𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐃𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒, 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬

FORTY-SIX| the heyward secret

Kiara shakes her head, "None of it makes any sense."

Heyward's booming voice echoed, "Well, don't ya'll just sit here whining about it! Figure it out!"

"No." Pope quickly shakes his head, shutting the idea down. "I'm just gonna give the key to that lady. It's not worth it—"

"No, no, no—did I raise you to back down from a fight, boy?"

Pope shakes his head, holding his father's gaze, "No, sir."

"Well, alright. Now I...I didn't think about it before. I admit that. But now..." Heyward points to the bandage atop his forehead, "Now? I'm interested. Well, did they say why they wanted it?"

"She said something about an old cross?" Eden recalls. She isn't sure how any treasure could make Mrs. Limbrey happier—she was rich. "We think it might be some kind of lost treasure, which I'm sure Limbrey will only use to her own benefit because she's already filthy rich."

"You know who you should talk too?" Heyward asks, handing the key back to his son. "Your great-grandma, Mee-Maw."

Pope's eyes slightly widen. They had another lead.

The car ride to go visit Pope's Mee-Maw's was tension filled.

Everyone was silent at first, the soft melody coming from the radio being the only sound. Sarah and John B. were making eyes at one another while Pope and Kie hadn't bothered to make eye contact at all—couple quarrels had certainly occurred once Topper dispersed, placing another layer of tension and snappiness upon the shoulders of the Pogues, who'd already been angry at one another enough the past week.

"Guys, the thing that Limbrey said, I don't think she meant to let it slip." Pope piped up, leaning against the back of John B.'s. Eden sat beside him against the back of JJ's seat—the blonde had whined about wanting shot-gun. "She said the key leads to the cross of Santo Domingo."

JJ throws a hand back—almost whacking Eden in the face—to take the key from the Heyward's grasp, "Wait. Can I see that?"

As Pope hands over the key, Sarah blankly states, "Are we supposed to know what that is?"

Eden sighs, "It's probably a historical artifact of some kind. Something that was meaningful and important in it's time that Limbrey thinks will help her now."

"Well, according to the interwebs." Kiara scrolls on her phone through Wikepedia pages and links—she'd been their searcher the past few days, googling and webbing for questions they didn't hold the answers to. "It was a gift from New Spain to the Spanish King."

"New Spain?" JJ bluntly asks, looking at the Routledge beside him, "Is there an Old Spain?"

Eden throws a hand over the seat to rub his shoulder reassuringly, "And this is why we go to Mr. Sunn's class."

"Shit, talk about over-gifting. Look at that thing." Kiara scoffed, flipping her phone to show an image she was looking at. The picture showed an outlined cross with decorative ornaments and a shorter, medieval dressed man standing beside it—a height comparison of sorts. "Looks like there's a person standing next to it."

JJ turned his head to see the image and deadpanned, "So it's a giant-ass cross."

"It was widely considered at the time to be the most extravagant tribute ever from the provinces." the Carrera girl reads aloud, "It was lost off the coast of Bermuda in 1829."

The finishing sentence piqued JJ's interest, the boy quickly whipping around to ask, "Did you just say Bermuda?"

"Oh, no, not the triangle." John B. softly groans—he didn't want to hear the Maybank fall down his hole of conspiracy theories again, as he had thousands of other times in the past.