“The Constitution is basically a floating museum today, but at the time it was one of the most powerful ships in the world, certainly the most formidable in the Americas. It had just returned from numerous victories at sea. It was considered unsinkable. At the time, oceans were dangerous. There were pirates, enemy nations, storms. If Revere had wanted to transport something he imagined to be valuable—so valuable that the British had essentially started the Revolutionary War over it, if my colleague’s theories are correct—how do you think he’d do it? He’d put it on the most powerful boat of his era. But not out in the open, where it could be shot off again. He’d have hidden it there.”

“So, he put this bell on the Constitution,” Hailey said. “And then he died. You think it might still be there? Today?”

Adrian looked back at the book, his mind whirling. It was ridiculous, fantasy. None of it seemed true or possible. But he finally shrugged.

“If Revere’s bell actually is still on the Constitution, I know where you’d find it.”

He held the book up toward them, showing them the last page.

“It’s right in the name.”

Revere’s handwriting was lavish and in script, but readable:

La Cloche Sous L’aigle

“More French?” Nick asked.

“Revere’s father was a Huguenot. He grew up speaking both languages.”

“But what does it mean?”

Adrian didn’t feel a need to respond. He could tell that Hailey understood. And she was about to answer for him when suddenly there was a loud hiss, and something whipped through the air, hitting Nick in his right shoulder, spinning him around. There was a spray of bright red blood, and then another hiss—and the display case behind Adrian exploded in a rain of glass.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

It all happened so fast it seemed like time itself had shattered along with the display case. One minute, Hailey was reading the last page of the book in the foppish professor’s hands, and the next everything exploded around her. She saw Nick spinning away, pushed by the force of the bullet that had hit him in the shoulder. She saw the professor diving to the ground and then scrambling on all fours toward a door marked “Staff Only.” And then she herself was diving forward, her backpack coming off as she grabbed Nick and pulled him behind the closest protection she could find—the slowly revolving Robinson crate, encased in its envelope of glass.