Page 40 of Fated to the Hunter
Instead of a name it was signed with an ornate symbol.
With shaking hands, I brought out my phone and opened the digital copy of the treasure map. There it was. The same symbol.
I clutched the booklet to my chest. One thing had been bothering me through all of this. If the information in the hard drives were stolen international secrets, then surely the owner of this home wouldn’t allow his home to be part of a riddle leading to them. That would paint a target on him and his family.
But if he’d received the telescope as a gift…
“Bael’k?”
“Hmm?” He sounded distant, and when I turned to look, he was standing stock-still in front of the window, his muscles bunched tight.
“Bael’k, what’s wrong?” I whispered, the joy of finding another clue dampened by the sudden knowledge that something was very wrong.
After a long moment, he backed away from the window. “They know we are here. They don’t know where exactly, but they are looking. We must leave.”
“Wait. We can’t. Not yet. I found another clue.” I held the booklet in front of me. “I think I figured it out. I just have to get up to the observatory one more time.”
“We can’t wait until nightfall.”
“So, we won’t. We’ll do it now. It doesn’t need to be nighttime. I don’t need to see the stars; I just need one of the telescopes. Pleiades. It’s not the stars. It’s the telescope itself!” I didn’t know exactly how a key would fit inside a telescope, but I was sure of it. I wasn’t going to ignore my intuition, not when it was screaming at me with such certainty.
“Alright. We go. But we must hurry.”
Chapter 22: Bael’k
I watched the skies warily as Kiera moved through the observatory, checking each telescope, the black and blue booklet clutched in her hand. She was looking for the one that matched the user manual. The first time we’d been here, I hadn’t even noticed that all the telescopes were different, with subtle variations in shape and design and different names.
Apparently, one of them had been a gift from the very person who’d drawn the treasure map.
The homeowner had accepted the generous friendship offering, not knowing he’d inadvertently committed his property to be part of a puzzle. Was the original buyer of the map meant to sneak in and search for clues? Or had he been expected to befriend the owner and gain access that way?
Whatever the plan had been, it never came to pass because of the scourge’s arrival on Earth. So here we were, years later, in a world he probably wouldn’t even recognize, going through the motions and solving his riddles.
What would the original seller of the map think of us now? Was he even still alive? Wouldn’t he have spoken up by now if he were still alive and had access to the survivor forum?
I was in awe of the fact that Kiera had managed to figure all that out from nothing but a single sentence riddle and this home.
Now that I’d seen her at work, I didn’t think of her as just thekeeperof knowledge anymore. She was something more. She took simple facts and information and processed them, making them into something useful. When I’d asked her how she knew, she’d called it intuition. I called it magic.
And then there was her will to keep going even when it seemed impossible. She spent the entire day yesterday scouring that library for clues. And even when she was so frustrated that tears welled up in her eyes, she refused to give up.
And her perseverance had paid off.
Kiera’s wide grin and waving told me she’d found the right telescope. I stepped closer, moving slowly to avoid catching the flyers’ attention. To me, it looked just like all the others, but Kiera pointed to a word etched into the barrel.Pleiades.And below it was a drawing of the constellation.
She opened the booklet to the saved page. “While you’re lost in the stars, don’t forget to search deep inside for your heart’s desire,” she read aloud. “The key is inside the telescope.” She ran a hand along the bottom where it was connected to the base. “Why couldn’t he just use a normal tripod like everyone else?” she huffed. “We need to get this thing off.” She looked around the room. “There has to be tools here for it somewhere.”
She went to the desk and started rifling through the drawers looking for tools, even as the shadow of a low-flying flyer blotted out the sun. We didn’t have much time. The only reason the flyer hadn’t noticed us yet was because I’d come back last night and draped a large sheet over the support bars above. It provided just the smallest bit of cover.
But it was a matter of time before we’d be spotted.
I analyzed the solid metal base the device was attached to. It was held on with only a few screws.
“Where the fuck are the damned tools?” She opened another drawer.
“We don’t have time for this.” I gripped the device in my hands and pulled, giving it a twist. Just as expected, the anchor points where the screws joined the base distorted and broke. The base groaned in protest as I tore free my prize.
Kiera gawked, mouth open. “That works. Okay, now can you get it open? I don’t think it’s a physical key because I doubt he could fit that inside without it hindering the telescope’s use. I think we’re looking for a piece of paper.” She bounced on her toes, unable to contain both her nervousness and excitement.
