“Ha!” Nick barked.
“Friendly fire,” Hagan said. He put on a fake Irish accent.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
Nick fired up his computer. “We’ll just Google this bitch.”
A few moments later he’d brought up a search page for the British lieutenant’s name. Almost every result was about the lost Revolutionary War treasure. Nick clicked the first one.
JD moved his chair so he could see the screen too. It was a chat board for amateur treasure seekers, with each post offering theories on where the gold had gone, stories about the poster having gone searching for it somewhere, and the occasional person telling everyone else they were stupid.
“See?” JD said. He pointed at one of the posts. “Right here in Boston.”
Nick looked sideways at him, studying his profile while JD’s attention was elsewhere. It was hard to forget the many warnings that had popped up about JD’s authenticity, including the one from Kelly, but Nick hadn’t felt like he was being lied to once. The man struck him as genuine.
Kelly cleared his throat as he approached the desk. Nick looked up at him, still scowling thoughtfully.
“Everything okay?” Kelly asked carefully.
“You know our treasure hunter theory?” Nick asked, wincing at their private joke. Kelly nodded. “We might have been a little too on the nose.”
“What are you talking about?” Kelly craned his neck to see the computer. Nick watched his changeable eyes as they darted over the screen, scanning the posts. “Stolen Continental payrol ?”
“They were paid in gold bars and coins,” JD provided.
“Meaning if it was hidden somewhere and left there, it’s worth millions today,” Kelly surmised. “Yeah okay, that’s worth killing over.”
“Before you guys go all Indiana O’Flaherty on me,” Hagan drawled, “what does that lost treasure have to do with our case?”
Nick took a breath to answer, but he realized he didn’t exactly know. They all looked to JD.
“I . . . I didn’t say it had anything to do with the robbery,” JD reminded them, his blue eyes going wider. “You gave me three things to associate, I associated them.”
Kel y sat on the edge of Nick’s desk, turned sideways so he could still see Hagan and the computer screen. “What was the other thing stolen from the place? One was the brooch, what was the other?”
Nick tapped Kelly’s knee to get him to scoot over, and he unlocked the desk drawer beneath him and reached in for the file. He set it on the desk and opened it up to find the photos.
“It was a bundle of letters.”
“Bundle of letters,” Kelly echoed. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, the brooch I get, it had a few precious gems on it,” Hagan said. “But the letters are . . . parchment. Tied with twine. No value whatsoever.”
“The value of words is measured by those who read them,” JD told him. He stopped short, scowling hard. “Is that a quote? What is that from? Did I come up with that?”
Nick almost laughed at him. He bit his lip to keep a straight face instead, and held up the photo the bookstore owner’s daughter had provided of the stolen items. Kelly took it from him, looking it over in silence.
“These are Revolutionary War era?” he finally asked. Nick nodded. “Do we know what they said?”
“The daughter said her father had them transcribed once, because the handwriting was hard to decipher. She’s trying to hunt up the file, said she’d email it when she found it. Why, what are you thinking?”
“I mean, if we go on the theory these people are hunting this lost payroll treasure, this makes sense,” Kelly said with a tap of the photo. “These are contemporary accounts. And you said one of the books they stole was a soldier’s diary, right?”
“Yeah, he was at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and later Bunker Hill.”
“Concord?” JD asked. “After their defeat, several British columns broke off and scattered across the countryside as they retreated along Battle Road to Boston. One of those could easily have intercepted a payroll delivery.”
“Why hide it instead of making off with it?” Hagan asked.
“And desert the British Imperial Army?” JD shook his head, grinning widely. “Might as well take a knife to the eye, you’d live longer. The theory is they hid it somewhere, intending to come back for it when the war was won.”
“Only they didn’t win the war,” Nick said.
JD clucked his tongue. He looked pleased with himself for the first time since they’d met him, but the expression faded quickly. He glanced down at his hands, twisting his fingers together.
“You okay, bud?” Kelly asked him.
JD gave them a weak attempt at a smile. “I know more about this than I do about myself.”
“You do know a lot more about this than most,” Kelly agreed. “At least you can remember it; that’s a good sign.”
Nick raised his head as an idea hit him. “Do they fingerprint college professors?” he asked Hagan.
Hagan pursed his lips. “Not to my knowledge. Some universities are starting to, but only for new hires.”
“School’s out, right? What if he’s a professor at a local college? If he lived alone, no one might know he was gone until classes start back.”
“No missing persons report would be filed yet,” Hagan said with a nod.
“Send his photo out to every institution in a fifty mile radius. See if we can get a hit.”
“On it,” Hagan said, and he lurched out of his chair.
“College professor, huh?” JD said quietly. “Not international treasure thief. You’re awfully optimistic, Detective.”
“That’s what we love about him,” Kelly said, and when Nick raised his head, Kelly’s eyes were on him, a gentle smile gracing his lips. Nick squeezed his knee, keeping his hand there.
“What’s the next move?” JD asked. If he was uncomfortable with Nick and Kelly’s small shows of affection, he didn’t let on.
“After you work with the sketch artist, we’ll get you somewhere safe. The Fiddler’s Green should do the trick, just need to get the captain to sign off on it.”
JD scowled, biting his lip instead of saying anything.
“What?”
“I just . . . if these people are trying to kill me, the only way I’ll really be safe is if they’re caught. We should try to find the treasure they’re after.”