Page 32 of Chance

“I’m praying for you all. And him,” Raine hedged. He swallowed hard. “I hate this whole situation for everyone.”

“It’s okay. Thank you for … warning me.” Chance didn’t know what to do. Was he supposed to comfort the guy who had brought chaos down on his family?

Raine nodded to the boat. “I’ll let you get going. Just be careful.”

When Chance boarded, the group headed out to Bird Island. His mind wandered back to how he could convince Kelly to keep the baby.

Once they got there, it wasn’t hard to unload, walk across the island, and get everything set up in the cave. Clearly, Trent was a pro.

Trent took them through the paces of how to dive. He demonstrated how to use his equipment, and then he helped them with theirs. “This isn’t a deep dive, so it won’t be hard. But I’m going to have each of you practice before we go deeper.” He jumped into the water.

“And what do you think we’ll see here?” Chance asked.

A big grin formed on Trent’s face. “The last time I was here diving, we found a treasure chest and that piece of gold with the skull on it. Plus, there was the picture of my parents.”

Chance’s heart went out to him. They’d lost their parents as well, and all of them were like kids as they tried to retrace the past and find signs of something their parents had done. He cleared his throat and pushed back his own emotions. “Well, hopefully we can find something that might lead to another clue.”

Trent shrugged and adjusted his equipment. “Hopefully.”

Kelly turned to both of them. “I want to hear about all the treasure hunting you guys have done. I know what the papers have said, and I’ve Googled it, but it seems like there are bigger stories here.”

Trent laughed and slapped his leg. “You should hear Hunter tell the story about coming here, or even Lucy and Oliver Stone, or Oliver Brown. He had to come rescue us on a helicopter.”

Chance snickered. “I actually heard the story from Kensi. Her account was pretty good.”

“The thing is, our family has really mixed feelings about this gold,” Trent explained. “On one hand, we’ve grown up with the stories. It feels like each of us siblings had a hand in uncovering something during the hunt. But we started tapering off after we found a VHS tape of our parents telling us that the gold was gone and we needed to quit looking.” He sucked in a long breath and said, “I can’t believe I’m still feeling this way after all this time, but my parents told us that we were the real treasure. Our family. They said that we should stop looking because they didn’t want us to get hurt.” He sighed. “Yet here we are, caught up in this again.”

Chance nudged Kelly. “I told you how our dads were Navy SEALs together. There was a letter between them that led us to believe the gold might have been taken and hidden on our ranch in Wyoming.”

Kelly nodded. “That’s crazy. I remember riding horses on your ranch and going to that one cave—do you remember that cave with that cross in it?” She snapped her fingers several times. “The cave on the east bench where everyone would go to make out.” She blushed, much to Chance’s delight. “Have you looked there?”

Chance laughed. “I do remember that cave, and I can’t remember seeing any of these hieroglyphs. Mostly graffiti. But we have looked there. I did, anyway.”

“I’d like to look again. I could swear there was a skull like that one.” She pointed to the wall of the cave.

“That skull was on the treasure chest,” Trent said.

Chance felt rocked by this information. It was the same type of skull that had been found on the gold bar. That was crazy.

Trent coughed. “Well, one step forward, two steps back. That’s how it always seems with this treasure. But we’re here. Let’s get to diving and looking around, okay? I’ll be back in a sec.” He dove under.

Chance turned to Kelly. He didn’t want to tick her off, but he was concerned. “Are you sure you should do this?”

Kelly cocked an eyebrow at him. “Do you mean dive, because I’m pregnant?”

Chance nodded, hoping she wouldn’t get offended.

She nudged him. “I wasn’t going to tell you like this, but I’m keeping the baby.”

“What?” His heart raced and he felt flabbergasted.

“I took your advice last night, and I prayed. I’m keeping it.”

He was so happy that he threw his arms around her. “Oh my gosh, I’m so happy.”

She laughed. “I looked up if it was okay for pregnant women to go diving, and I should be good in my first trimester.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

He wanted to ask a million questions, but then Trent popped up, ripping out his oxygen. “It’s good. Let’s go.”