Chapter 148

"Oh!"

"It opened."

"Incredible! Emily, you're something else!"

I yanked the safe open immediately.

"But wait — 4885? That's a strangely gloomy set of numbers. And oddly familiar."

"You're right. A peculiar combination, certainly."

But none of that mattered. What mattered right now was emptying the safe.

I peered at the gleaming contents with wide, admiring eyes.

"Wow. Cash, in stacks! Good lord. And gold bars. How much pocket money has he been getting?"

"There's more here than I expected."

"Let's take all of it. If we sell everything, we might even be able to pay Emily back the full hundred gold."

We began systematically clearing the safe into the compression bag.

"Urgh… you two absolute disasters…! Stop it right now…!"

A voice from behind us — the kind squeezed out by someone who had given everything just to produce sound.

I turned around. Jacqueline had crawled all the way…