anything.
That’s something, I think as Dickie inflates my back tire. They could have ruined my bike altogether, but at least they just let the air out. I’m not saying those assholes deserve a humanitarian award, but I am saying they could have dropped it off the three-story roof, instead of just leaving it up there with no air.
I clench my jaw as I think about their smug as fuck faces handing over that map. Whatever they’re trying to accomplish by coming to Clary, I can’t let them get to me. Not now. Not ever.
4
At least I have my bike when I make my way back into town after sharing a spaghetti dinner with Dickie. He’s always been good to me, but he’s definitely stepped up since Dad went missing. Even if my father couldn’t find treasure, at least he found good friends. Well, one good friend. Let’s not go crazy. His other relationships were an epic disaster. My mother died when I was young. Clary old-timers whisper that the desert killed her. As a woman from Minnesota, she hated the heat, she hated the barren landscape, and if you ask one of them, she hated my father, too.
I don’t know. I don’t put much stock in what some of these people say.
Now, what they say about Marilyn is true. She’s a gold-thieving bitch. Too proper for Clary. Too stuck-up for my dad. And if she didn’t have a giant backhoe up her ass, I’m not sure why she always walked around straighter than a compass needle pointing north.
Instead of leaving my bike in front of the dorms like I usually do, I drag it up the wooden staircase and right inside my front door. Saint Clary’s dorms are actually just an old west motel turned into college living. It’s a long building, stretched out almost an entire block in length. The walkways to the exterior dorm room doors hover over a gulch that gurgles with rain water when it actually does rain. Every other day, it’s just a dried-up ravine riddled with stones. Just past the hotel, there’s a curve in Old Gulch Road that leads to the college.
Years ago, Saint Clary’s didn’t have dorms. The campus was just too small, but then the Johnsons, the owners of this old hotel, fell on hard times. They kept the motel alive for as long as they could, but once a Motel Six opened up a quarter of an hour away, no one wanted to stay at the Clary Inn, whether they were treasure hunting or not. It needed a remodel two decades ago, and the Google reviews left it with barely a single reservation throughout the summer months. A crazy occurrence considering the number of tourists we get that time of year, all of them with gold bars in their eyes. I guess the call of the new single-serve Keurig’s in the Motel Six was just too much for the outsiders to turn down.
When the Johnsons put the motel up for sale, the community reached out to the college to purchase it. The last thing we needed was another building that sat unused and seeing as how Clary’s higher education institution is pretty much the only business in Clary that makes money besides the gas stations and saloons, they were the only hope. Thankfully, they took pity on us and bought it, putting very little money into the building to transform it into dorm rooms. The dorms are full despite the fact that most students are locals. I don’t know where the farthest commuter lives this year, but last year, it was only forty-five minutes away. We’re the smallest campus of any Arizona college, but we’re also the cheapest, and as my dad always said, sometimes you just can’t pass up a deal.
I lean my bike against the closet door. She’s safe and sound in here. I highly doubt the Jacobs’ golden boys would set foot in these dingy dorms let alone stay in one of them.
And there it is again, a reminder rearing its ugly head that the one thing the Jacobs always had that we didn’t was money. When you’re treasure hunting, that can mean a world of difference. Treasure hunting isn’t cheap. The supplies alone can get expensive, and that’s not even counting the time off of work—if you’re lucky enough to have a regular job. However, there’s one thing that we Wilders have—an important thing—that they don’t: Information. And as they say, information is king.
When I decided