Chapter 1

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DEDICATION For every hiker who reached the top and understood.

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The map was a fake.

Nate Adesanya knew this because he had spent three weeks following it — through the woods behind Henderson Creek, past the old mill, around the reservoir, and up the side of Bald Mountain — only to arrive at the X and find nothing but a pile of rocks.

Not treasure rocks. Not interesting rocks. Just rocks.

"This was a waste of time," said his friend Chiara, sitting on the rocks and looking distinctly unimpressed.

"The map said 'treasure here,'" Nate said, staring at his copy of the hand-drawn map he'd found tucked inside a library book. "Maybe the treasure is buried?"

"We don't have a shovel."

"Details."

It led to rocks.

"The treasure is not what you expected. Look again."

"Look at what?" Chiara asked. "The rocks?"

Nate looked at the rocks. He looked at the view from Bald Mountain — the whole valley spread below, Henderson Creek glinting silver, the town nestled in the trees, the reservoir reflecting sky.

And he understood.

"The map didn't lead to a thing," he said slowly. "It led to a place. This place. This view."

Chiara looked out at the valley. It was, she had to admit, extraordinary.

"Someone drew a treasure map," Nate said, "that led to the best view in the county. The treasure IS the view. The journey IS the point."

They sat on the rocks and looked at the valley and the creek and the sky, and Chiara said, "That's either really deep or really annoying."

"It can be both," Nate said.

Nate started investigating. The book — A History of Henderson County, 1985 — had been checked out fourteen times. The library had records going back to 2001. Nate cross-referenced the checkout dates with weather patterns (because who hikes to Bald Mountain in winter?) and narrowed the suspects to three people who had checked out the book during hiking season.

"Tahirih is a Bahá'í name," Chiara said. "My mom knows someone named Tahirih."

"What does it mean?"

"It means 'the pure one.' She was a famous Bahá'í heroine from Iran."

They tracked down Tahirih Wilson. She was eighty-three years old, lived in a retirement home on the edge of town, and was absolutely delighted to have visitors.

"You found my map," she said, her eyes twinkling. "I wondered if anyone ever would."

"Why did you draw it?" Nate asked.

"But why a treasure map?"

Tahirih smiled. "Because if I'd just said 'go look at the view,' nobody would have gone. But a treasure map? A treasure map makes you walk. And the walking is the point. The journey transforms you. By the time you reach the top, you're a different person than the one who started."

Nate wrote this down in his notebook. Case closed. The treasure was the view. The map was an invitation. And the mapmaker was an eighty-three-year-old Bahá'í woman who understood that the best treasures are the ones you don't expect.

THE END

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Crimson Ark Publishing creates mysteries about the treasures hiding in plain sight.