Alek

Two days earlier.

Shining a flashlight through the squeeze that led down into a larger cavern, I offered my free hand to Mrs. Lopez. "It's slippery. Hold on."

"Oh, this is so exciting!" She clamped onto me as her husband, in the rear, shuffled sideways behind us down the incline.

After an hour-long moderate hike, we'd entered a system of caves and reached an oblong space about the size of a semitruck. "It's exciting for me too, Mrs. Lopez. I've been hearing stories of this cave's existence for years, but it was only since we found the remnants of that old map in an estate sale that I've had the information I needed to locate it. And now, here it is. Old Man Barlow's treasure is someplace in the very room in which we stand."

"It just looks like a cave to me," Mr. Lopez said. "Where's this supposed treasure?"

"Fred, watch your tone," his wife called back to him.

"No, no," I said, as I removed my backpack, and from it, a shovel with a retractable handle. "He's right. You're right Mr. Lopez. Not a single pirate doubloon in site, is there?" I flicked the shovel, and the handle sprang up. "We're going to have to dig."

"You mean, you will have to dig. I didn't pay to do manual labor." Mr. Lopez eyed the shovel like I was about to hit him with it. He'd made it clear to me back at Aurum Venari's Treasure Adventures headquarters, with his wife out of earshot, that this whole thing had been her idea. After the brief time I'd spent with them on this excursion, that made sense. Mrs. Lopez, sweet and bubbly, was desperate to bring some excitement back into the drudgery of a life married to this clod. They'd spend whatever money they had for that excitement.

"Of course. I'll dig. The question is," I waved the shovel around, pointing at different corners of the cave. "Where?"

"Let me look at the map again," Mrs. Lopez said.

Propping the shovel against a wall, I took a worn map out of my pocket, unfolded it for her and let her study it, my flashlight focused on the area designating this room. I was proud of this map. I'd fashioned it after some eighteenth-century cartography drawings I'd found online, then weathered it by crumpling it, spilling tea over its surface, and baking it at a low temperature in the oven. If you didn't know better, like my current clients, you couldn't be blamed for thinking it was real.

"Okay, so we came in through there." She pointed towards the part of the map showing the cave's northern entrance. "And the legend states 'in a chamber buried, a golden flame, forever lit, but never claimed.'"

"You memorized it. Impressive." I didn't have to fake a smile this time. Mrs. Lopez was throwing her whole self into this. Whether she believed it was real or not, her passion was a pleasant contrast to her husband's grumpy old man bit. "We might just have to offer you a job at Aurum Venari."

Hand covering her mouth, she giggled. "I might just have to accept."

"Can we get on with it?" Mr. Lopez flashed his light back the way we'd come like he was eyeing his escape.

"Go on, Mrs. Lopez. Let's solve the mystery and find us our treasure!"

#

I hated it here. Here, in this case, was the outdoor, curbside seating of Alfie's Chow Palace, where the smell of food grease mixed with vehicle fumes. This was Norvin's favorite place to grab lunch and his most often requested meeting spot. I kind of hated him too for dragging me here, but my annoyance with him was a bit like eating an Alfie Meal, easily accepted at first, but a decision I'd always come to regret.

Norvin stuffed a half dozen French fries into his mouth. "You sure you don't want something?" He eyed my water glass. "They've got a grilled chicken if you'd prefer that. Chicken is good for you, right?"

I'd had the grilled chicken last time we were here, and it had not been good for me. "No man, I've had my designated allotment of food poisoning for the year."

"You going vegetarian again?"

"I am when I'm here. Kind of scared of the vegetables too, though, to be honest."

He waved a French fry at me. "I've never once gotten sick from eating here. You know that? It's your constitution, Alek, not Alfie's cooking. Don't slander a good name."

"It's not slander when it's true. Can we get back to why you brought me here?"

"Sure, but first, how'd the last trip go?" He wiped his chin with a napkin and waited for me to respond.

"Typical. They were happy customers. Well, the wife was, anyways. Very enthusiastic about my skills."

Norvin let out a hearty laugh. "I'll be she was."

"Come on, Norvin. Cut it out."

"You had fun. That's good. And they paid through the roof. Also, good. I'm not mad."

"It's not like that."

"It's always like that with you. You can't help yourself."

I took a sip of water before coming to a stand. "If you called me here just to give me a hard time, I'll see myself out."

Norvin gripped my wrist. "Sit down. I have a new job for you."

"I gathered that much. Seriously Norvin, I've done five hunts in one week, and one of them was the platinum package. Three days in the backwoods. Fucking mosquitos ate me alive." A group of tech executives had paid an ungodly amount for the bug-heavy experience, having me guide them to a treasure trove planted on the side of a mountain, miles into the wilderness." It would be nice to have this next couple of days off."

He patted my chair. "This job isn't another treasure hunt."

"What is it, then?"

"It's about Aurum Venari's other work. The sort we don't speak of in a public setting."

Legs tingly, I sunk into the chair, trying to keep my expression as passive as possible. Inside, my stomach churned, and it wasn't from the carnage masquerading as food spread across Norvin's plate. "Why'd you bring me to a public setting if you can't talk about it?"

"I don't need to say much. We have a potential. A person we've been monitoring for a long time. We need someone on the inside to observe. And we think that someone is you."

Finally. They'd finally selected me for a real assignment. "I've wanted to do this sort of thing my whole life. So, just tell me who it is."

He looked around at the empty tables before sliding his phone over to me. "Recognize her?"

It took me a moment to realize his question wasn't rhetorical. "Obviously. Everyone knows who she is. Verity Jayne is a huge star."

He grabbed his phone, studying her image. "Most young people would know who she is, you mean. If I didn't have previous knowledge of her, I wouldn't be able to pick her out of a lineup."

"Wait a minute... you can't mean." I lowered my voice. "Verity Jayne is a potential? Fucking come off it, Norvin."

"As I said, we've had our eyes on her for a long time. Her whole life, in fact."

"Okay, but why? She's just a pop singer." Nice voice. Nice...everything, really. If you were swayed by curves and confidence.

"She may be far more than a performer with a couple of hit songs."

"That doesn't tell me why she's on your radar. And since birth? That's gotta mean...are her parents—?"

"One of her parents. Yes."

"Shit. Does she know?"

"We don't believe so. Her father is normal. It's her mother who was of concern, and she hasn't been in Verity's life since she was a young girl."

The gears turned. Verity Jayne. My very first real assignment with Aurum Venari and my target was the music world's current It Girl. My luck was looking up. "Wait, how am I going to get close enough to her to determine anything? She's famous. I can't just swipe right on her profile and invite her for drinks."

"That's why I called you here today." He winked at me. "Verity Jayne is in the market for a bodyguard."

"Holy shit, no."

"Yes. I've already pulled my strings. You start tomorrow."

I brought out my phone and did a quick search for Verity online. Hundreds of images of her in various stages of hotness infiltrated my brain. A bodyguard—couldn't be too hard of a job. Plus, I'd get to spend long hours near her. So very close. "I have to say, this might not suck."

"Alek." Norvin snapped his fingers at me. "Don't get caught up in her mystic. You were selected for a reason. And it's not to screw a potential."

"I would never!" I ran my finger over my phone screen, scrolling to a picture of Verity in a miniskirt, performing at an outdoor concert. Damn. "But I can flirt, right? If it helps with the assignment."

"You're not going to want to flirt with her after I tell you this next part."

"I seriously doubt that."

"Listen to me, Alek. Eyes up." He snapped his fingers at me again.

I put my phone down and shut off the screen. "What is it?"

"It's her mother. You already know who she is. Or was, rather."

I wracked my brain, but nothing popped up. "No, I don't think I know of any Jaynes, other than this famous one."

"Jayne is her father's name. Her mother was a Hargrove."

My body shuddered as though I'd been zapped by a live wire. "Cora Hargrove is Verity Jayne's mother? Please tell me this is a joke. A sick, fucking joke, Norvin!"

I gripped the edge of the table as the world tilted.

"Steady there. I'm sorry for the shock."

"Shock! Jesus. You seriously get me all excited that finally, after years of me begging to be brought into Aurum Venari's true work, it's finally going to happen, and then you spring this on me?" I shut my mouth and waited for a couple walking their dog to stroll by. "Wait... do you think... is Verity like her mother?"

"That's what we need to know. Obviously, we'll take decisive action if she is. The company feels, given your history, you're the person best suited to—"

"How? This changes everything." I thought about Verity in her miniskirt and even that wasn't enough to dispel my newfound revulsion. She could be like her mom. "How am I supposed to be in the same room with her, act like I like her. Act like what I want more than anything is to be her bodyguard and keep her from harm, when all I'll be able to think about..."

"Keep your voice down, Alek."

"No. I can't do this. I can't. Send someone else. Send me on another treasure excursion. To the desert, to the mountains. To a mosquito infested swamp. I don't care. Anything but to Verity Jayne."

"You've been waiting your whole life for this, Alek. And now that we're finally giving you the opportunity, you're turning it down?"

"Only for this. I'm too... too close to the situation. Give me any other job. Just not this one."

"It's because you're so close that you've been selected." He leaned in. "Look at it this way, if she is like her mother, wouldn't you like to be the one who helped make sure she can never hurt anyone the way Cora did?"

"Killed," I said. "Not hurt. Killed. My parents."

Norvin placed a hand on top of mine. "Verity's mother was responsible for their death, but also for your trauma. To be orphaned at such a young age. It's tragic. But now, we suspect that her daughter may—it's not for sure, but she may—have a similar inclination. Who better to make it right?"

Extracting my hand from his, I ran it through my hair. I wanted to be more than just Aurum Venari's most requested treasure hunt guide. What I wanted even more was to rid the world of anyone like Cora Hargrove.

Norvin let me stew a moment. "You're thinking about saying yes, aren't you?"

"No." Cora's daughter. Perhaps a normal, innocent person. Or perhaps something far more dangerous. "Maybe."

"If it helps make up your mind, this is the company giving you a shot at the secret side of our business. If you don't take it, you'll likely not be doing much but leading treasure-seeking plebs to fake hoards until you're thirty."

I stared past Norvin at the line of traffic waiting for the streetlight to turn green and thought of my mother. Whenever she hugged me after coming home from work, she smelled like the cleaner they used in her lab. This artificial pine scent was one of my few memories of her. All the others I could have had had been stolen from me.

Still not looking at him, I gave Norvin a nod. "Tell me what I need to do."

___

Author's Note: Uh-oh, looks like Alek went from hot to cold on Verity before he even met her. Of course, he has his reasons. Do you think they're legit? And how might her being a "potential" tie into those blackouts she had in chapter one?

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This chapter is dedicated to my friend, rskovach who's upcoming exclusive story, A Cowboy for the CEO promises to be a fun ride!