Something Wilder

And yet Duke hadn’t given this diary to her. He hadn’t told her he’d found the treasure, either. He was fine selling her favorite place in the world, leaving her poor and alone. She was tired of her life being decided by Duke Wilder.

Still. Was it worth just… looking?

“Walt and I are with Nicole,” Bradley said. “We’re in.”

“I’m with Dub,” Nicole clarified. “I’m with whatever she says. We’re a team.” After a beat, she added, “I mean, I do think there’s a way to go ahead with the riddle and also not get into trouble about Terry.”

Bradley turned to Leo. “What do you think, man?”

Leo was still crouched in front of her, but his gaze dropped to the dirt at their feet. The fire licked shadows across his face, setting the angles of his jaw and cheekbones aglow. After a moment he lifted his chin to meet her eyes again. “I’ll do whatever Lily says.”

Lily tried to kick down the tiny spark in her chest. She looked at the map again, and the words in Duke’s handwriting.

The answer is yes.

“We’ll sleep on it,” she said. “We can’t do anything until the morning anyway.”

Chapter Thirteen

LEO WASN’T SURE how he managed to sleep as hard as he did, but he woke on their fifth morning in the desert with a shoulder so stiff it suggested he’d barely moved all night. He didn’t remember dreaming, didn’t remember a single second of consciousness between when he’d closed his dry, exhausted eyes and now. Grateful, given the alternative, he pushed up onto an elbow, clearing the sleep from his vision. With a spike through his gut, it all came tumbling back: the bewildering discovery of the gun, the view of Terry slipping over the lip of the canyon, the map suggesting there might be real treasure out here.

He wondered whether Lily’d gotten any sleep at all.

There’d been no animal sounds the night before, no creatures rustling around the camp. No birdsong greeted the day now. It was just after five thirty, and through the soft gray tent walls he could tell that the sky was the deep-sea blue of a morning still considering daylight.

And then, a sweet groan cut through the cool air—a sound he’d heard a hundred times in reality and a thousand times in his memory: Lily stretching as she got up for the day. Even separated from her by the fabric of his tent, he could picture it perfectly: her arms snaking above her head, the way her body twisted, catlike, from left to right. She would tilt her face to the sky, eyes closed, and let out that low, sexy sound that—more than once—had him reaching to pull her back into bed. Instinctively, his body tensed, responding with a rush of blood so intense it made him light-headed. Wild that, given the circumstances and the downright clusterfuck they found themselves in, his brain had no problem going directly to how good it would feel to have her warm body next to his.

Truthfully, he thought he could face anything with her at his side again.

She was awake, getting the day started, and he was about to do the same when he heard another voice only a few feet from his tent, closest to the campfire. “You get any sleep?” Nicole asked.

The glugging sound of water being poured into the kettle, the metallic scrape of the kettle set on the grate over the fire. “Not much. You?”

“A little.”

They fell quiet, and he settled back down, propping his head on his hand, shamelessly eavesdropping. Blame it on the fog-like surreality lingering from yesterday or the way Lily seemed at once so familiar and so unexpected; he wanted to know how she was, and he didn’t know if she’d be honest with him.

“Okay, Dub,” Nicole said. “What’re you thinking?”

Lily’s answer was quiet, like she might be worried someone could overhear. “I went around and around all night.”

“Same.”

“We can’t just ignore the situation.” A quiet pause, and then, “Terry, I mean.”

“Of course not. That’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“But you were right. Heading straight back won’t make him any less dead.”

“Sure won’t.” They were silent for a few seconds, and he wondered if they’d moved farther away, until Nicole spoke again: “Here’s how I see it: You can have just shit, or you can have gold and shit.”

“Nic, I’m not even sure Duke ever found anything, and if he did… I mean, that’s just a lot to think about.”

“I know.”

“I thought I was done being disappointed by him.” The way Lily’s voice went thin, cracking at the very end, made Leo’s chest ache.

“I know, honey, but here’s a chance to maybe get something out of everything he did,” Nicole said gently. “Say Duke didn’t find anything. Say it’s a game, or that we’re wrong about the riddle. Then what? We’re talking a couple days, tops. Down and back up. We don’t find anything, we come back and tell the cops Terry took off and we went to look for him, thought we knew where he was headed but it was a bust.”