Charles Walker had always believed there was more to the man. And when they argued, his response had always been the same: Boston was big enough for two eminent experts on Paul Revere, no matter how disparate their scholarship. Adrian could spend his days in the diligent pursuit of the mundane details of Revere’s life, while Charles would focus on the dramatic secrets he believed were hidden beneath those details.

In other words, Adrian would pursue actual academic work, while Charles would chase his flights of fancy. And up until those exhibits attached to the end of this wild paper, that’s what Charles had done, in Adrian’s view. Spun fantasy, wild theories, and yet…

Feeling savage with anger—and, yes, jealousy—Adrian tore open the envelope and dug into the papers, retrieving the final page. As he did so, something that had been paper-clipped to the inside of the envelope fell out, landing on the sidewalk between his feet. With an annoyed grunt, Adrian scooped it back up, barely giving it a glance. Of course, he’d recognized the object when he’d first seen it back at his mailbox: one of the coasters from the Warren Tavern, with the image of the Bunker Hill Monument on one side. He hadn’t given it much thought when he’d first seen it, and even less thought now—because once he’d shoved it into his pocket, his attention was captured again by that last exhibit at the end of Charles’s paper: a printed image, incredibly detailed, that was actually a photograph of an original Revere engraving. An engraving that Adrian was quite sure had never been published, or even seen, anywhere before.

Incredible. And paired with the second exhibit—the photo that Charles had included in the paper itself, from Hancock’s trunk, even more than incredible.

Awe-inspiring.

What Charles had discovered within the walls of John Hancock’s trunk would have been enough, alone, to set Adrian’s entire profession on fire. Adrian himself had found it so compelling that he’d spent much of the morning trying to arrange his own radiological study of the trunk—to no avail. It turned out the donor who had loaned the trunk to the Worcester museum had unexpectedly sold the trunk that very morning to a private collector with very deep pockets. Though the trunk would remain on loan to the museum, the new owner had insisted on retrieving it for a period of assessment and repairs. A new radiological study would have to wait.

So Adrian had been forced to do what he’d hoped to avoid; he’d called Charles’s office, hoping to see Charles’s radiological evidence in person. And that’s when he’d been told the terrible news.