Page 150 of Darling Wildfire
“I’m sorry to hear about your family, North,” he said quietly. “Cap said you were in the fire too or I swear I would have—”
“I know,” I looked over at him briefly. “It was a professional job. They didn’t want any loose ends.”
Knight nodded and turned to lean his forearms on the railing, looking out over his front lawn.
“They’re all dead,” he said. “We’re the last ones. Cap died last year—suicide.”
I nodded, unable to feel anything but a dull melancholy. We’d served together for a while and like any crew who’d gone through some shit together, we’d been tight. After the military, we’d gone our separate ways, keeping in touch here and there but life has a way of fucking over people that have seen the shit we’d seen. And once your friends started dying by their own hands, it was like having survivor's guilt all over again.
“How long have you been out here? The last time we talked, you were contracting I think.”
“Yeah, I did that for a bit,” he said. “But I needed a break. Pops died a few years back, so I figured it was the perfect time to come out here and see to the property. I was going to sell it actually, but I don’t know—we all have our demons, mine are just less noisy out here. It ended up being the perfect break and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to go back to civilian life yet.”
I nodded. I could understand that.
Knight straightened and put his handon my shoulder.
“I’m really glad you’re not dead,” he smirked. “Let’s go inside. We’ll eat and you can tell me about everything—or at least who we need to kill.”
It was late into the night by the time we finished telling Knight everything that had happened.
Or at least everything we wanted to share. The conversation wound down, and we sat sipping whiskey and staring into the fire Knight was subconsciously poking at.
“I don’t even know what to say to all that,” Knight said after a moment. “I’m glad you guys got out. Do you have a plan to take him down?”
“Maybe.” I threw back the rest of my whiskey and leaned my forearms over my thighs, watching the coals reflect in Knight’s eyes. “Do you still have it?”
A slow smirk spread across his features, and he nodded once before standing up and leaving the room. He was only gone briefly before he came back and tossed a folder down on the coffee table in front of me.
“I looked into it a few years ago, but without you and the rest—” He shrugged. “It just didn’t feel right.”
“What is that?” Nyx asked, leaning forward.
I opened the folder and spread the papers out, looking for one in particular. Once I found it, I put it in the center of the table and Atlas reached for it.
“It’s a map,” he said.
“Not just any map,” Knight said. He went around refreshing everyone’s whiskey before sitting in an armchair next to me. “A treasure map.”
Nyx laughed but when he saw neither Knight nor I laughing he stopped.
“You’re serious,” he stated. “Treasure? As in gold?”
Knight nodded. “During World War II, some Nazis hid a vast amount of gold in the Austrian mountains. The myth is they sunk it in a lake, but that map says otherwise.”
“How much gold are we talking about?” Atlas asked.
“5.6—” I paused. “Billion.”
“How come no one has found it yet?” Nyx asked incredulously.
“Everyone thinks it’s in the lake,” Knight shrugged with a grin. “No one can get to it.”
“It’s also dangerous,” I added.
Knight barked a laugh. “Oh yeah, there is that too.”
“Mysterious deaths mostly,” I said.
