“No way.” Sweeping her light up his body, she grinned. “That height was meant for only one thing: taking down any potential spiderwebs we run into—or you do. As long as I don’t, I don’t care.”
Shaking his head, Fionn went first.
From the look of the dated furniture and the unfamiliar portraits on the walls, Lyse guessed that Robert had inherited everything from the previous owners. Probably waiting for Siobhan to put her personal stamp on the place. She looked at Fionn’s back. “Where should we start?”
With a methodical sweep, apparently. She shouldn’t even have needed to ask. “I came so we could split up the searching duties, you know,” she said as she followed him through the first-floor rooms.
“And let you be wanderin’ around an unfamiliar place, unprotected?” He threw an arrogant look over his shoulder—one brow raised, stern look in his eyes, mouth almost a smirk. “That was never gonna happen.”
She grinned at the American phrasing ince his back was turned. He’d sounded just like Deacon there for a moment, despite the accent. “At least tell me what to look for.”
“Locked rooms. Hidden passages. A big chest.”
“If I calculated right, that will be chests, plural.”
Fionn grunted a reply as he stepped into the kitchen.
Two hours later the house had been thoroughly searched and they’d moved on to outbuildings. At noon they stopped to eat and reevaluate.
“We’re not seeing any sign of anything,” Fionn said, rubbing an apple absently against his shirt. “Maybe we missed something in the house.”
Lyse cleared her throat, hating what she was thinking but knowing she had to say it anyway. “Maybe I made a mistake?”
“No.” Fionn took a big bite, then chewed thoughtfully. “No, I think you’re right. This place fits perfectly. It’s just a matter of looking in the right spot.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes, Lyse turning the options over in her mind. It was definitely possible they’d missed something in the house. Or maybe they’d missed something on the grounds. And they were running out of time to figure out which.
Or…
“I noticed on the property maps that there’s a folly on the eastern border of the land. It’s not visible from satellite photos—too many trees—but…”
Fionn narrowed his gaze, obviously considering the same questions chasing themselves in her head. “How hard would it be to get to, especially with a trunk of gold?”
She shrugged, wiping her mouth on a napkin. “Now? Very hard, if the satellite photos tell me anything. The whole place has been left to grow wild. But ten, eleven years ago? On the map the terrain seems pretty straightforward, especially without the overgrowth.”
Fionn stood, chucking the core of his apple into the weeds. “Let’s be checking it out then.”
Traipsing through the woods took almost half an hour. Like Lyse had predicted, it wasn’t the terrain that was the problem; it was the hundreds of saplings, the fallen tree trunks, the overgrowth of vines and weeds and a decade of fallen leaves mulching the ground. Fionn, with his long legs and, ugh, muscles, made his way easily, occasionally laughing at her attempts to overcome logs far taller than her short legs. When he helped her over one tree and simply held her there, legs dangling, she gave him a backhanded smack on his perfect pec. “It’s not my fault I’m not built like an Olympian god,” she snapped.
Fionn nipped the side of her neck before allowing her to slide down his body. “Maybe a miniature goddess.”
He grinned when she glared up at him. Then his look turned serious, his eyes going unfocused as he stroked her cheek. That expression… “Your body is perfect to me, Lyse.”
She shivered, swallowing hard. Before she could respond, Fionn was walking away.
The folly was, in essence, the remains of a long-ago castle, though very little of the structure could still be found. Follies were scattered across Ireland in various stages of completeness, but Robert’s folly, in addition to some random half walls and piles of stone, contained one room that was almost completely enclosed. The walls, anyway. No roof remained, and the door was long since gone, but with the growth of the canopy around the site, the small space was practically private.
“If anything is buried out here, we’re shit out o’ luck,” Fionn said, voice rough with impatience. Time was weighing on them both.
“True.” Lyse gestured toward the room. “That’s the most likely place.”
Inside, light filtered through the leaves overhead, allowing them to see the ragged walls. Very little vegetation had grown within them, though, and when Lyse kicked at the floor, she realized some of it was actual stone. In the far corner a mound of grass-covered dirt rested against the two walls as if the wind had pushed it through the door over time until it accumulated to waist height.
Fionn made a beeline for the corner. Without finesse he dug into the top of the mound, dragging clump after clump away until the top of a solid steel footlocker appeared, dirty and corroded from time. Fionn paused, glanced back at her. “Holy feck, I think we’ve found it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Fionn’s heartbeat was thundering in his ears. Most people would be ecstatic to find footlockers full of gold. He sure as feck was, but not because of the money. Because of the freedom it would give them. His mam no longer in hiding. Fionn able to come and go, seeing Siobhan as frequently as he desired. The end of the Ferrinas’ hold on his family once and for all.
His fingers shook as he dug out the combo lock holding the lid of the steel box shut.
“How do we get that open?”
Lyse’s question pulled him out of his fantasies and back into the moment. Anticipation flowed through him, making his smile
