Envelope Challenge

Chapter 11 - The Second Instruction

"What's the picture?" he asked once they got into the hotel room. She fell onto the bed and pulled off her beanie. Her head was itching like crazy and she was willing to bet that the beanie wasn't helping in the least. "Come on, show me the picture already, spitfire." He took a seat beside her on the bed.

"I haven't had a chance to look at it," she admitted and reached down into her boot for the lightly crinkled picture and envelope. "What is this?"

What she assumed was a photograph wasn't anything like a photograph. It almost looked like a handmade sketch and not a very good one at that. It was a picture of something thin arching from the bottom of the page up to the top with block-like objects behind it. There were crisscrossing patterns behind the huge, odd structure that reminded her of her childhood when she would draw dark skies.

"Is this some child's picture?" he demanded. "How can they expect us to identify this based on the picture alone?"

"I have no idea," she admitted with a shake of her head. "It's obviously some type of arch in a city, but it's just... it's just way too vague."

"I think my sister could draw better than this," Nathaniel grumbled and tossed the picture back to her. "This is gonna be way harder than the last one."

"You have a sister?"

"Yeah, she's five and absolutely adorable." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone before showing her a picture of an adorable little girl laughing happily as she took a selfie with her brother. They were grinning wildly and her brown hair was flying into his face while he held his phone out to take the picture.

"She's so cute," she admitted with a smile. "And she's a great artist, huh? A little Van Gogh in the making."

"You should tell that to my mom when she drew her own version of Starry Night on the kitchen wall." He locked his phone with a click and turned back to the more pressing matter at hand. "Even that picture was better than this."

Silence befell them as they tried to digest exactly what the picture was depicting before an idea popped into her head. "Do... do you think that girl we met, Maria, would know where it is?"

"It's not worth it!" he declared. "That girl is trouble; I don't want to get involved with her when our lives are on the line."

"But, isn't she in danger, too? She wasn't able to find the next hint in time because we found it and reported the bomb. Isn't everyone else who was tasked with finding the next hint gonna die because they couldn't find it because of us?"

"It's not our fault they were slow!"

"And if she had gotten there before us? She was only a few minutes behind us and knew exactly where it was. If she got there first, we would be the ones in trouble after not finding the next hint, not her!" She stood up and pointed an accusing finger at him. "I bet she would try to help us!"

He jumped up as well so they were chest-to-chest, anger making their breathing short and faces red. "That doesn't mean I'll risk your life again over your perverse sense of justice! I won't let you do it to yourself either."

"You can't tell me what to do! You're just some stranger who feels like he has to protect me! You. Don't. Own. Me!" she yelled, each word punctuated with a jab of her index finger into his chest.

He grabbed her fist and dragged it down to her waist before dragging her closer to him. Anger was flashing in his eyes. In that moment, she realized she hadn't seen his dead eyes in a long time. "I'm not going to let you jeopardize your chances at living!"

"Helping one other person to live wouldn't jeopardize my chances at anything, idiot!"

Suddenly, there was a pounding on the door and a man was screaming at them. "Keep it down in there! Some people are trying to sleep," he screamed through the door. Surprised by the sudden character showing up, they broke apart from each other and glared into the other's fire-filled eyes from five feet apart.