A Sparkle of Silver

by Liz Johnson

  Carl had spoken while inspecting and sorting what looked like century-old letters on his table. Finally he looked up. “But there was one family who didn’t seem to care too much about Dawkins’s past.”

  “Claude Devereaux.”

  Carl dipped his head in agreement. “And his sister Angelique. She was as scandalous as Lucille or any of the actresses that ever graced a vaudeville stage.”

  “Really?” Millie tried to match his description with the one Ruth had given, but the pieces didn’t quite fit into place.

  “Definitely. She was engaged to at least three men in the two years before the crash. There were rumors that she’d fallen in love with a man who’d lost his fortune to gambling and she was fixin’ to marry him, even though her father forbade it. They snuck off to Europe together after the stock market fell.”

  “What happened to her?” Ben asked.

  “Tuberculosis. She died in 1930. Alone and single.”

  Ben’s eyebrows dipped, and he uncrossed his arms, leaning into the story. “What about her husband?”

  “Ah, he divorced her when he found out she’d been disinherited.”

  Carl’s words were stoic. Not cold exactly, just factual. But they pricked at something deep inside. Millie bit her lips. Should she feel more emotion than she did at Angelique’s sad life and death—especially if she was her great-great aunt?

  But there was no proof of that. Not yet anyway.

  She risked a quick glance at Ben, who stared at her with a knowing gaze. He knew exactly what she was going to ask. But Carl didn’t, so she tried to play casual. “What about Claude?”

  “Oh, he had a good life. There were rumors that he’d planned to wed a poor girl.”

  Millie’s stomach twisted until she thought it might explode. She tried to sit up, but it wasn’t easy with her ankle still throbbing. She rolled a little bit in Carl’s direction, leaning closer. “Do you know who?”

  “That’s a family secret that’s likely gone to the grave.”

  Carl hadn’t meant to—he probably hadn’t even noticed—but he’d just let the air out of her balloon, and she sagged against the chair.

  Ben, on the other hand, had noticed. “Why don’t you let me drive you home while you rest your foot?”

  She glanced over at him as her eyes began to tingle. She had no reason to be upset. Maybe there was still proof out there. Who knew what was in Ruth’s second journal? Certainly Carl didn’t.

  She didn’t need much. She just needed enough to compel the Devereaux family—Claude’s three remaining heirs—to give her an audience. Then she could ask for the help she needed. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t even for herself.

  But it might as well be the world.

  Ben reached for her, and she let him help her up. Hopping on her good foot, she leaned against his side, his hands at each of her elbows.

  “Thank you for your time and your ice pack, Carl.”

  He nodded but didn’t look in her direction. “Some treasure hunters you two are.” His low mumble caught her off guard, and Ben’s grip on her arms tightened.

  After a long moment, waiting for him to continue, she gave Carl a nudge. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He kept right on reading his papers, sorting them into clear plastic covers with the tenderness of a new mother caring for her child. “Only that every other treasure hunter who’s called here in the last two days asked about the actual Chateau.”

  “Wait—”

  “What?”

  She and Ben spoke over each other, and she could feel his heart beginning to race against her shoulder. She had no illusions that it had anything to do with her proximity.

  The others—the ones Milo Fazetti had promised—were already calling. And they couldn’t be far away.

  “Oh yes. They want to know about the layout and the best hiding places. And they want to know how to sneak in. Some yahoo asked me if his boat would be noticed parked at the dock behind the house.” Carl chuckled. “Bunch of hooligans chasing down some lead on the internets.”

  Ben nodded. “We know about it. I checked it out after I caught the guy on Chateau grounds, but it’s mostly wild speculation. All it says is that there’s money—lots of money—to be found on the estate.”

  “I looked too,” Millie said. “There’s nothing even remotely backed up with evidence. These treasure hunters are just talking about what might be lost there. Some even think it’s an old pirate treasure.”

  Finally Carl looked up from his work. “I know they’re just speculatin’. If they knew what they were looking for, bet they’d stop callin’ and askin’ for help.”

  “And what have you been telling them?” Ben said.

  “Nothin’. Why would I help them? You two, on the other hand—I like you two.”

  Millie laughed out loud, and Carl gave her a brilliant smile. “How are you going to help us?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you about the secret passage.”

  sixteen

  Ben took off after another tour guest. His legs shouldn’t have been tight—not after three other chases that night—but they were. And his boots felt like they had been made out of cement. Every step crashed into the stone pavers along the back of the house, jarring his knees, sending sparks up his back.

  He wasn’t really old. Thirty was still young. So why did he feel like he’d doubled in age and thrown out his back for good measure?

  He let out a groan as his mark tossed away an oddly shaped object—surely something intended to help him find a treasure underground—and zigzagged at the bottom of the twin stairways. The Chateau’s spires rose before them, the second-story deck stretching a welcome to guests. The curved staircases on each side were as sleek as the rest of the house in the yellow glow of the night lights.

  The guest on the lam couldn’t have been much younger than Ben, and he couldn’t seem to decide which staircase to take. He bobbed to one side and then darted in the other direction.

  Ben didn’t know why the other guy was having such a hard time deciding, but he didn’t complain, as it gave him a split second to catch up. “You. Stop!”

  The guy looked over his shoulder, and Ben realized he was more of a kid than a man. His ruffled blond hair looked like straw, like he’d spent every single one of his few years swimming in the Atlantic. His skin was as light as his fair hair, and his eyes were wide, haunted. He was in over his head, and there was no escape. But he kept running.

  “Not up the stairs,” Ben grumbled to himself, as he tried in vain to fill his lungs. There wasn’t anything to be done about it. He had to push through the stabbing pain in his side. It was far too late to start that gym regimen he’d considered six months ago. There was only time to lament his own stupidity and keep going.

  God, please let me catch up to him.

  The stairs were tough. Wider than usual stairs, they forced him to adjust his stride.

  But the kid didn’t know to do that. Halfway up the stairs—while Ben was only on the third step—the kid missed his footing and slammed into the steps. He squealed in pain, and Ben picked up speed. He didn’t know where the extra burst of energy came from, only that he was suddenly at the kid’s side, reaching out to check on him.

  The kid groaned and rolled himself over, his back against the steps and his eyes closed. “Guess I’m busted, huh?”

  “Pretty much.” Ben squatted next to him, taking a quick visual survey. There wasn’t any blood, which was a good sign. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any broken bones.

  Cradling his left arm against his chest, the kid sighed. “I just wanted some of the treasure.”

  “You and everyone else here tonight.” Ben wasn’t exaggerating. They were coming out of the intricately carved woodwork. An older woman and a middle-aged man had broken free from their tours and set off to explore the grounds, and a man older than Grandma Joy had tried to enter the grounds from the beach side. And those were just the ones Ben had been sent after. There had also be
en a family trying to hide a metal detector in the dad’s pants and two frat boys carrying shovels who had been turned away by security at the front gate.

  “Yeah, well, treasureseekers.com knows its stuff, man. If they say there’s something here, it’s big. Huge.” The kid groaned as he tried to sit up, but he moved like his head weighed more than the rest of him.

  “Treasureseekers.com, huh?” Ben shifted to sit on the step below the kid’s head. His chest still burned, but at least he could gulp in deep breaths. And the thundering pace of his pulse was beginning to slow down.

  “Sure. You know, it’s like where people post about tips and stuff they’ve heard about. Some lady found half a million dollars in Arizona last year just from one post on the forum. Like, she just went to her backyard and dug it up.”

  Ben nodded. He did know about it. He’d checked it out after Milo first arrived on the scene. But it didn’t mean that any of the information on the site was more than speculation. No one had any of the details that he and Millie did.

  Besides, all these jokers seemed to think treasure hunting looked like it did in the movies. It didn’t. It wasn’t quite so frantic or fast-paced. At least not like the action movies he’d seen. Treasure hunting was more like searching for clues and then waiting to see how they fit into place—if they fit into place. It was a slow grind. Not that he minded that part of it.

  But now . . . now there wasn’t time to waste. Not when the Chateau was pretty much under siege and he needed that treasure more than ever.

  He was apparently a treasure hunter too. He’d never wanted to be one. Never considered it, not once in his life. Not until he’d met Millie. And now it was pretty much all he thought about. Well, the treasure and that list of names on his desk at home. The list of names of people who were owed as much as he could repay them.

  The treasure and the list.

  And Millie.

  He had to be honest with himself. She was taking up a fair bit of space in his brain of late. He didn’t really mind. Not when he thought about that wry smile she sometimes had. Or the way she’d kept her cool with a plate of ketchup-covered potatoes all over her. Or the way she wore her hair all pulled back in a knot at her neck. The costumes were pretty, the jewelry flashy. But they couldn’t hold a candle to the line of her neck, so elegant, so graceful. And that was all her. He’d wondered more than once what it would be like to press his lips to that hollow where her neck met her shoulder.

  And then he’d promptly given himself a swift kick in the pants.

  Millie was beautiful. She was smart. She was funny. And she fit in his arms like she’d been handcrafted to be right there. He rather liked it when she slipped into his brain a third—or half—of the time.

  But he didn’t have anything to offer her. Not now. Not for a long time. Not until every name on that list had been checked off, every person represented on that sheet of paper given back what had been stolen.

  It was too late to save those people from his mother’s crimes. But maybe—just maybe—it wasn’t too late to give them back some of what had been taken from them. More than money. More than security. This was about dignity.

  Ben was so lost in memories and scribbled lists and the smell of sunshine in Millie’s hair that he almost missed the kid beside him pushing himself up. Jerking back to the present, Ben stood and held out his hand. The kid took it and pulled himself to his feet.

  “Guess you’re going to turn me in?” There was a slight question in the statement, a hope for leniency.

  Ben nodded. “I have to if I want to keep my job.”

  The kid shrugged. “Figured something like this might happen.”

  Ben wanted to tell him that if he was going to give up so easily, he might have saved them both a heart-pounding chase and a stumble up the stairs. But he was just thankful the kid didn’t fight him on the way back to the security office.

  After the paperwork was completed and Billy Cruze was escorted off the property, his name added to the list of personae non gratae, Ben sank into a chair in the security office. Maybe he and Millie had brought this on themselves. No one had talked about this lost treasure for ninety years—until they started snooping. And now it was everyone’s favorite target.

  Putting his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees, he let out a deep breath. God, what kind of Pandora’s box have we opened? And what if Millie really is a Devereaux?

  There was no audible response. Not that he’d expected one.

  “Benji!” The least favorite of all of his nicknames—probably because his mother had called him that—was accompanied by a smack on the shoulder and a low laugh.

  He didn’t need to look up to know who had joined him. “Hi, Theo.”

  The twenty-one-year-old kid bounced in his chair. “Man, some night, huh? I mean, I knew things were going down and all that when they called me in to work overtime, but . . .” He swore proudly, like he’d just learned the word and wanted to show off that he knew how to use it.

  Ben cringed. He’d give his overtime paycheck to have ended up on a shift with Jerome or Richard, two men who’d served in the military, earned the right to say whatever they liked, and respected others enough not to take advantage of that.

  “You hear about the new monitors?”

  Ben sat up a little straighter and looked Theo right in the eye. “What new monitors?”

  “They added some cameras. They’re going to keep them on 24-7—like all the time.”

  Yes, he knew what 24-7 meant. And the growing ache in his gut told him exactly what it could mean for Millie and him.

  “They’re installing them now, and they’ll be up and running by tomorrow. Gotta get the new monitors installed in the morning. This place is gonna be the business.” Theo waved his hand to the desk that currently held three computer monitors.

  Ben hunched against the riot in his middle. If cameras were rolling, he and Millie wouldn’t be free to explore the grounds. They could kiss the second diary farewell and bid adieu to the treasure. Wherever it was.

  His stomach rolled, and for a second he thought he’d be sick.

  Theo swore again. “You don’t look good, man.”

  Not surprising. His leg bounced, and he pounded his fist against his knee. He needed to let Millie know. They needed to make good use of this night. Their last night. They needed a plan and a map and . . . and more than a couple secret passages hidden in the old home.

  They needed to check out Ruth’s favorite place. They needed to find the diary right there, in plain sight, because a million restorers and visitors had failed to see it before. They needed the map to be on the first page and so clear that they couldn’t mistake the directions. They needed the treasure to be an inch below the ground.

  And if—by some wild miracle—all of that happened, they still needed to prove that Millie was a Devereaux and had some claim to the money they’d discovered.

  His head began to pound, and a shooting pain behind his left eye was followed immediately by his ever-present acid reflux.

  Perfect.

  In that list of all the things he needed, a dysfunctional esophagus wasn’t one of them. But it was what he had.

  Doubling over, curling against the pain, he pressed his face into his hands and closed his eyes. Taking as deep a breath as he could muster, he tried to still his spirit and quiet his soul.

  Lord, we need your help.

  Such a simple prayer, yet it seemed to lift something from his shoulders. Some of the weight that had been stacking higher, heavier, with each of their needs.

  Could it really be that simple? Not that God was going to automatically give them whatever they asked for. But Ben was reminded that it wasn’t all on his shoulders.

  It felt like it was. Most of the time anyway. He’d been on his own so long that it was hard to remember he wasn’t in this life alone.

  Except sometimes—when he was with Millie—it didn’t feel like he was doing it all on his own. He had a partner.

&
nbsp; He smiled and stood up. If they only had one more night at this thing, then he was going to go find her. They’d make the most of every minute beneath the shadow of darkness.

  Millie was hungry and tired and so ready to go home. If her apartment had a bathtub, this would have been the night to fill it with bubbles, sink into it, and wash off the spit-up from the baby during the last tour. The mom had been terribly apologetic. But it didn’t change the fact that she was on the hook to get her costume dry-cleaned. Or that she smelled of sour milk.

  She gagged as the wind floated the odor past her nose again. Trudging toward the women’s locker room, she trailed behind the others, each step like dragging a ball and chain.

  “Millie.”

  The whisper was urgent and so unexpected that she nearly jumped. She really might have if the ball and chain hadn’t been so heavy.

  Spinning, she saw Ben’s face between two of the palmetto trees. He looked around quickly before motioning her toward him.

  “What’s going on?”

  His eyes darted back and forth again, and it made her skin tingle. She looked over her shoulder as well, but the path between the main house and the offices was empty.

  “Ben?”

  His eyes were intense, and he pressed a finger to his lips. “They’re adding twenty-four-hour cameras. Because of the treasure hunters.”

  “But you’re still security, right?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t protect us from this—new cameras that are recording at night. After tonight, there’s no way for us not to be caught.”

  “So we have tonight?”

  He nodded. “Barely.”

  “So . . .” She began to wring her hands as her insides churned. There wasn’t enough time. This wasn’t going to work. They weren’t going to find what they needed. She wasn’t going to be able to prove anything.

  He put one of his big hands over both of hers, and she gulped for air. “I know. Let’s give it our best shot.”