ˡᵒᵛᵉʳ'ˢ ᵍᵃᵐᵉ ▷ⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ ᵈʳᵃᵏᵉ ¹ ✔

nine

Halle's POV

Chloe had the copy of the map Nate found in the pile of salt or more known as the map she betrayed me and Nate for, so Nate persuaded her that the map as well as the keys should be with me and Nate for the night in exchange for answers. She was hesitant, but she gave in to the idea because she didn't know what to do, leaving the puzzle solving to us.

"How is it going?" I asked him as he was shirtless sitting on the couch. He had the map laid out and Sam's postcards spread out on the coffee table in front of the couch.

"Not much." He replied not looking up at me with his eyes concentrated on the map. "I wanna say I'm sorry, for all the stupid ass things I did to you. Okay." He says as he looks up at me as I crack a smile at him.

"That takes a lot, and I'm proud of you." I tell him as I sat beside him. I look down at the map. "Anything interesting."

"Braddock isn't going to find the gold. Well, not where she's looking anyway." He says pointing at a place on the map called 'cala de oro'.

"So we may actually have a chance at finding the treasure after all?" I ask him as he nods his head.

"Correct. The captain left one final clue and Sully seems to think that Sam knew what the clue was and he might have tried to tell us what itis. These postcards are the only thing I've gotten from Sam in the last ten years, so if he did try to tell me something, it has to be in these cards." He explains to me as I nodded my head.

The two of us starting looking through the postcards trying to find something and what feels like forever we found nothing. Until an idea came to mind when I saw it in a movie once when I was a kid. "Invisible ink, that's it!" I say as I grabbed a candle and the last card that read 'there's a whole world you haven't seen, but you will' and there it was, the final clue.

I glanced at Nate through the corner of my eye and he looked like he was looking at me, amused and shocked that I knew that trick. "How, do you know that?"

"Well, Nathaniel, there are a lot of things that you don't know about me." I tell him as I ruffle his hair knew that he wouldn't like it.

"The keys are your compass." I say looking at the secret message. I handed it back to him, as he was confused until something caught his eye. "Could it be the jewels?" Then he removed one red jewel of the first key and one blue jewel of the second key.

"Blue goes there." He says piercing the needle where the blue jewel was on the compass rose and he did the same for the red. "And red goes here." He says as he moved the keys like a compass as he set them down on some island nearby.

"We did it!" I squealed as I hugged him without a warning before immediately retracting. "Sorry."

"Don't be." He says as he cleared his throat. "I'm going to write the geographic coordinates down." He says as I handed him my phone.

Done writing the coordinates he searched on his phone, he ripped another paper from the notepad and wrote fake coordinates.

I knew that Chloe would definitely sneak into our room to steal the map and the keys so she could keep the treasure for herself like the bitch that she is. She would do that while our guards are down in the morning.

"The real coordinates will bein this bottle." He says as he rolled the paper and put it inside a black bottle and put it in a cabinet in the back, where she couldn't see it.