Slowly, the photo came into focus. It was old and yellowed at the edges, with scribbled handwriting in the corner. A structure… scraggly trees… a man. Leo arched a brow, amused—Duke must have made quite an impression on the bar owner if even the john was a shrine to him. In this photo, he was far younger than when Leo had known him, but the mustache, dark hair flattened by the trademark Stetson, the cocky lean: it was definitely Duke, clear as day.
Realization felt like a shot of adrenaline as the words from the riddle crashed into Leo’s thoughts: So, search the stump of Duke’s tree at the belly of the three.
He leaned closer still. Down in the corner, almost too faint to make out, were two words scribbled in pencil. Duke’s Tree.
Holy shit.
Chapter Fifteen
LILY LOOKED UP from the jukebox to find Leo Grady, whose weirdly possessive self had left her only minutes ago looking chiseled and gorgeous in soft worn jeans and a white T-shirt, emerging from the men’s room looking like a… a goddamn sandwich board. And wet.
“What on earth?” she mumbled, trying to decipher the object shoved beneath his damp shirt.
Hair dripping, Leo hurried toward her, grinning as he opened his wallet and threw down more than enough money to cover a handful of beers.
“What did you—?” she began.
“Lads, Nicole,” he called to the group, walking briskly. “We’re leaving. Quickly.”
Smoothly, he dug his hand into the front pocket of her jeans and tugged the car keys free, spinning them on his finger and winking as if he knew exactly how the brief intrusion into her pants sent an electric thrill sparking between her legs. Tossing the keys to Bradley’s waiting palm, Leo grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him toward the exit.
As he dragged her out the door, Lily looked back over her shoulder in time to catch a thin trail of water silently seeping beneath the men’s room door.
“Leo, what’s under your sh—?”
“Get in the car,” he said, cutting her off again. “All of you. Now.”
Scrambling, they shoved a bewildered Walt into the rear cargo area and tumbled into the back seat while Nicole and Bradley jumped into the front.
“What happ—?” Bradley began as the bartender ran outside, shouting.
“Just go,” Leo urged, slapping the back of the driver’s seat headrest. “Go, go, go.”
Without needing further instruction, Bradley turned the engine over and peeled away with a roar. “This is it!” he yelled, rolling down the window. “This is the shit we came for!”
Specks of dirt swirled into the Jeep, orbiting like stardust, and a wild energy took over. Nicole reached to crank the radio playing crackly honky-tonk. “I don’t know what that was about,” she said, “but goddamn if I don’t feel like an outlaw.”
Lily turned in her seat to face Leo, ready to demand he explain precisely what the fuck that was all about, but he beat her to it, already pulling the item from his sodden shirt. For a handful of seconds, words fell away, and she held her wind-whipping hair from her face as she stared down at the framed photo in his hand. The glass of the frame was streaked with water, but the image inside was protected. It was a photograph of her father, standing outside a tiny one-room cabin. The tilting wooden structure itself was flanked by two trees, and a brown-haired, bushy-mustached Duke leaned against the tree on the left, holding a beer and smiling easily at the camera.
“Duke’s tree,” Leo said proudly, tapping the words scrawled beneath the glass with an index finger. “?‘So, search the stump of Duke’s tree at the belly of the three.’ If we can figure out where this photo was taken, we won’t even have to bother with the riddle. This is it!”
Lily would have sworn the breath was being slowly pulled from her lungs. “I know where this is.”
Leo stared at her. “Wait—seriously?”
“I think so,” she said, nodding. “The few times Duke took me with him on cartography outings, we’d stop at this little cabin down in the canyons. Well, more shack than cabin and I haven’t been there since I was little, but…” She chewed her lip, mind spinning. “I think I know generally where it is.”
Bradley shouted, slapping the steering wheel. “Yes!”
Shaking her head, Lily said, “I’ve never seen this picture.”
“To be fair,” Leo answered, “it was hanging in the men’s room.”
She looked over at him, blinking into awareness. “So you decided to steal it?”
“At the time it seemed easier than asking your buddy at the bar if he was willing to part with his urinal art.” He paused. “There was, however, a slight plumbing mishap when I took it down.”
“?‘A slight plumbing mishap’?” she repeated, stomach sinking.
“The less you know, the better,” he told her. “I think this frame was nailed into an actual pipe. That restroom was definitely not up to code.” Lifting the bottom of his shirt, Leo used it to wipe his face. Lily’s eyes dropped to the hard planes of his flat stomach, the line of soft, dark hair just above the waistband of his jeans. “You might not want to go back there for a while.”