Page 74 of These Reckless Hearts

I take a drink from my own canteen. “We know we have to go through this valley,” I say, pointing to the area between the two cliff faces.

“Then where?” Lance quizzes.

I sigh. “This isn’t a step-by-step guide to a recipe, Jacobs. Not that you would know how to use those either.” I take a deep breath, trying to settle my annoyance. “They made it hard to find for a reason. If it wasn’t,youmight’ve even already found it.”

“How do you want to proceed?” the leader asks Lance, hiking his gun up like he’s ready to use it.

Lance stands drenched in sweat, but he still has that demanding air that he’s been perfecting in offices all over Phoenix. He has power, and he knows it. “We’ll see how this plays out for now. I’m sure they understand that if they’re just taking us on a leisurely stroll, there will be consequences.”

“I can nick one of them again,” Bucket Guy offers.

Stone turns toward him, scowling. Well, now we know which one got him, I guess. In answer, the guard lifts his brows suggestively.

Lance shrugs. “Sure, start with that one.”

He points out Lucas, and my heart drops. “What?” I exclaim. “No.”

I barely wrangle in my surprise before all five guns turn toward my messy-haired guy.

“A reminder couldn’t hurt,” Lance crows, smirking.

31

Ithrow myself between the assault rifles and Lucas. “Stop!”

“Dakota!” Stone screams. He lunges for me but stops when one of Lance’s team swings the barrel to his chest.

Lucas growls behind me. “Get out of the way.”

“No.” I glare at Stone’s father, fighting back the sudden dose of adrenaline pumping through me. I keep my voice steady even though I want to shake the shit out of him. “I’m helping you. I have an idea to try, but you have to understand that we’ve been searching for this for over a hundred years. It’s not going to magically appear once you pull guns on us. It takes research and sleepless nights and actual boots on the ground. You don’t just get to wave your finger at a problem and have it go away, and if you think for one second that if you do something to one of them that I’ll be in any sort of mood to give you one fuck’s worth of time, you’re the ignorant one.”

“Show me something quickly,” Lance threatens, boredom moving into his voice since he’s not gulping in air like a greedy bastard.

I didn’t want to do this in front of him, but I meant what I said. We all get out of here alive or it means nothing to me. I take out the trace of the map I did.

This piques Lance’s attention. “Is that the map?”

“Sure. My ancestor who took...” I turn the paper over. “...Chem 103 wrote the most important document in Clary history on the back of their homework.”

Lance sputters something, but I ignore him as I unfold it, then motion to Mr. Blade Happy. “I need your knife.”

He unsheathes his blade and hands it to me handle out. I curve my fingers around the black, well-worn grip and move toward the huge boulder, smoothing the paper out and using the tip of his very sharp blade to cut out the traces I made earlier. Afterward, I give the knife back and hold up the map.

“What are you doing, Dakota?” Lance asks, frustration clearly evident.

“I told you I have an idea.” My stomach churns with a mix of doubt and excitement. If this matches up, we won’t know what it will mean but it’s a start.

Wyatt, Lucas, and Stone crowd around me. “I think we’re missing some of the squares and x’s,” I hedge. We need to show them something, but this is the only idea I have. If it doesn’t pan out, I don’t know what we’re going to do.

“But if all the others match up, that’s what we need.”

“Where was the first one we found?” Lucas asks. From the corner of my eye, I see him inspect the cliff face on the right.

“About halfway down the chasm. Maybe a quarter of the way down from the top.”

“It has to line up with this one,” Stone offers, pointing to the outermost square on the map.

“We have to line it up with the outermost on the opposite side,” I state. “I can make the square show through now, but it has to match up with another in order for this to mean something.”

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