✯ North Star ✯

18 - Gold Fever

We were walking the grounds when John B started laying out the plan, and I was trying very hard not to smile at the way he got when he had a plan, that particular electric focus that made his whole body move differently. He looked like a golden retriever pretending to be a wolf.

"We're gonna melt the bricks down so they're not traceable," he said. "Take it to the pawnshop. After that, pay for JJ's restitution."

"How many bars?" I asked.

"I don't know. It was all muddy. I think it was like 500."

I stopped walking, my feet just refusing to keep moving under the weight of the number.

"500?" I said.

"600," he corrected.

"600 bars of gold?" My voice did something involuntary on the last word, climbing somewhere it hadn't meant to go.

"I don't know. Could be a thousand. It was all muddy but it was everywhere. Covering the walls, stacks of it. Four hundred million dollars. It's all there."

I laughed — part disbelief, part pure what-the-hell-did-we-just-step-into, the sound coming out shakier than I meant it to.

"That's crazy!"

"We did it," John B said.

And the way he said it — soft, warm, proud — hit completely different from anything else he could have said, something in my chest going warm and full at the sound of it.

"We did it," I said back.

"Now we just have to get it out of there."

"Right. How?"

"Pope has a plan."

"As always."

"Pulley system. We get back in the well and dig it out."

I laughed a little, the sound settling easy in my chest now. "I'll be honest, I never really thought we'd find the gold. But I should've known. You always pull off the impossible."

He smirked. "It was only because you knocked some sense into my head."

"Yeah, I agree. Where would you be without me?"

"Probably long gone by now," he said, and we were leaning in, almost without deciding to, the way it happened with us — my whole body already tilting toward him before my mind had caught up — and then the feeling came again, that specific quiet the world got right before something shifted.

A cough.

We both jerked apart, my heart lurching hard in my chest.

Dad stood in the doorway.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi," I said, trying and failing not to turn red, heat climbing fast up my neck.

"Hey," John B said, clearing his throat.