Gage swallowed the last of his scotch, set the glass and the map down on the coffee table, and rose from the sofa. No treasure hunter worth his salt would mount an expedition with evidence like this. He didn’t have to worry. Abby would be safe.

“I’m sorry, Abby, I truly am. But I’m going to have to pass on this one.” He stuck out a hand Abby ignored.

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Turning back to the antique box on the table, she lifted the lid, reached inside, and brought out a chunk of gold. It glittered in the lamplight, sending his pulse up a notch.

Gage sat back down. “Where did you get that?”

“It came with the map.” She handed him what looked like a chunk broken off a solid gold ingot. Beveled sides, flat on the top and bottom, a little over an inch and three quarters long and an inch and a half wide, it appeared to have been part of a longer bar, with a rough edge where it had broken off. There was a stamp in the gold, the letter P, worn but legible.

Gage studied the gold, turning it over and over in his hand. “Have you had it assayed?”

Abby nodded. “Twenty-four karat. Ninety-nine percent pure gold.”

He rubbed his thumb over the stamp mark. “I recognize this style of writing. It’s Spanish, very old. It’s called Italica. I ran across documents written in this style when I was digging around in some archives in Seville.”

“You’re right. Italica was used by the Spanish from 1550 to 1800. In this case, the P stands for Peralta. That was in the letter my grandfather left with the map.”

A letter he most surely wanted to read. “According to the legend,” Gage said, “it was the Peralta family who found gold in the Superstitions and started the mine in the 1700s. They worked it for years, brought out gold worth millions today. As the story goes, they were using mules to transport a number of gold bars to Mexico in 1847 when the family was attacked by a group of hostile Apaches.”

Abby nodded. “Legend says the family was completely wiped out. Along with any notion of where the mine was located, a secret they’d guarded for generations. That’s the basic premise, or at least one of them. I figured you’d know something about it.”

“I know a little about all the most valuable lost treasures in the world. Not much about that one.”

“So what do you think? Are you interested now?”

He looked down at the map, thought of King Farrell and the man’s absolute conviction the treasure existed. The X on the map wouldn’t be easy to find, but it might be possible. And Abby was going—with or without him.

“I have his notes,” she added, those amber eyes sparkling like the gold he held in his hand.