Chapter 7 - THE MAP HIDDEN INSIDE THE LETTER
The evening traffic rolled past the dealership as Daniel, Samuel, Richard, and Richard's colleague remained in the parking lot longer than any of them had expected.
Daniel opened the folded letter once more.
"I thought I finished reading it."
Richard smiled faintly.
"Your father had a habit."
Daniel looked up.
"What habit?"
"He hid important things where people stopped looking."
Samuel stepped closer.
"What do you mean?"
Richard carefully pointed toward the bottom margin of the page.
"Look at the paper itself."
Daniel frowned. At first, it appeared to be nothing more than ordinary stationery that had yellowed with age. Then, under the fading sunlight, he noticed faint indentations pressed into the paper.
Not ink.
Pressure marks.
Someone had written another page on top of this one years ago.
Samuel immediately understood.
"We need proper lighting."
They returned to Samuel's office, where Ryan carefully placed a desk lamp over the letter.
Richard removed a soft graphite pencil from his briefcase.
"If your father intended someone to discover this later, he probably used pressure writing."
Daniel hesitated.
"I've only seen that in detective movies."
Richard chuckled.
"So had I...until Edward Reeves taught us otherwise."
Carefully, Richard rubbed the side of the graphite across a blank sheet placed over the impressions.
Slowly...
Letters appeared.
Then numbers.
Then rough lines.
Ryan leaned closer.
"It looks like..."
"A map," Samuel whispered.
The drawing was incomplete but recognizable.
A river.
An abandoned railway.
A small bridge.
And beside it...
An old warehouse sketched with remarkable precision.
In the lower corner were six handwritten words.
"The truth survives beneath forgotten foundations."
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Daniel stared at the hidden message.
"My father knew."
Samuel nodded.
"He knew someone might eventually find this."
Richard carefully folded the page again.
"But whoever destroyed Reeves Engineering probably knew about this possibility too."
Daniel looked up.
"So we're not the only ones searching."
Richard's expression became serious.
"I don't believe we ever were."
Just then Samuel's phone vibrated.
He answered without much thought.
"Whitaker."
The cheerful expression disappeared from his face almost immediately.
"I understand."
He slowly lowered the phone.
"What happened?" Daniel asked.
Samuel looked directly at him.
"Someone broke into the old Reeves property last night."
Silence filled the office.
Richard exchanged a glance with his colleague.
"They're moving."
"They?" Daniel asked.
Samuel nodded.
May you like
"Someone else has started looking for whatever your father hid."
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