Truly, he should have headed outside and found the police. But he knew, if he did turn the two fugitives in, they might never reveal what they were chasing—or what secrets the writing on the urn might unveil.

He had come to the Bunker Hill Monument seeking answers, just like them. Though it could be coincidence, the more reasonable assumption was that somehow, their search and his were related.

He took a deep breath and came to a decision.

The two fugitives had run upstairs, toward the observation deck at the top of the monument: a literal dead end. But the woman seemed smart. The man appeared to be a day away from handcuffs, but the woman, the way she’d figured out the writing on the urn—she just might have a chance.

So Adrian decided—the best decision, for the moment, was no decision. He would wait, and watch, and see what happened next.

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

Hailey’s calves were burning, and she was pulling the dank air in through her teeth by the time they had rounded the last curve. But she figured they still had a pretty good head start on whoever Nick had seen outside in the park. She knew she was going to feel every one of those 294 steps when her heart rate returned to normal, but at the moment her mind was in full flight mode.

She leapt over the final step and found herself in the crowded observatory at the top of the granite monument. The space wasn’t large; the tour group ahead of them was huddled around the viewing windows cut into the walls, the tourists mostly gathered in groups of two and three, taking in the 360-degree views of Charlestown, the river, and Boston beyond.

Hailey didn’t have time for the view, and she planned to stay as far away from those windows and the vertigo-inducing panorama as she could. Instead, her eyes were tearing around the small space, looking for some way to turn what was obviously a dead end into a way out.

Even a quick assessment told her there wasn’t much that hadn’t been there from the time the capstone was sealed to the top of the great obelisk, in 1843. Other than what appeared to be some sort of fire alarm control box where the wall met the ceiling directly above her head, the place was a living museum. Aside from the viewing windows, there wasn’t much to work with.