Page 121 of Stella
“This sucks. They could already know you were here, whoever this is has been happy snapping photos of us everywhere.” I don’t like how her voice wobbles. It makes me want to break someone’s face.
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever happens from here on in, we can handle, but it isn’t safe for Cash to be around.”
“I know they’re busy making plans right now with the doors to church closed. Wait… that’s weird…” she trails off.
“What’s weird?”
“Nothing, just a hunch. Cale, I’ve gotta go.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll text you in a while. I just remembered something,”
“Okay. Just don’t leave the clubhouse. I hate to say it, but you’re probably safer there than anywhere else at the moment.”
“I’ll talk to you soon.”
I’ve no idea what my girl is up to, but I’m sure I’m gonna find out.
Stella
We hang up, and I stare at the wall.Chapel. Church.Okay, I know that we call it church because of the importance of the meeting room, but still. I can’t help thinking that maybe the blueprint I saw could really be a chapel. Or a church… This used to be a church, years ago, I’m sure of it.
I break away from Jett’s empty office, eager to test my theory, and rush to the meeting room. I know where I’ve seen the old sketches of the clubhouse before. I make my way through the crowded space, knocking on the meeting room door as I wait.
“What?” Ryder barks.
When I push the doors open, only half the committee is there while the others are out looking for the tomb. Because I was in the back, I didn’t hear the commotion of the Bracken Ridge Rebels arriving. But there’s no mistaking the guys who sit around the table now.
My eyes go wide as I spot Hutch, then the Sergeant at Arms Steel, and the VP Brock. Gunner is to his right, plus several others I don’t recognize, too, but they’re here.
“Uh, I… sorry, Cash,” I say, squirming as all eyes land on me.
“What is it?” Cash looks exhausted.
“I, um, well, I noticed something on the blueprints from earlier, and since I’m now a super sleuth with the key and the tomb thing, I thought I’d bring it to your attention.”
A few chuckles ring out, and I ignore them, steeling myself to go on.
“You have five seconds,” he says. “We’re busy.”
Here goes nothing. “Well, didn’t this used to be a church?”
Cash frowns. “It did, many, many years ago, but it was burned to the ground during the civil war. Stell, what has this got to do with the blueprints?”
“I noticed one of the structures looked like a chapel,” I say. “Then I got to thinking where I’d seen the old sketches of the building before.” I turn and point to the back wall that holds all the memorabilia of the club since Cash started the NOLA chapter, and old historical artifacts about the building as well as New Orleans itself.
Cash frowns, then stands. Walking toward the back of the room, I follow him. He stares up at the wall, tilting his head. “Someone got a picture of that blueprint?”
“Yep, I do.” I dig out my phone and hand it to him. I took a screenshot earlier.
“What you thinkin’?” Hutch says, coming up behind us. “This got somethin’ to do with the clubhouse?”
“I don’t see how,” Cash replies, turning the phone this way and that. “The old ruin stretched quite a ways back, and I don’t see what you’re seein’ with the chapel.”
The sketches are amazing, but very faint, almost too faint to even see any outlines. I guess this is why you preserve things,and having an original drawing is pretty cool. I’ve always loved history, so maybe that’s why I paid attention in school in that subject.
“Here,” Steel’s reaching over, tilting the phone one way to slot it directly into a part of the sketch that fits perfectly. “Could be there if that wall wasn’t there.”
