Butch Cassidy hid his money or something?”

“Her father knew everything about the Wild Bunch,” Bradley said from the side. “Every story, every trail.”

Nicole shot him a ferocious look, and he shrank guiltily again but still added, “I’m just helping explain why I think Terry did what he did.” He looked at Walt. “At one point, Duke Wilder was one of the most sought-after archaeological guides in the Southwest. He was on the cover of National Geographic.”

“Did you know Lily was his daughter when you booked this trip?” Walter asked Bradley.

He nodded, staring at the dirt between his boots. “Terry told me, but just in passing. I didn’t know about the journal.” He looked up and met Leo’s eyes over Lily’s shoulder. “And I swear to God I didn’t realize this was your Lily.” The group fell dead-of-winter silent, and an awkward awareness heated the points of contact between Leo’s body and hers. He made to move away before Lily stilled him with her hand over his. She heard his breath catch.

With the reassurance of Leo’s body behind her, the chaos in her head slowly started to calm. She looked down at the journal in her hands, letting it fall loosely open. Two pages had been torn out from the very end, and then shoved back in, crumpled inside, as if he’d planned to take them but decided to keep the whole thing instead.

“What the hell?” she murmured, fingering them.

The first of the two was a map. It was one of Duke’s aerial drawings of slot canyons; formed by water flowing through sandstone over millions of years, slot canyons were serpentine, intricate, sometimes as wide as a river, other times as narrow as a man’s arm, and deadly. Without a map, it was easy to get lost and never make it out. But each major vein, every slot on this hand-drawn map was labeled with a tiny number or letter.

“Do you recognize where this is?” Leo asked, gently taking the page so he could get a better look.

Lily shook her head. “He had about twenty of these drawings in here, and each one covers too small an area for me to know exactly where it is,” she admitted. “It’s a section of the Maze, I’m sure about that.”

“Maybe Terry thought it’s where Duke hid something,” Bradley offered, scooting a little closer to the group.

Nic glared at him. “Shut up, Brad.”

The next torn page was a riddle in Duke’s handwriting, and Lily’s heart dunked down into her gut.

“What’s that?” Leo said quietly near her ear.

She took a steadying breath. “A Duke Wilder riddle.”

“Have you seen this one?” he asked her.

“I’ve seen it, but I didn’t care,” she said. “The journal is full of ramblings, and I’ve never had a reason to figure every one of them out. This and the map are the last pages.”

Leo looked over her shoulder again as they read it together.

In the end, the answer is yes.

You have to go; I have.

You hate to go, but you will.

You’ll need to go, but never there.

But whether you do or whether you don’t,

I can assure you that suffer you won’t.

If nothing else, you are free,

So, search the stump of Duke’s tree at the belly of the three.

She read the words again and again, mumbling, “This is not the time for a fucking game, Duke.”

“Half of it rhymes, half of it doesn’t,” Leo murmured.

“That’s Duke for you.” Finally, Lily exhaled a frustrated “What the shit.”

Leo repeated the cryptic lines, puzzling this out. Lily could hear the hesitation in the way he seemed about to speak but then held his breath.

Turning, she looked at him. His face was so close, only an inch away. “What are you thinking?”

“That Terry was looking for these pages specifically,” he said quietly enough so that only she could hear.

“Agree.” Lily looked back at the page. “But why? Out of the hundreds of pages in here?”