He laughed. “You really don’t see what this means?”
“No.”
Leo rested his cheek sweetly on his folded hands and smiled at her. “It means I could tell them anything I wanted.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
LILY SNIFFED, SWIPING a hand over her face before scooting her chair closer to the bed.
“Leo,” she said with forced calm.
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me you lied to them back there?”
He nodded, ignoring the way his cheek throbbed in pain. “Yup.”
Her expression flattened in disbelief. “The note doesn’t say ‘Beat ya here’?”
“It does not.”
“It’s not the…”
“Fougère?” he supplied, and shook his head. “That’s not a real thing.”
“You made up a code to trick them?” she asked.
“Sort of? Not really. I faked it.”
“What would you have done if Nicole hadn’t been there with the cops?”
He shrugged. “That was a problem for Later Leo.”
“Then do you even know what it says?” Lily’s jaw had gone rigid, the tendons above her collarbones tightening. “Leo, stop fucking around.”
“I’m tempted to give you the satisfaction of solving it yourself.”
She scoffed. “I promise I never needed that satisfaction.”
Relenting with a smile, he said, “The real trick was trying to remember ASCII without writing it down. Once I realized what it was, I didn’t want them to see me work it out. I had to do every letter in my head.”
“Impressive.”
“I thought so, too. So, while I was pretending to solve it and write down wrong letters, I was mentally high-fiving your dad for using a mix of capital and lowercase.”
“Why?”
“Because if by chance they put together that my fake Fougère code was a doublet or triplet code, then the three E’s in Beat ya here should have been the same number. But—”
“Leo,” she said with strained patience, “I swear to God if you don’t tell—”
“Look at home,” he said quietly.
She wrinkled her nose. “What?”
“That’s what it says.” He watched her reaction, how her expression crashed in disbelief. “It says ‘Look at home.’?”
“At whose home?”
He gazed steadily at her.
“At—at my home?”
“Who knows,” he said. “But if your dad really was the one writing this, and hiding it, wouldn’t it make sense that it would mean his home?”
“Which is also my home,” she said on an exhale.
“Exactly.”
She bent, cupping her head. “If you’re telling me Bradley was right this morning… that this money has been right under my nose this entire time…”
“Worth looking, isn’t it?”
* * *
Leo could sense Lily’s apprehension as they approached her place. Her old truck barreled down the road, and she attempted to manage expectations. She reminded him that the cabin wasn’t that impressive, that she was never there, and that when she was there, she never had time or money to fix it up. After everything they’d been through, her mood was understandably all over the place. She was hopeful and pessimistic, giddily disbelieving and anxious.
Inside, Leo was a mess, too, but he had decades of experience keeping his emotions hidden from the surface. Each of them had a mountain of therapy in their future, but right then, this tendency was serving him well. Did he want to climb out of his own skin? Of course. Was he losing it at the possibility that the treasure was still there? Absolutely. Was he worried about facing another devastating letdown? Hell yes. So he focused on Lily instead—on reassuring her that he didn’t care what her house looked like, reassuring her that even if the money wasn’t there, he was still all in on her.
But when they pulled up, they stared out the windshield, wordless, for several quiet ticks of her engine.
“See?” She studied his reaction so closely he had to carefully school his expression.
Because, in fact, the cabin was as bad as she had described.
From a distance, it had looked like a sweet log cabin nestled in a cluster of cottonwoods. Knee-high desert grass rolled up all the way to the foundation. A little creek babbled nearby. The fencing and small stable were old but lovingly maintained.
The house, however… well, it leaned—a lot—settling unevenly into the earth. The roof needed to be patched at least, probably replaced entirely. One of her porch steps had caved in, rotten and crumbling. Screens were missing from windows. The front door was water damaged and had to be hit with a determined shoulder in order to open.
But inside, it was clean, tiny, and surprisingly sweet. Her furniture was a simple navy blue sofa, two chairs, a battered but carefully polished coffee table. What looked like a hand-crocheted rug made out of strips of fabric decorated the scratched hardwood floor in front of the fireplace, giving the room a homey feeling. The dining room was small; the four-seater pine table looked handmade. Her kitchen was tidy and bright, appliances old but clean, fridge whirring loudly.
“It’s nice, Lil.”
She huffed out a quiet laugh. “I’m sure it’s nothing compared to your Manhattan bachelor pad.”