Dangerous Temptations

And she was mine.

“So, Professor McHotty, I got an A, eh? Do you think it’s just an A, or an A-plus, or an A-plus-plus?”

My eyes widened. “It was a pretty stellar performance.”

She jumped up and hugged me.

“Did you find anything?” she whispered in my ear before pulling away from me.

I held her hand as we walked toward the entrance. “Yes, in true Nicolas Cage fashion, too.”

Sydney giggled. “I saw a coffee shop right up the road.”

We quickly covered the short distance to the coffee shop. Sitting outside at a table, I carefully took the note out and handed it to Sydney. I’d found the last clue, so I wanted her to see this one first.

She took it and ever so gently unfolded the note as she looked around. Now she was making me think someone was watching us.

“It’s a letter. ‘To my darling wife. If you are reading this, then you have found the clues I have left for you. I found myself involved with a group in which I had complete faith in the beginning, but in the end, one I was desperate to get out of. The Truth-seekers will set us free. They must. They are the only ones to expose the truths.’ ” Sydney paused before reading the next line.

“What you thought you knew was only what they wanted you to know.”

“There’s that quote again,” I said when Sydney looked up at me.

“So Robert Collins was an Alchemist turned Truth-seeker?”

I nodded. “It appears so.”

“There’s more. It goes on to say, ‘The truth of Thomas Hutchinson can be found among the books,’ and it is signed R. Collins. The handwriting is different though.”

Sydney met my gaze. “Why would he sign a note to his wife as R. Collins?”

Rubbing my chin, I glanced down to the note again. The word Veritas was written under Collins’s name but was in the same penmanship as the sentence above it. Like someone had added to the note at a later date.

“Maybe it wasn’t him who wrote that last line. I know what library we need to go to.”

Sydney looked back down at the letter and back up at me, and a wide smile spread across her face.

“Harvard,” I said.

“Yes! Veritas is their motto; it means truth. Maybe his wife never found this and someone else added the clue to it.”

“The son, maybe?”

She shrugged. “I honestly cannot believe my grandfather knew this was all going to lead to this. I’m baffled by all of this. Mike, I think this is a lot bigger than what we’d originally thought.”

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. We’ll go check out the library at Harvard University. There has to be something there.”

Sydney stood and reached for my hand as we headed back to the parking lot.