Deep Six — Chapter 3

The pass revealed itself not through any map at all, but through an old shepherd’s trail that neither expedition had thought to follow — a route so ordinary, so unremarkable, that Ren understood immediately why the cartographer had left it off the map entirely.

Not to hide a treasure. To hide a way home that he hadn’t wanted the wrong people following.

She stood at the mouth of the pass as the rival expedition’s fires flickered in the valley below, and, for the first time since she’d unrolled that century-old paper, felt less like she’d found what she was looking for and more like she’d finally understood the man who’d hidden it.