The fire at Holger Foyt’s mansion had destroyed all but the stone and brick on the outside. Several bodies had been found inside the building but none had been identified yet. The scene seemed chaotic with police and firefighters rushing around everywhere. It was believed that there were no survivors and the cause of the blaze had yet to be determined.
A small twinge of emotion panged in her chest. Foyt had been a nice man and he’d trusted her with something big, perhaps something he didn’t fully comprehend. She certainly didn’t understand it.
She flipped over the painting and looked at the back. On the backing paper of the frame, she noticed the bottom right corner had been peeled away a little. She lifted the edge and pulled it back. Five numbers were written on the back of the canvas accompanied by a strange set of backwards letters.
Adriana stared at the numbers, wondering what they meant.
36115
Curious, she grabbed a pen and paper and started writing down the numbers and letters. For several minutes, she tried to make different words of out the letters but kept coming up with nothing. She looked up from the paper and saw herself in the mirror. Then it hit her. She took the painting over to the mirror and held up the back of it to the reflection.
The letters spelled out the word, Coronado.
But what did it mean and what about the numbers? Fatigue was setting in. Her eyes were getting heavy. The long drive hadn’t been easy after the day she’d had.
There would be time to figure out the mysterious meaning of the word and numbers tomorrow. For now, she needed sleep.
As she laid her head on the pillow, the news had changed to a story about an American agency that had discovered some ancient relics just outside of Istanbul. Two men, probably in their mid-thirties, appeared on the screen holding up a few small, stone statues. They looked proud, smiling as they handed the objects over to a Turkish emissary.
The room was getting blurry as her weariness caught up to her. The last thing she heard as she drifted off was one name.
Sean Wyatt.