The Last Treasure by Erika Marks

him. Water dripped from his hair and jaw. He grabbed the other blanket and pulled it around his shoulders.
    â€œSo how was Ocracoke?” said Sam.
    â€œFar.” Whit reached his hands to the fire, palms out. Sam handed him the wine. “Thanks,” said Whit, swinging it high and draining it. He screwed the empty bottle into the sand and lay down, grinning as he tugged the blanket tighter around his chest. “I say we sleep out here. Under the stars like shipwrecked pirates.”
    â€œBe my guest, Blackbeard—but I prefer sheets and a mattress,” said Sam, rising. He brushed sand off his seat and reached out his hand to Liv. “Ready to go back up?”
    â€œDon’t jump ship yet,” Whit said. “The night’s young. And Red hasn’t had her turn yet.”
    â€œShe’s cold,” Sam said.
    â€œSo get closer to the fire.”
    Liv stood. “We’ll see you back at the house, okay, Whit?”
    He turned his face to the sky and closed his eyes. “Fine, then, you lousy mutineers. Go.”
    â€œCome on,” said Sam, taking her hand and steering her back up the sand toward the house, the maze of the first floor lit up, blazing like the fire she could still hear crackling in their wake.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    â€œI t is a cool chart. I’ll give him that.”
    Crossing through the living room, they slowed to admire the massive map Whit had hung earlier.
    â€œMy mom and I had one like it once,” Liv said. “Just not nearly as big. We used it to figure out what might have happened to Theodosia. We scribbled all over it, places where people had claimed to see her, where the Bankers might have taken her captive after they seized the
Patriot
. Everything.”
    â€œWhat happened to it?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she said, which wasn’t entirely true. She’d looked for it after her mother died and not been able to find it where she’d always kept it in her bookshelf. She suspected her father had found it and thrown it away—not that she planned to tell Sam that. Not that she planned to tell him anything more about her father than she already had done.
    She walked to the chart and drew her index finger wistfully along the coastline, recalling all the notes she and her mother had crammed into their miniature version. How tiny she’d had to make her letters to fit.
    Possibility tore through her, a spark of defiance with it, not so unlike the confidence she’d felt in the lecture hall, raising her hand, then her voice.
    She glanced over her shoulder to find Sam watching her expectantly.
    She smiled at him. “I don’t suppose you have something to write with?”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    S he made her first mark near Nags Head, the yellowed paper releasing a dry, powdery smell as she pressed the tip of the pencil against it. P ORTRAIT , for where the painting of the woman in white believed to be Theodosia was found in an old woman’s cottage, then another PORTRAIT for where the old woman’s suitor had supposedly stolen the painting off a ship that had washed ashore.
    Other labels returned quickly:
    D ETAINED , for the place where the British fleet had allegedly stopped the
Patriot
for inspection before allowing her to continue to New York.
    B ANKERS , for where the pirates were believed to have lured the
Patriot
into the shoals to her doom.
    C APTURE , where Burdick had claimed on his deathbed to have taken part in the seizure of the ship, and her passengers—adding a star beside the word, just as she and her mother had done years earlier.
    When everything was labeled as she remembered, Liv stepped back to survey her work.
    She glanced at Sam, pleasure rippling through her at the serious way he scanned the path of her marks.
    She smiled sheepishly. “I told you I was obsessed.”
    â€œNot obsessed—passionate. Passion’s