Page 67 of In the Pursuit of Haven
He met my eyes. “Yes… but each of these clues were useless on their own. The Shepherds had to work together to find the treasure.”
Sounded just like the Revolutionary War. The thirteen colonies had been as different as night from day, but they’d had to put all that aside to gain their independence; although in the end, it meant ultimate dependence on each other on the federal level.
Such a strange thought really. Had we always faced these same political frictions?
“Is this why these Relics have snakes on the front of them?” I asked.
“Yes, it shows they were against the Crown.”
I thought about the “Don’t Tread on Me” snake on the mystery board. “Haven suspected as much,” I said.
“Crabb hoped that would mean that if they ever found his treasure that they’d use it against these invaders.” Jessie looked back down at the map. “The identities of these Shepherds are supposed to be here.”
My heart jolted as we scanned over the geographical locations. It was rife with history, detailing every house on the block and the names of streets and landmarks. This was a history geek’s dream—namely mine—but there were far more than nine candidates here.
“It doesn’t say who they are,” I said finally.
“Lay ‘not’ your heart upon treasure,” Jessie read aloud the inscription on the top of the map.
“The ‘not’ is scrubbed out,” I said. Though it definitely was there at one time.
“Lay your heart upon the treasure,” Jessie reread it. “A heart,” he whispered.
As soon as I figured out what it meant, my hand went to the chains around my neck that held both sides of Crabb’s locket.
Jessie’s fingers joined mine. His breath warmed my skin as he gently lifted the locket from the folds of my shirt. “Lucky for us Hunter pays more attention to himself than he does to anyone else,” he said with a wry look. “I noticed it the first second I laid eyes on you. You can’t hide anything from me…”
My cheeks burned in response to his smoldering look as he leaned down to undo the clasps. I startled when I felt his lips against my neck seconds before he slid the chains over my head.
We were a team now, and he was doing his best to fulfil that promise. Knowing that he was taming his fiery instincts that ran deep through his bloodlines to be that lone wolf he’d always been, and that he was fighting that baser nature for me made his every move feel tender and sincere.
“The two sides should fit together on these hinges,” I said, my focus entirely on his strong fingers, “but we’d need a jeweler or…”
I watched him fit the two pieces together. Without closing them over each other in the locket, they made a heart.
“Only the pure o’ heart shall possess the treasure,” Jessie whispered Crabb’s final words. He set the heart over the map.
“The rubies on the locket,” I pointed to them. “They could match up to where our Shepherds are. There are five on one side and four on the other—nine altogether!”
Jessie slid the palm-sized heart around the map to find any geography that worked with the pattern made up by the rubies. It was easy to see under the red glass what ground he was covering. Nothing was corresponding. He finally slid the heart out into the ocean.
Without the benefit of Bowditch’s accurately scaled maps we were blessed with today, the islands were much smaller than they should be, and closer together, and yet… there was a method to this madness because nine islands matched up precisely with the rubies on Crabb’s heart.
“Do you think?” Jessie asked.
“Definitely.” Reading the names of the islands, I saw that some bore different names than now. Brown’s was called Great Island; Children’s was Cotta; and Gerry was Maverick, though the others, Misery, Jeggle, Ram, Tinkers, Winter… even my island, Baker’s, were still the same.
“So…” I wasn’t sure where to go from here. “Are we supposed to find out who owned them at the time when Crabb was alive, or are we just supposed to find the Relics there or…?”
Jessie shook his head. “No idea. Get me a marker.”
“Why?”
“We’ll mark off on the map what Shepherd Relics we already have.”
“Not with a permanent marker, you aren’t!” I said. He was killing me. “This map is a treasure in itself.” I found some tiny sticky notes. “Use these.” I dug out a spiral notebook from the drawer too, much like the ones Haven had used for her notes on Crabb’s associates. Those would still come in handy, since she’d identified potential friends—they could be Shepherds.
The excitement for the hunt rushed through me. I finally understood why Jessie’s ancestors risked everything to find this treasure!
