Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 124836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 624(@200wpm)___ 499(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 624(@200wpm)___ 499(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Chen adjusted his glasses. “I considered them clues too. . .when she talked to Lei, she always seemed like she wanted everyone to know something.”
Dima looked at him. “Know what?”
Chen shrugged. “She was too creepy to ask more and she never talked to me. Her focus was always on Lei.”
Everyone turned to Lei.
Dima tapped the pen against his notebook. “Where were most of the daggers, Lei?”
Lei glanced at TT who had finally finished putting them all on the ground. “I had to dig the daggers up from different spots around Dream Lake.”
Dima pressed on some more. “Just around the Jones Estate?”
Chen shook his head, answering before Lei could. “Some were much further away. I remember one night that damn ghost made us walk 15 minutes to an old grave to get one.”
"A grave?” Dima scribbled down notes, his curiosity clearly piqued. “And you could see the ghost too, Chen?”
“Not as well as Lei,” Chen admitted. “I got the feeling that she liked him more. But I could see hints of her from time-to-time and. . .like a shadow or projected movie on a screen going in and out. . .most of all, I could feel her.”
Chen shivered slightly. “It wasn’t a good feeling.”
Dima didn’t miss a beat. “What were you supposed to do with the daggers?”
Lei’s eyes were on TT as she closed the top of the trunk and just climbed on top of it. “The Bandit just kept saying that this was the key to freeing them.”
Rose jumped back in. “Them? Who? Was she talking about all the people that were brutally killed during the Week of Blood?”
Lei furrowed his brows. “She never made it clear. She just kept saying each dagger was the key.”
Dima studied Lei. "Each dagger was the key?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it then.” TT bobbed her head over and over. “I’m starting to figure it out. . .I mean. It has to be.”
What has to be? What does she mean?
Chapter twenty-six
The Key to Everything
Moni
I watched TT as she stood on the trunk and gazed down at all the daggers. “Maybe, we should go eat an—”
“Moni, just give me a minute.” TT’s voice held clear irritation. “I’m thinking.”
I glanced up at Lei, unsure whether to insist. But he smiled at TT, completely absorbed by her determination.
Okay. Fuck it. Everything is okay. I’m just worried about her too much.
Additionally, I couldn’t tell if TT liked Lei yet, but it was clear that Lei was totally taken with her. There was a warmth in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before, something soft and protective.
I was also finding that I loved their reactions.
Fine. Let’s see where this goes. Guess we’ll just live on this helipad.
Dima crouched down to examine the daggers now spread across the helipad. He tapped one with his pen and then another. “Yeah. I have to agree with Chen and Lei. I don’t think these daggers are weapons. It wouldn’t make sense.”
Lei nodded. “Their shapes aren’t efficient for real protection or fighting. And the thin wood. . .it wouldn’t make sense to use something like that in combat.”
TT, still perched on the top of the trunk, looked at Dima and then at the daggers. “The Bandit had guns. He. . .I mean. . .”
TT beamed. “She made her own bullets because her father was a blacksmith and taught her when she was a kid.”
I could see the gears turning in Dima’s head as he processed what she said. “So, why are they wooden?”
TT bit her lip, thinking. She always did this during a hard math problem, nibbling on her lip as if that could further pry out the truth that way. “Or. . .”
I watched as she leaned forward, her eyes scanning the daggers as if searching for some hidden meaning.
"Oh my God, Moni.” She didn’t get down from the trunk.
"What?”
“I think I got it, but. . .I don’t want to say it out loud.”
"Maybe. . .you should get down from the trunk.”
She didn’t budge her gaze still fixed on the daggers. “I’m fine up here, Moni. I can see them all that way”
Lei stepped in, placing a hand on my arm.
TT’s new protector.
I let out a long breath and against all logic. . .I smiled.
TT whispered, “At the end of her journal the Bandit’s Gospel, she says. . .”
TT closed her eyes for a few seconds and then opened them. “She said, ‘in the end I hid it all and went to my children and gave them each a piece so that no one would be able to find it by themselves. They would need each other to get it and that meant unity. Which was the biggest treasure of all.’”
Everyone looked at TT.
Dima wrote in the book and muttered, “Gave them each a piece.”
TT widened her eyes. “That’s it. I think it’s got to be.”
I shivered, nervous with all that was going on. “What has to be it?”