Seth and I headed off down the beach, hand in hand. It was low tide, and the receding waters had revealed a landscape that had almost as much gravel as sand. Once you moved farther inland, though, the terrain turned green and grassy—probably the result of park maintenance crews. Semiahmoo Bay itself stretched off into a dark, choppy vastness that would have probably been blue and beautiful on a nicer day. Heavy gray clouds obscured most of the land surrounding the far sides of the bay, and I thought I heard a rumble of thunder, something that wasn’t so common in the mild Pacific Northwest. I hoped we’d find what we needed soon because it looked like a storm was about to break out. Ah, metaphor.

Seth interrupted my ponderings. “That,” he said, “is a white rock.”

I came to a halt, turning my attention from the larger panorama to the path in front of me. There, about eighty feed ahead of us, was a white rock—a huge, white rock. And from the looks of it, Evan hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said it was about five hundred tons.

“I kind of feel stupid wasting my time with scraps of white gravel,” I mused, brushing hair out of my eyes. The wind promptly whipped it back.

“It was so obvious . . . and yet not. Shall we?”

I nodded, and we approached the rock, our steps filled with both eagerness and apprehension. After all this time and all the failed efforts, it didn’t seem possible that we’d really done it. Something was going to happen. Something had to happen.

“Whoa,” I breathed, staring up at the rock’s top when we reached it. It was so massive that it covered us in shadows. “I can see why people thought this came from the gods.”

Seth was looking down. “Unfortunately, we’ve got to direct our attention to less lofty places. How are we supposed to find this? Just dig at random?”

If Seth and I were alone, that would have been the method. Now, I was hoping Roman would reveal some insight about where the vessel was—if it was even here. A small part of me panicked that us ending up here might have been the biggest misdirection of all.

I scanned the ground around the rock, but there was nothing indicative of a recent digging. On a beach like this, all of the ground was uneven. “Something like that,” I said, needing Roman to pick up on his cue.

Seth had let go of my hand when we reached the rock, but now he caught hold of it again and pulled me to him. “Georgina . . .”