Unconventional

by Krista Wolf

  You love them and you might get hurt…

  That part I wasn’t crazy about, but there was nothing to be done. I loved Noah’s closeness, and Julian’s honesty. I loved the way Chase could always make me laugh. Any one of them would’ve been an ideal boyfriend — and a far cry from the self-centered narcissists I’d been dating back home. The flaky surfers. The overly-controlling bad boys. Somehow they all seemed so immature and far away, in the wake of the real men I now had at my beck and call.

  Yes, I loved them. The way they got up and went straight to work. The way they took me in their arms at the end of the day, smelling like sweat and leather, steel and stone. They had the purity of manual labor all over them, but beneath the dirt, each of them had a softer, sweeter side. A deeper level of love and caring — not to mention self sacrifice — that melted my heart.

  And of course, it didn’t hurt that each of them was a lion in bed.

  I considered all of these things during my midnight reflections, staring up at the ceiling while listening to their slow, rhythmic snores. The painted beams stretched overhead, scorched in places, scratched in others. They’d seen siege, famine, fire — all things Westgate Castle had endured. Now they’d seen something wholly different. Something I imagined they probably hadn’t witnessed before.

  “Medusa!” Chase said, pointing at the cat. “Vixen! Ripley!”

  The calico stood up nonchalantly and left the room. Chase chuckled.

  “Think it was something I said?”

  We all looked up as Julian shambled in from the direction of the Great Hall. Everywhere he didn’t glisten with sweat, he was covered in a fine grey layer of dirt and dust.

  He grunted as he sank into the nearest chair. Reaching into a small cooler at his feet, Chase threw a bottle of water his way.

  “Still nothing?” asked Noah.

  The stonemason nodded appreciatively at Chase, then wiped his hands on his shirt and shook his head.

  “Maybe it’s a goose chase then?”

  I could see by his expression it was a hard pill to swallow. Julian usually spent an hour or more each night, continuing my uncle’s investigation of the Great Hall. Taking apart the walls piece by piece, and rebuilding sections he’d already finished checking.

  “What makes you think there’s something there again?” asked Chase. “I mean, you never really sat down and told us—”

  “It was something my uncle was doing,” I cut in. “Toward the end, he was taking the walls in that room apart. Rather than putting them back together.”

  “And he never said anything to you?” asked Noah. “About looking for anything specific?”

  I tried to think back on it, and not for the first time. Once again I came up with nothing.

  “If it were something important, wouldn’t he have told you?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Travis was usually open with me about everything. Except when he wasn’t.”

  Julian downed the bottle in a single long pull, without coming up for air. The plastic crinkled as he crushed it in his hand.

  “What were his last words to you?” asked Chase.

  Everyone turned to face him. Julian and Noah’s expressions told me they thought the question to be a little fucked up.

  “What?” Chase said defensively. “If he had anything to tell her, it would’ve been—”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” I answered. “In those final moments, he knew he was going. He said a lot of things, like telling me he loved me. Telling me I was the daughter he never had, and that I should fight to keep this place. He wanted me to raise children…”

  The guys looked to the floor at that last part, like they were hearing something not meant for their ears. The truth was though, I had nothing to hide.

  “His last words were a little weird,” I recalled, looking off into a dark corner of the room. “He said I should go into his desk. Get everything he needed me to have.”

  “And did you?”

  “I went through his desk, yes. Most of the stuff I found was personal, though. Nothing really important.”

  “The whole desk?”

  I nodded numbly. “Every drawer.”

  Noah looked thoughtful. “That’s not what he said though.”

  The others went silent as I blinked back at him in confusion. “What?”

  “He said go into his desk. Not through it.” He paused, wagging a finger. “That’s funny wording.”

  “Yeah,” Chase agreed. “And he said to get ‘everything he needed you to have’. Like there would be important paperwork in there, or maybe the deed to the property or something.”

  I shook my head. “But there wasn’t.”

  Julian sat up a little straighter. They were all looking at me now, with the same level of interest a cat would give to a mouse.

  “Into his desk,” said Noah. “You didn’t really do that.”

  Chase stood up at the same time Julian did.

  “So now where’s this desk?”

  Forty-Nine

  MADISON

  Everyone seemed suddenly alive again as we raced up three flights of stairs. My uncle’s room was sealed off. It hadn’t been touched since the weeks after he’d died.

  “Here,” I said, handing Noah the old brass key.

  The steps had been cold beneath my bare feet, but I didn’t care. There was something fun, something strangely exciting about what we were doing. Even if I wasn’t sure it would amount to anything substantial.

  In short, it was just good to be around the guys again in a non-work setting.

  “Whoa,” Chase whistled, glancing around as we walked inside. “This place is…”

  “Pretty awesome?” I finished for him.

  “Yeah. Totally.”

  To say my uncle had traveled the world would be an understatement. He’d gone to six out of the seven continents. Stood on mountaintops in Nepal, and stepped through the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon. He’d seen and done just about everything in his all-too-short life, and had bragged very little about the things he’d achieved. But entering his bedchamber, there was one thing about Travis that became instantly apparent:

  He’d brought something back with him from virtually everywhere.

  “Damn, just look at this rug,” muttered Noah. Right next to his foot, the fanged maw of a black bear’s head was attached the rest of its skin. “Did he kill this thing himself?”

  “Dunno,” I said truthfully. “He told me about some of the stuff, but not everything.”

  Julian made his way past a collection of intricate jade carvings from Indonesia. Chase was running his hand over the smooth surface of a ship’s wheel, mounted on the wall from only God knows where. There were shelves of books, from all over the world. Old and new, they lined the room with their colorful spines.

  “There she is.”

  Chase pointed, and we all surrounded my uncle’s desk. It was an intimidating monstrosity, so big and so old it looked like it had to have been built inside the room.

  “You searched that desk?” Noah demanded.

  “Pretty much.”

  The guys all stood staring down at it, hands on their hips.

  “Alright,” he shrugged. “Let’s search it again.”

  What happened next was an in-depth ransacking of my uncle’s desk, but also with a certain level of respect. The guys searched it top to bottom, removing the drawers completely. I helped them go through every knick-knack, every tchotchke. Every last little piece that made up the puzzle of my uncle’s life, from the man’s humble beginnings to his sad, bittersweet end.

  And still we found nothing.

  “Alright, now into the desk,” said Noah.

  I opened my mouth in protest, worried they were going to literally crack the big desk in half. Instead, Julian picked it up and tilted it to one side. He held it effortlessly, suspended on a sharp angle, while the others proceeded to run their fingers over every inch. Noah was pressing, pulling, prodding. Chase was knocking on the
wooden panels, checking different areas for anything—

  CLICK.

  As I watched, a small panel dropped open. Something fell out, sprawling open as it tumbled to the floor.

  “Holy shit,” uttered Chase.

  The object was a book. Faded. Brown. But also unmistakable.

  “It’s my uncle’s journal!”

  The guys looked back at me in disbelief, as Julian set the desk back down.

  “Your uncle had a journal?” said Noah. “You didn’t mention anything about—”

  “I totally forgot!”

  Memories came rushing back, of my uncle bent over his desk. Writing feverishly in the slim leather journal, that he once called his “ideas book.” I’d never once asked him what was in it. And I’d never even thought to look for it, after he died.

  “Here,” said Noah. He picked it up and handed it over. “I’m sure this is probably personal, but—”

  “No,” I said, waving him off. “It’s really not.” I folded my arms and smiled. “We found it together. We read it together.”

  Julian was clapping his hands against his legs, wiping the dust off. Chase stretched his arms out and cracked his knuckles.

  “Alright then,” he said. “I’ll put on some coffee.”

  Fifty

  MADISON

  “Two-thousand Ryals,” Noah read aloud. He traced a page in my uncle’s journal with one finger. “Eight-hundred fifty Nobles. Six silver vessels. One cross, with emeralds, and—”

  “This is crazy,” said Chase. He was sitting backwards in his kitchen chair, the glow of his smartphone highlighting the excitement on his face. “Scottish Nobles are gold coins. And the Ryals…”

  He scrolled through screen after screen, calling up photos and showing them to us. The coins were ancient. Hammered silver, with imperfect edges. Elaborate depictions of a crowned king, holding a sword and shield. An eight pointed cross on the back, in beautiful, gleaming yellow.

  “Your uncle wasn’t just looking for any old something,” uttered Noah. “He was trying to find a whole goddamn treasure horde.”

  “No wonder he took the walls apart!” Chase exclaimed, dropping his phone to the table. “I’d be tearing the place apart, brick by brick!”

  “He was,” I pointed out.

  There was a moment of silence as it all sank in. My uncle’s journal had been filled with a lot of things. Details of places he’d been, random thoughts he’d jotted down while he was there. Most of it was personal, and we skipped those parts. But here, right at the very end…

  “This is why he bought this property,” Julian said plainly. “Not because he liked castles, or Scotland, or anything else. But because he had this.”

  Julian pointed to a piece of yellowed parchment, old and crumbling. We’d found it folded into Travis’s journal. An itemized list of the same treasures he’d copied into the pages, which Noah was reading now.

  “You really think so?” I asked.

  “Well you said your uncle traveled a lot. No wife, no kids. Never put down roots.” Julian shrugged. “Why settle down now?”

  I couldn’t argue the theory. As far as I could remember, my uncle had never talked about Scotland. Or castles. Or buying any kind of property, for that matter.

  “The thing I don’t understand is what made him think to look in that one chamber,” said Noah. He flipped the piece of parchment over. “It says here ‘Stowed, Westgate Castle’.” He shrugged. “It could be anywhere. In any room.”

  “Or under it,” offered Julian. “It could be anywhere on the castle grounds.”

  “Why would they hide it rather than spend it?” asked Chase. “That makes no sense.”

  “Because back then castles were laid siege to all the time,” said Noah. “Armies rolled through, ransacking and pillaging. Taking everything that wasn’t nailed down, or—”

  “That happened here!” I cried excitedly. “My uncle once told me. This place was razed at one point. Burned to a shell. Some of the roof rafters are still charred, you can see them from the top level.”

  We sat there for a moment, studying each other.

  “That’s promising,” admitted Noah, “but it still doesn’t narrow it down. We need to know where to look, or at least get in your uncle’s head. Find out what made Travis think the way he did.”

  It was already late, and getting later. As exciting as it was to think we could be standing a few meters away from a life-changing discovery, exhaustion was winning out.

  “Well this is definitely something to think about,” said Chase carefully. “But for right now…”

  “We need to check off the inspector’s list,” Noah finished.

  “Yeah.”

  It was overwhelming to me, that they were all still here. All still working so hard toward this near-unachievable goal. At this point, part of it had to be personal. Part of it, pride.

  But I also knew a good part of it was loyalty, and friendship, and love. Especially the love part… because I felt it too.

  I hugged Chase, then Noah, then Julian. Each of them felt amazing in his own special way.

  “Well I, for one, am heading to bed,” I told them, rising from my chair. I could feel their eyes on my back — or more likely my ass — as I made my way out of the kitchen.

  “Is that an invitation?” I heard Chase say.

  I shrugged and smiled to myself. I was tired, sure… but not dead.

  “It’s whatever you want it to be,” I called back coyly.

  Fifty-One

  MADISON

  I woke up alone, which made little sense. Lately I’d been beating the guys. Rising well before they did, and acting as Queen of the Coffee Maker.

  But not now. Not today.

  Yawning, stretching, I made my way to the south-facing window. I could see Julian outside, hammering away at the gatehouse. He’d finished the courtyard days ago, and was now helping Noah and Chase with the carpentry.

  I felt instantly bad, sleeping late. Only I hadn’t. It was just barely light outside. Almost too dark for them to see what they were doing.

  Dressing quickly, I scored a cup of coffee on my way out the door. The rich brown liquid was lukewarm. That meant the pot was at least an hour old, which made even less sense.

  I tripped over the calico while leaving the kitchen, spilling a good quarter of the cup all over myself. I cursed scathingly. Not so much at the cat — whose name I still didn’t know — but more at myself for not flipping the lights on.

  “Stay,” I ordered, at the already sitting cat. When it licked its whiskers I nodded tiredly. “Good girl.”

  I crossed the bailey to the sound of crickets, reaching the gatehouse on my third yawn. Chase was holding a thick beam. Noah and Julian were hammering away. I waited for a pause in the action.

  “Why?” was all I could muster up.

  “Getting an early start,” said Julian, without even looking. “You should rest. Gonna be a long day.”

  “The day just got longer,” I said, sipping my coffee.

  “Uh huh.”

  Noah began hammering again, so I glanced at Chase. He smiled back at me, knowingly. We’d had some fun last night, the two of us. If anyone ought to be tired, it should be him.

  “You guys need some more coffee?” I said, dumping the rest of my cup. “I’m putting a fresh pot on.”

  It took a while, but I received nods all around. I decided to leave them alone. They were already busy as hell, no matter what time it was. The last thing I wanted was to slow them down.

  I thought back to the last night as I wandered back into the kitchen. Went over the events involving my uncle’s desk, as I put on more coffee and threw together a big, hearty breakfast.

  Was Travis really trying to get me to find his journal? It seemed almost like he was. Thinking back over his last days, it did seem like he wanted to tell me more and more. He whispered a great deal of stuff into my ear, but I always figured his throat hurt, or he just couldn’t speak.

  A
nd now…

  Now it seemed he’d been hunting for something big. It hurt a little that he hadn’t shared this knowledge with me, but there could’ve also been a thousand reasons why he hadn’t.

  I found myself wishing I could go back in time. Grab hold of my uncle and make him tell me everything he knew or suspected. Instead I served breakfast out at the gatehouse, and a big lunch right outside in the bailey. The guys wolfed down both meals, then went straight back to work like they were on some kind of a mission… which of course they were.

  Bit by bit, things were getting done. The curtain wall was finished, the mill tower reinforced. The courtyard had been leveled, and Julian had finished fabricating and setting a new keystone, as required on the latest round of bullshit paperwork from the bullshit inspector’s office.

  I thought about this in the late afternoon, on my way back from town with dinner. After my errands, I hadn’t felt like cooking. Instead I’d stopped for a Mediterranean pizza, which was woefully short of American pizza, but still about as close as we were ever getting.

  As I pulled through the castle gate I noticed two things right away. One, both Julian and Noah’s trucks were inexplicably gone. And two…

  There was a stranger standing at my front door.

  I felt uncertain, then frightened, then angry. If this was someone from the inspector’s office showing up a few weeks early, a boot was going up someone’s ass.

  “Hi! Miss… Lockhart?” the man said cheerfully.

  He was a short, wispy-haired trespasser in a button-down shirt. He looked like a banker, or maybe a lawyer. Some poor, unfortunate bastard whose job required them to wear a tie in middle of summer.

  I stomped straight past the stranger, and slid the big key into my front door. I was in no mood at all.

  “Miss Lockhart, my name is Jonathan, from the—

  “What is it that you want, Jonathan?” I demanded, once I’d stepped inside. I held the heavy door in one hand, ready to swing it shut. “I’m busy.”