Cross & Crown

Nick laughed. “It’s a date.”



They split off, each of them wandering the crooked lanes of the graveyard, examining each headstone for any sort of clue. They didn’t know what they were searching for, though, and it was a large graveyard.



Nick kept glancing back to the steps, where JD now sat beside Kelly, his head bent over the napkin. Kelly was still leaning against the iron gate.



“What if it’s a grid?” JD called.



“Oh my God,” Kelly grunted. He covered the ear JD had just shouted into. “Dude.”



“Sorry,” JD offered with a wince.



“A grid,” Nick repeated, drawing closer to them.



JD nodded and stood. “If you turn it on its point, with the X forming a cross-like grid instead, then the symbols start to make a little bit of sense. Look.”



Nick stood at JD’s shoulder, eyes going from the napkin to the graveyard. JD was right. One of the symbols that had looked like a less-than symbol now appeared to represent the obelisk monument of the Franklin family in the center of the burial ground. Another, which Nick had assumed was an infinity mark, appeared to represent a barrel-vaulted tomb near the edge of the ground.



“Nice,” he said with a pat on JD’s back.



JD was grinning, looking pleased with himself. “It’s a legit map. I mean, we have to take into account that I freehand drew it from memory, so it might be iffy on exact locations.



But stil .”



“What are we looking for, then?” Kelly asked. He still sounded miserable, but he was up and peeking over JD’s shoulder.



“Is there an X on it?” Julian asked, his voice laced with sarcasm. “An X would make this easy.”



“No. But there is a cross,” JD told him.



“It’s a cemetery,” Julian grunted. “There are crosses everywhere.”



“The treasure he buried was a cross,” Nick pointed out.



“What better to mark it with?”



“Are you thinking the treasure itself is buried here?”



Kelly asked again. “’Cause I don’t have my grave-desecrating boots on.”



“No, this is just another hint. The treasure would have to be northwest, somewhere along Battle Road,” Nick guessed.



Julian pulled up short. “How do you know that? And why the fuck are we here rather than there?”



“The wagon was intercepted on the road to Concord and Lexington,” Nick told him. “It had to be hidden before it reached the checkpoint at Boston. See, at the time, Boston was a peninsula; there was only one way in by land. The British troops occupied the city, but the Colonial troops controlled the countryside. They had a gentleman’s agreement to allow passage to and from the city as long the traveler was unarmed.



A stolen wagon full of gold being driven like hell by British soldiers wasn’t going to be making the cut. They would have had to have hidden it between Lexington and here.”



Julian frowned. “Fair enough.”



JD was watching Nick, his blue eyes unreadable.



“What?” Nick asked.



“You know a hell of a lot more about this than you let on.”



Nick’s only response was an unapologetic shrug.



“Where’s the cross on the goddamned napkin? Let’s get this shit over with,” Kelly mumbled.



JD held it up, positioning the two main landmarks appropriately. Nick pointed to the cross on the napkin, and they all turned toward the spot in the graveyard it indicated.



Julian glanced toward the sidewalk as Nick and the others moved forward. “I’ll hold down the fort,” he offered. “I’m not very good at this stuff anyway.”



Nick stopped and looked back at him. Julian cocked his head almost imperceptibly, and Nick’s eyes strayed toward the perimeter. A city cab sat idling on the other side of the street, just out of sight unless you stood near the cemetery gate to see beyond the buildings on either side.



Nick nodded. Julian had picked up on their tail before Nick had. That was a little spooky, but Nick tried to shrug it off and trust the man to have his six as he headed for the indicated section of the graveyard.



JD and Kelly were wandering around the graves, bending occasionally to examine a headstone or wipe at the words to better read them.



“I think I got something,” Kelly said quietly. Nick came up behind where he was kneeling. The carvings on the marker had been nearly obscured by hundreds of years of weathering, which was odd since most of them had held up reasonably well. But the date was still clearly visible. There was no date of birth, merely the date of death: April 19, 1775.



“That’s weird,” JD whispered.



“That’s the day of the Battles of Lexington and Concord,” Nick told them.



“Could it be a soldier who was killed there?” Kelly asked.



“It’s not a body,” JD said. “The marker was placed here as a clue to the location of the stolen loot.”



“Would explain why there’s no date of birth, and why the carving isn’t as deep: it was done in a hurry or on the sly,” Nick added. “This must have been the only way the soldiers could tell what they’d done, leaving a monument to the theft, a map pointing the way.”



Kelly fished his phone out of his pocket, then took a picture of the gravestone.



“What are you doing?” Nick asked.



“Being awesome, how about you?” Kelly drawled. He pulled up the shot he’d just taken in his photo app and began to play with the contrast, adding to the shadows, brightening the lighter bits. Soon he had a representation of what the marker probably read. He stood and showed it to Nick.



Nick grinned and nodded. “Being awesome indeed.”



“What’s it say?” JD asked, and they crowded around the phone.



“Russell B. North,” Kelly read. “Is that significant?”



“Not to me,” Nick admitted.



“North,” JD said with a wave of his hand. “And the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Old North Bridge. It was where the first shot of the war was fired.”



“How would he have gotten back there to leave something?” Nick argued.



“He obviously stuck around Boston long enough to commission a fucking headstone be carved. That would have been what, at least a week? A few days? Time for him to range out of Boston while it was being done. A single man traveling out of the city with no weapons would have had free passage, you said so yourself. Maybe the treasure itself was hidden there.”



Kelly and Nick shared a look, and Kelly nodded. “Sounds good to me.”



“Okay. Let’s rol .”



They rejoined Julian as he loitered near the entrance.



“Find it?”



“We think so. How are our friends?” Nick asked. He carefully positioned himself between the cab and JD, just in case.Julian grunted. “Nosy.”



“Should we deter them?” Kelly asked.



Nick stared at the cab for a few moments. He wanted their tail to know they’d been spotted. “No,” he finally growled.



“We’ll lose them on Battle Road. If they can keep up, they’re welcome to come and get us.”



Kelly had commandeered Nick’s spare set of sunglasses in the car and was nursing a cup of the strongest coffee he’d been able to buy on the walk back to the hotel. He was slumped in the front seat, trying not to watch the scenery pass by.



He felt a million times better than he had when he’d woken, but he’d much rather be in bed on Nick’s boat being cuddled than here right now.



“Doing okay?” Nick asked him. He’d stopped sounding amused, and his voice was laced with more concern every time he asked.



“Yeah, I’m fine,” Kelly grunted. “Don’t look at me. Stop looking at me.”



“Forgive my ignorance of this particular war, but what is the importance of this bridge we’re going to see?” Julian asked.



“The North Bridge was part of the Battle of Concord,” Nick answered. “Four-hundred minutemen and Colonial militia against just under a hundred British regulars. It was the first battle of the war, the opening bell that told the British the Americans were going to put up real resistance.”



“I see,” Julian said.



Nick handed his phone to Kelly. “Call Hagan for me, will you? I told him we might have to go off grid last night, but he’ll call out the cavalry if I don’t check in.”



Kelly pushed Nick’s aviators down his nose and flipped through Nick’s recently dialed numbers. He paused when he saw that Nick had called Ty Grady several nights ago. He glanced at Nick in surprise. Nick hadn’t spoken to Ty about anything that didn’t have to do with work since they’d come home from Scotland.



“You talked to Ty?” Kelly asked.



Nick glanced at him, then again before returning his attention to the road. “Yeah, he called to check up on us. I called him back, he pegged JD’s accent for us. Why?”



Kelly shrugged. “If you two are on speaking terms again, he’d be a good one to call in for this shit, you know?”



“Are we talking about Tyler?” Julian asked, leaning forward to put his face between the two of them from the backseat. “Please do call him, I have missed being handcuffed to every possible surface whenever I speak.”



Nick glanced at him in the rearview mirror, smiling slightly. Then he tapped Kelly’s knee and shook his head. “We got this. Call Hagan.”



“Okay.” Kelly found Hagan’s number and dialed, then handed the phone to Nick. He watched him, though, his hangover forgotten. Ty and Nick had known each other since they were both seventeen years old. To think that their friendship was crumbling, or worse, coming to an end, made Kelly immeasurably sad. It was like losing a family member.



“Hagan. Yeah, I’m sorry, I should have checked in last night. I know.” Nick glanced at Kelly and rolled his eyes. “We got distracted. Anyway listen, we’re on our way to Concord.”



Kelly returned his attention to the passing scenery as Nick filled Hagan in. He shifted around, trying to get comfortable. He wasn’t sure what Nick had done to him last night, but he hoped he would do it again when Kelly could remember the specifics of how he’d gotten so fucking sore. It was probably fun.



It was about a thirty-minute drive to the bridge, and Kelly was surprised when they arrived to find a visitor’s center, loads of tourists, and stone monuments commemorating the battle.



“It’s a national park?” Kelly asked when he joined Nick at the bumper of the Range Rover. He’d expected a little parking lot next to a creek with a bridge over it. But there were monuments and walkways and visitor centers and tour bus parking. He couldn’t even see the river, much less the bridge.



Nick leaned against it, his arms crossed. “And it’s the first Sunday of summer.”



Julian was pacing, eyeing the crowds like they might be filled with hidden assassins gunning for him. Kelly would have been amused by it, but he had to acknowledge that it might actually be true.



“What’s our plan?” JD asked them.



Nick pursed his lips, his expression mostly hidden behind his sunglasses. He lowered his head. Kelly glanced from him to JD with a wince, then looked over to Julian, who simply shrugged.



“Do we have a plan?” JD asked, sounding a little more agitated.



“You’re the treasure hunter,” Nick told him.



“Look, I’m not a hound dog who’ll point on command, all right? I don’t remember any of my fucking training.”



“Let’s do a recon of the bridge,” Kelly suggested. “If he carved a message in it, it’s got to be somewhere accessible, but hidden enough to escape notice all these years. Can’t be too many places like that on a bridge in the middle of all these tourists.”



“We’ll split up along the scenic paths,” Nick agreed.



“Approach it from each side. Kels, you and Cross circle around the north end, JD and I will take the south. We’ll meet you at the bridge’s head.”



“Right.” Kelly patted Julian on the shoulder and they headed off together as Nick and JD went the other way.



“Can I ask you a personal question?” Julian asked almost as soon as they were out of earshot of the others.



“I guess, sure.”



“Does it bother you that he orders you around like he does?”



Kelly’s head jerked up. “No,” he answered. “If we were making breakfast or going to a movie, he’d be asking for opinions left and right. This is a tactical situation, though, and he’s reverting to his training. If he hadn’t, I’d be worried about him.”



Julian arched an eyebrow as they walked along the paved path.Kelly just shrugged. “People see Nick in all kinds of ways.”



He smiled fondly. “He’s so much more than you see on the surface, though.”



“If you say so.” Julian returned his attention to the crowd as they meandered along the path, trying to blend with the tourists.



Kelly briefly let his mind wander to Nick before he did the same. He didn’t care if he was the only one who saw through all Nick’s layers. He knew the man who’d hold the hand of a dying enemy, who would let a kid tie a piece of yarn around his wrist for luck and still be wearing it five years later, who would lay his head in Kelly’s lap and sigh as if he’d just dropped a huge weight from his shoulders. He was the man who would never, ever make a promise unless he intended to keep it or bleed trying.



“There’s the bridge,” Julian said, pul ing Kelly out of his reverie.



Ahead of them was a large stone monument, rising over the bank of the river. A concrete path led around it toward an arched wooden bridge.