“Tell him to put his gun down,” Southie shouted, nodding his head at Nick. “Or I blow his head off!”
Nick felt Julian move, and Kelly tensed beside him but couldn’t take his attention off Alex and her gun. Nick glanced back in time to see Julian with the barrel of his gun aimed at Kelly.
He sounded apologetic, but deadly serious. “Drop your gun, O’Flaherty.”
The man on the floor groaned again and raised his head, shaking off the stupor. He rolled to his stomach and began to crawl toward his compatriot. His hand went to his belt, where a backup weapon was likely hidden. Nick transferred his aim to the man. “Stop!”
In rapid succession, Southie turned his gun from Cameron’s head to Nick, and JD raised his gun and put it to the back of Southie’s head.
“Don’t!” JD ordered.
No one moved.
“Everyone have a gun on them now?” Alex called. “Is this what boys do for fun?”
Nick grunted, afraid to move with so many nervous and inexperienced personalities involved. Not to mention Julian, who would definitely blow out the brains of an ally to save his husband.
“Okay,” Nick said slowly. “No one move, let’s talk this one out, huh? Bottom line, Cross is here for Cam and the rest of you are here for treasure. I think we can accommodate everyone.”
“What are you here for, cop?” the man on the ground asked.
“I heard they had doughnuts,” Nick said through his teeth.
“Treasure?” the woman in the bonnet asked. She was nearly screaming. “What are you talking about?”
“The Continental payroll,” Nick said to her. “Know about it?”
“Of course,” she said, wiping a hand over her face. “You’re in the wrong town! The Continental payroll was stolen from Buckman Tavern in Lexington!”
“It would have been brought this way,” JD said, speaking to the entire room. “I remembered why we had to break into that bookstore. I remembered everything, Nick.”
Nick glanced up at him briefly, afraid to take his eyes off the kidnapper on the floor for too long.
“They took me from my hotel room,” JD continued.
“Alex, I’m sorry, I didn’t leave you guys. Two men came in with guns and said I was dead if I didn’t come with them.”
If Alex responded, she did so silently, because Nick heard nothing from behind him. JD’s blue eyes pleaded with Nick.
“I’m not a bad person, Nick. I swear. I remember. Please.”
Nick tried not to examine the melancholy feeling settling in his chest. “I believe you,” he finally whispered. “Tell us what happened.”
“There were three of them,” JD said as he poked his gun at Southie’s head. “Two Irish guys, and this one. They had Cam with them, had him tied up. I kept promising him I’d try to get us out of there and he kept saying his husband would find us, that he was some sort of spy.”
Cameron closed his eyes, swallowing hard.
“They had Julian after the Crown Jewels lead, so they put me on studying the contemporary writings, trying to pinpoint when and where the wagon of treasure had been spotted. I knew about the letters in the bookstore because I’d requested to read them a couple months back. I had the digital copies, but I needed to see the original ones. So much in that time period was done in secret, the originals could have had messages concealed in them. That’s why we went to the store, that’s why they robbed it. I hid the letters to slow them down until someone figured out we needed help or we could get away.”
Nick couldn’t take his eyes off JD as he spoke. His voice was shaky, his eyes were sincere. Every bone in Nick’s body told him JD was telling the truth.
“How’d you figure out it was here?” Kelly asked without turning around.
“When I started remembering things, I remembered a diary entry about this place. How a wagon was seen being guarded by the redcoats. It was the last sighting. And then the name on the headstone, Russell. As soon as I remembered everything, I knew it had to be here.”
“We did the same,” Julian offered. “As soon as I told her what I knew, she directed us here.”
Nick growled softly. “Yeah, we need to talk about the stealing evidence thing.”
“I’d rather talk about the gun to my head thing,” Kelly said wryly.
“Where is it?” the man on the ground asked. “We’ll let him go without hurting him if you tell us.”
Julian growled.
“How did you get here?” JD asked him.
“I called them,” Julian answered.
“Great, so no one actually knows where we’re looking?”
Kelly asked.
“There’s no treasure here!” the curator cried. “This museum commemorates a battle!”
“What happened here?” Nick asked her. “What’s the story? Give us the tour.”
“Are . . . are you serious?”
Nick nodded, still not looking away from the man on the ground.
The woman glanced around at all the hardware being wielded, at all the people filling a little house that must have seen so much violence in its history, if the bullet holes still in the walls were any indication. She took a deep breath.
“After their defeat at Lexington and Concord, the redcoats were retreating to Boston. Along Battle Road there were many skirmishes, and the retreating forces were ordered to clear out any houses they came across to prevent snipers from attacking.
Jason Russell, the man who lived here, evacuated his family, but then returned to his home. Nearby, along the stone wall you probably saw when you came in, the minutemen had set up an ambush. They concentrated on the main body of the redcoats coming through, but were outflanked and retreated to this home.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. It was obvious that giving her lecture was helping to calm her a little. Nick’s mind was whirring, trying to fit the puzzle together as she gave them more pieces.
“Jason Russell was an old man, and he arrived at his home just as the minutemen were retreating. He was gunned down just outside his door and then stabbed by bayonets eleven times. The British soldiers massacred everyone else in the house, save for eight minutemen who were able to barricade themselves in the basement. When Jason Russell’s widow returned to her home, she found her husband and the rest of the dead, numbering twelve men total, laid out in rows in the kitchen. She is said to have claimed the blood on the kitchen floor rose to her ankles. Jason Russell and the dead Continental soldiers were buried in a mass grave, no coffins and no services. It took over seventy years for a monument to be erected over the grave.”