A/N: An oft overlooked part of treasure hunting is research and development... :)
Wavy strands of wet hair dangled just inches above the floor as Cassie, fresh from the shower, hung her head upside down and shook it, combing through her dirty blonde locks with her fingertips before twisting a towel around it and standing upright again. Her hair was longer than it ever had been, coming about two-thirds of the way down her back when it was loose, and when asked, she always said it was due to the difficulty of getting regular haircuts when you live the life of a rover. In reality, though, she had made a conscious decision to let it grow. It felt somehow more fitting, now that she was feeling less and less like a child and more like an adult, albeit still a young one. Dressed in a simple tank top and comfy shorts, she dropped her dirty clothes in a pile by the bed and stepped out of the guest room, headed for a smaller, private den that Solange had offered her to use for her research. Her bare feet padding silently on the polished wood floor, she felt a pang of self-consciousness over her towel-headed state of and hoped she wouldn't run into anyone. Foster, ever on the move, had said he was going out on a business errand and wouldn't be back for a couple hours, while Solange had disappeared into the western wing of the house right after showing Cass her room and hadn't been seen since. Reaching the door to the den, she carefully turned the knob and stepped inside.
The more intimate size of the den was a relief to Cassie. The study she had met Solange in earlier was by no means pretentious in its square footage, but the high ceilings would have had her feeling watched, like she was in a library or something, even if she was alone. She always found studying most effective when she could tuck away in a corner somewhere solitary and away from distractions. Crossing the room in three strides, she pulled the chair out from the simple wooden desk, its legs scraping on the floor where slightly worn-out streaks in the finish showed evidence of that same motion being performed thousands of times in the past, and plopped down in front of Ian's laptop. Flipping it open, she fished the scrap of paper from her pocket on which he had written his password: 4v4l0n.
"So corny," she giggled softly as she typed in the characters and hit the button to log in. His desktop loaded with a generic wallpaper, and she opened up the internet search engine. Her eyes shifted to the scribbled note from Solange's father, the cryptic riddle begging for her attention. "H.M. tiene la moneda, 7 de junio, 11:43, Lucas 17:32".
Where do I start? she wondered.
Over the next several hours, she searched every word and every combination of words, letters, and numbers the note had to offer, all to no avail. Pulling up an online Bible, she read all of Luke chapter 17 (and chapter 11, in case the time given was actually switched with the scripture reference), but found nothing that made any sense toward deciphering who "H.M." was, or where the coin might be.
"H.M., hmmm..." Cassie leaned back in her chair and stared at the slanted penmanship on the torn hotel stationery. "His Majesty?" she guessed with a shrug. "Maybe we need to go ask the King of England about this?"
It wasn't a very convincing idea.
"Maybe it's a cipher code," she muttered, hunching back over the keyboard and tapping away at it. The cuckoo clock in the corner sounded out the time at eleven P.M., and Cassie suddenly realized she was still wearing a turban on her head from earlier. She paused long enough to pull the damp towel off and throw it behind her onto a red love seat in the corner, then proceeded to run the letters through several common ciphers.
After more untold hours of that, she was still no closer to the answer. "Damn it, what are you saying," she cursed under her breath as she stared at yet another failed attempt to decipher the meaning behind the words. She yawned and leaned back, folding her arms behind her neck, and gave a bleary-eyed glance to the clock. It was 1:40 A.M.
"I bet dad would know what it means," she murmured wearily. Then she frowned. "Trouble is, I don't know if I want him and mom finding out I'm getting involved with another treasure hunt. The last time this happened I think I nearly gave them a heart attack." She scoffed. "Dad still tells me I took a few years off his life the day he heard I had been kidnapped." Staring thoughtfully at the wall beyond the computer screen, she mentally ran through her options. "I should try Uncle Sam!"
She slipped her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contacts until she got to his number, then opened up a texting conversation with him.
Me, sent 1:42 A.M.: Hey, do you want to help me figure something out?
Setting her phone down in front of her, Cassie yawned and scrubbed both hands over her face. With her palms pressed to her cheeks, she parted her ring and little fingers on both hands so she could peer out through the slits at the wall. Most likely, Sam would not respond at this hour of the morning.
Suddenly her phone chirped and Cassie nearly leaped in surprise, hurriedly scooping up the device and reading his reply.
Uncle Sam, received 1:44 A.M.: do you people ever check time zones before doing this kind of shit?
Uncle Sam, received 1:44 A.M.: this had better be worth it.
She chuckled and snapped a picture of the note, sending it along with the text: "Trying to track down an old spanish coin. what do you make of this?" Leaning her head back as tiredness settled in on her, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander, hoping that Sam would have some kind of help. Her phone rang, and she answered.
"Hello?"
Sam's voice came through from the other end, sounding gravelly and tired. "For real, Chipmunk, do you all need me to buy you a world clock or something, or do you purposely wait until it's the middle of the night to call?"
"Where are you?" she asked.
"London, same place I've been for weeks now. I know it's probably the afternoon where you are, but where I am it's-"
"1:47 A.M."
Sam groaned. "So you do know. This is premeditated, then, which makes it even worse!"
"I'm in Lisbon," Cassie stated matter-of-factly.
"Lisbon?" Sam sounded suddenly disoriented. "So, like, you're-"
"In the same time zone," Cassie completed his thought. "Yeah."
"Oh..." Sam was quick on the rebound, coming back with a, "What in the world are you doing up at this time of night, young lady?"
Cassie rolled her eyes. "Uncle Sam, I'm twenty-one!" she groaned.
"Exactly. Means you can legally get into even more trouble! You can drink, you can-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get the picture," she cut him off, afraid of what other activities he might think to list. "But as you can see, I'm actually up studying.I can't figure out what this note could mean, though. Think you could give it a shot?"
The sharp sound of fine glassware clinking could be heard on the other end. Her uncle Sam growled something incoherent, then replied, "Yeah, I'll take a look, see what I can do. Do your parents know about this?"
"No, and I'd like to keep it that way, please and thank you," Cass replied. "Twenty-one, remember?" She heard liquid being poured hard into a glass, and she added, "Alcohol this early in the morning, Uncle Sam?"
"It's coffee, thank you very much." he answered.
"That's some awfully fine-sounding glass to be drinking coffee out of..."
"All my mugs are dirty."
"You're a bad liar, Uncle Sam," Cassie snickered.
"And you're nosy, so just- shush!" He retorted. "Now, any clues as to where I should start with this note, or am I shootin' in the dark here?"
"All I have is that this guy was on the trail of Cortes, who hid pieces of a map inside twelve false coins." Cassie scrolled down her computer screen idly. "That's about it. If we can figure out who 'H.M." is, that'd be a great place to start."
Sam grunted. "Alright, I'll give it a whirl. But only 'cause you're my favorite niece..."
"Only for the lack of competition," she smiled. "Thanks, Uncle Sam. You're the best!"
After hanging up, she yawned again and rubbed her bloodshot eyes. "Tired," she muttered. Settling her glasses back on the bridge of her nose, she turned her focus back to the laptop's screen and decided to follow a different line of thought. Wriggling her fingers to loosen them up, she positioned them over the keyboard and tapped out the name "Rodriguez" and the word "historian". Her search pulled up about a dozen pages of results.
"Of course," she whispered to herself. "It's only one of the most common surnames in Spanish." She wearily checked through the first couple listings with half-lidded eyes before she finally gave up and shoved the computer back on the desk to make room for her to lay her head down. "Just gonna-" a long yawn interrupted her, "rest my eyes a minute..." she mumbled, before drifting off to sleep.
Hours later, she awoke to the sound of a soft thud near her head. Groggily she lifted her head from the desk to see a steaming cup of coffee with cream sitting close by.
"What the-" It took her a moment to reconstruct the events of the previous day enough to remember where she was. Sitting bolt upright, she met the face of Ian Foster standing at her side, eyes tinged with an amused warmth.
"I see your work ethic hasn't changed a bit," he said, sliding the mug closer to her.
Cassie looked from him to the coffee, then wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic and took a sip of the earthy beverage. "Thanks," she said gratefully.
She checked the time on her phone and saw it was almost eight-thirty, and then she noticed the new message alert. She picked up the device and unlocked the screen to find multiple messages from her Uncle Sam, starting from about five o'clock on. Eyes widening in anticipation, she opened the first of them.
"Figure anything out last night?" Ian asked casually behind her.
"Ummm," Cassie's attention was divided between answering him and reading her Uncle Sam's texts. Finally she ripped her gaze away from the phone and gave a reply. "Not really, no. But seems like my uncle might have."
"Samuel?" Foster asked as he half-sat on the edge of the desk.
"Mmhmm," Cassie nodded, eyes still glued to her phone.
Uncle Sam, received 5:07 A.M.: Cass?
Uncle Sam, received 5:07 A.M.: Chipmunk?
Uncle Sam, received 5:09 A.M.: Caaaaaaassiiiiiie
She scrolled past several more like that until she got to some of the later ones.
Uncle Sam, received 6:34 A.M.: It's unfair that you wake me up with a text in the middle of the night, but you won't respond to mine when I text back at a respectable time of the morning ^:-(
Uncle Sam, received 6:35 A.M.: Call me when you're done catching up on zzzzs
Cassie quirked a quizzical eyebrow at Sam's misshapen attempt at a frowning face as she closed out her messages and hit the speed dial to call him. After a few rings he answered.
"Hey, good morning sleepin' beauty!" he said with exaggerated enthusiasm.
"Good morning, Uncle Sam," Cassie said dryly. "What'd you find out?"
"Whoa, whoa," he replied. "First off: I cleaned out a mug, and I'm drinking some coffee in it. Just wanted you to know."
Cassie rolled her eyes but grinned. "Thanks for the update."
"Your welcome. Also-" he chuckled, obviously pleased with himself. "You're gonna kick yourself when you hear this one. It's amazing what you can turn up online, if you know what to search for." He made a dismissive noise. "Rookie mistake."
Scoffing, Cassie leaned back in her chair and answered, "I'm not really sure if I'm ready to receive criticism on my internet researching skills from a person who can't figure out how to piece together a frowny face in a text."
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. Listen, I just don't keep up with how you kids do that stuff these days. I prefer to frown at people in real life whenever possible."
"The note, Uncle Sam!" Cassie urged, waving her hand as she began to get exasperated at the suspense.
"Right, right. So I'm sure you tried searching for 'H.M.', looking up the verse, searching for people named Luke or Lucas..."
"What's he saying?" Foster hissed in Cassie's other ear, eager to get a piece of the action.
"Mmhmm," Cassie said to her uncle as she put the call on speaker and turned it so Ian could hear as well.
"But once I had a few minutes to wake up and something non alcoholic to drink, I started thinkin' that date sounded awfully familiar," Sam continued.
"Tried that too," Cass interjected.
"Ah, but did you input the time with it?" the smugness in Sam's voice was impossible to miss, even through the fuzziness lent to it from Cassie's speaker. Ian leaned over and began pounding away at the keyboard on his laptop as the elder Drake brother drawled on. "If you search the time and date, the first result that will pop up is for-"
"Port Royal, Jamaica," Ian stated, pointing at the screen as he straightened up from being hunched over the computer.
"Port- huh?" Sam stopped mid sentence. "What the- Cass, you have a boy over? I knew you were up to somethin'-"
Cassie's face insantly flushed and she hurriedly took the call off of speaker again and pressed it back to her ear. "Uncle Sam!" she hissed in a low tone out of the corner of her mouth. "It's not like that. It's Ian Foster. Remember the guy I told you about that found Avalon with me? He asked for help on this one, so I'm giving him a hand."
"Uh-huh," he said suspiciously. Cassie opened her mouth to further defend herself, but fortunately for her he kept going with his explanation. "So, anyway, that's the date Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami. Once that was in the picture, the only person that 'H.M.' could possibly be was none other than Henry Morgan, who was based out of the city."
Ian was again looking expectantly at Cassie, who turned to him and mouthed the name to him. As he nodded in understanding, she added into the phone, "Of course! That's why you're sooo excited about this! Get a pirate involved, and you're there, right?"
"Yeah, and I would be too, if I wasn't already tied up digging around for old Druid junk with the Powerpuff Girls..." Sam trailed off, then Cassie heard him say in an aside, "Oh, hey Nadine!"
"Suave, Uncle Sam," Cassie said dryly.
"What can I say? 'Smooth' is my middle name."
Cassie's mind was racing. "So we find Henry Morgan, we find the coin."
"Yeah," her uncle said in reply. "Just one thing about that, chipmunk. His grave was lost to sea when the city was destroyed. Never been found since."
"It's true," Ian said, startling Cassie by how close he had gotten in order to still hear both sides of the conversation. "We'll need some kind of a lead to even know where to start looking." Noticing Cassie's look of surprise at his proximity, Foster stood back and cleared his throat. "Ahem. Sorry."
"What about the scripture verse?" Cassie asked Sam. "Do you think that could have something to do with it?"
"Maybe," her uncle answered unconvincingly. "Or it could just be a reference to the fact that Port Royal had become something of a contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah, and the destruction of it was seen by many to be an act of God. Guess you'll see when you get there, though." He paused, and Cassie could hear Chloe's voice in the background. "Hey listen Cass, I gotta go, but you're gonna need help."
"I don't need help!" Cassie protested, pressing her free hand firmly down on the desk. "And please don't tell my mom and dad!"
"I wasn't thinkin' of them," Sam said. "I was thinking of Cutter."
That caught her by surprise. "Charlie?"
"Yeah. He's been getting stir-crazy recently, doesn't have much work. And besides, he's got a pilot's license now, so he can get you where you need to go." Cassie furrowed her brow in confusion at this last piece of information, but Sam kept talking. "I'll send him your way, just wait where you are. Bye, Cass. Behave yourself."
"Hey- wait!" Cassie stammered, but the line went dead. She looked at the screen as she pulled the phone away from her ear, then shrugged and stuffed it back in her pocket. "Charlie flies?" she wondered aloud. "Is that just, like, a thing that treasure hunters do when they get old, they take up flying as a hobby?"
Ian shrugged. "That's what I was thinking about doing," he deadpanned.
Cassie smiled at his joke, then leaned her head back on the chair's headrest and closed her eyes as the new information settled in. After a moment she sat up and turned sideways to face Foster, hooking an arm over the back of the chair. "Well," she said, "it may not be the place to beat the heat, but of all the places we could be going treasure hunting right now, Jamaica's not the worst one I can think of."
Grunting in agreement, Ian added, "We'll want to see what we can turn up on Morgan's fate while we're waiting for Charlie to catch up. Otherwise we're looking for a needle in a very big haystack."
"Yeah," Cassie scoffed, "I guess Cutter got volunteered to help us, huh?"
"He'll be good to have," Ian said as he turned to the door. "I've worked with him a couple times since Avalon, and he's always a solid addition to the team."
Cassie stood and took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee as she followed Foster out. "They're all crazy," she said with a smile. "Every last one of 'em. I mean, am I going to still be doing this crap when I'm sixty years old?"