Adrian didn’t respond. There was no question—there was more that Adrian wasn’t telling them. But the engraving and the eagle were connected, which meant somehow Adrian was connected to them.

Nick didn’t like the thought of involving someone else he didn’t know. And he damn well wasn’t going to trust this stranger. But the man did seem to be following the same thread of clues as them; he hadn’t been at the Bunker Hill Monument by accident. Clearly, he knew things that they didn’t, and could probably be helpful.

Hailey seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because she suddenly pointed to a set of steps tucked behind a boarded-up grocery store, mostly lit by the bright green neon shamrock hanging over the convenience store next door.

A moment later Hailey was sitting on the lowest step, the copper paged book unwrapped and open on her lap. She had Nick’s cell phone next to her on the step, the screen open to the photo he’d taken of the numbers that had appeared on the gilded urn. Adrian was hovering nearby, watching, and Nick was pacing back and forth, as Hailey went to work.

As she concentrated on the pages, her entire persona seemed to change. It was like a switch being flicked, the way the muscles in her face relaxed, her body gone liquid—as if every ounce of her energy was being funneled toward the task in front of her.

Nick didn’t dare say a word, watching as she used a pencil and pad of paper from her backpack to carefully begin applying the numbers from the urn to rearrange the letters from the copper pages into vertical lines, excising out the random fragments along the way. He wasn’t sure how much time went by like that—in silence—but he didn’t stop pacing until she finally leaned back, the muscles beneath her skin twitching back to life.

She pushed her notepad in front of her; Nick looked down to see sentences, still vertical, but now with spaces and punctuation she had obviously added on her own. Words, not gibberish—except, as Nick stared, he realized he still didn’t know what they meant.

Adrian stepped uncomfortably close, almost boxing Nick out as he peered down at the notebook.

“More French,” he said.

Hailey nodded, then drew her own phone out of her purse, which was tucked into the pocket in her backpack. She played with the home screen until she’d found her translation app.

“Most of the time I’m translating Russian mathematical papers with this, but it can handle dozens of languages. Give me some time, I’ll work through this.”

“My French is graduate level—” Adrian began, but Hailey waved him off. The professor seemed like he was going to protest, but then he saw the way Nick was looking at him and only nodded.