BREE MET SARAH AND KIE AT THE DOCKS. The Camerson girl apparently had some important information for them that had to be said where literally no one else could hear unless they were in the water or talking to fish.

"So I went back to grab clothes and a phone, and you're not gonna believe this. Rafe is back," she informed them, and both of the girls let out groans. Kie had had some interactions with the Cameron man back when she had been kidnapped, and things had not been left pleasantly. "Yeah. I saw him at the house. I don't think he saw me, but I think the cross is coming back to Wilmington tomorrow night."

"What?" Bree exclaimed. Sarah really buried the lead there. If the cross was coming back, that meant that they had a chance of intercepting it before it reached Rafe. All they had to do was come up with a plan.

However, there was one member of the group that definitely needed to know about it before they began plotting anything. He was the one that cared the most about the cross because it was a part of his family's history. Kie questioned, "Does Pope know?"

"No. I was gonna tell him at the Chateau," Sarah answered.

The Calloway girl shook her head because Pope's parents were not allowing him to go anywhere. She was honestly surprised that Kie's parents had let her out. She definitely thought they would want to have her home at all times for at least a few days. "He can't. He's on lockdown."

"Okay. Um... Then, I'll hit up Pope, and then maybe you two go to the Chateau and tell John B and JJ?" Sarah asked, and Kie was quick to nod. Bree really did not want to have to face the Maybank boy again, but this was bigger than their argument.

So, they headed to the Chateau, and JJ pulled up just as they did. Bree really wanted to run inside and leave Kie to explain what happened, but the Carrera girl beat her to it. "I'm gonna go check to see if John B's here. You fill him in." Bree glared at her as she left before turning back to the boy awkwardly.

"What up?" he quizzed, not looking up as he walked past her and pretended to do something at the outdoor table. He was really just playing with some thread.

"Uh, Rafe's what's up. He's back on the island," she responded, and he had a very similar reaction her when Sarah first told them. She continued, "Sarah saw him, and she overheard him saying that the cross is coming to Wilmington tomorrow night. Figure he must be trying to sell it."

He nodded, and he was really killing it with the neutral reactions lately. He had the same reaction when he found out with Big John. She was wondering if he just completely shut down his emotion around her. "Great. Does Pope know?"
"Yeah, Sarah went to tell him. He's locked down, and I guess John B and his dad went and got the Twinkie because it doesn't look like they're here. They're off to God knows where," she replied because there was no movement or sound from inside the house. If Bree had to guess, she would have bet that Kie was watching them through a window.

"Yeah, of course. Just when we need them," he muttered, but everything seemed to process in his brain all at once. His mood immediately lifted, and he began talking excitedly. "Hold on, though. We know where the cross is gonna be. That means it's still on the field. So we can come in and swoop. We're still in this, B. We gotta get everybody together, then we'll come up with a plan."

"Sound's good," she answered, and there was a pause before he turned to her with an apologetic expression on his face, like he had just remembered their fight again.

"Hey, I'm sorry for calling you a Kook," he said sincerely, and as he spoke, Bree began to wonder if he used AI to write his apology. "I was mad at the world, and I took it out on you. You didn't deserve it, and I'm really sorry that I didn't realize how bad of a position you were in as well."

She nodded slowly, a little weirded out by the lack of jokes and sentence fragments. It was definitely confusing her because she had never heard him say anything like that. "That was a very formal apology."

"Yeah, I had to look up some of those words," he joked, but his smile faded when he saw that she did not laugh or even smile at that. He sighed and extended his hand for her to take. "Truce?"

"Let's just get this cross."

《✵》

"WELL, THERE'S, LIKE, A THOUSAND TRAINS HERE." Sarah was correct. There were rows and rows of trains with dozens of cars, which was going to make everything increasingly more difficult. They were in the train yard with no plan but one Topper and one Topper's truck. How they ended up with Topper helping them, Bree honestly had no clue.

As they looked out on all of the trains and just processed how shitty this was going to turn out, Pope reminded them, "Well, we know it's car 750X on the track to Raleigh."

"Yeah, so now we just gotta find it," the Calloway girl breathed out. That was going to be the difficult part. Any of those train could be the one going to Raleigh, so that information did not really help them. Once they found out which train it was, getting the cross out should hopefully be easy. But when was anything ever easy for them?

Kie then brought up an amazing point. "Well, news flash. We're not getting out of here unnoticed with a giant cross."

"We won't have to. We can nab it somewhere further in the country," Pope informed her, and the next part made things seem a lot more difficult than Bree had pictured them being. She had not really thought everything through perfectly. "Just gotta figure out how to stop the train."

"Leave that to me," JJ assured them, and they all raised their eyebrows at him because he had said that quite a few times in their hunts for the gold and the cross, and about ninety percent of the time, it did not end well.

Cleo, like the rest of them, was unconvinced, and she just stared at him like he was crazy. "How you gonna do that?"

"I got an uncle up in New Bern, right?" he began to explain, and Bree wondered if there was anywhere in the state that he did not know someone. "When he got tipsy, he'd just throw an old chain across the tracks, just for shits and giggles. And that old little chain would stop all the train traffic in coastal Carolina."

"A chain?" Kie questioned, and they all seemed to be wondering what the hell he was talking about and whether it was true or his uncle had been lying to them. They really could not take any risks like that.

"He's actually right," Pope informed them, which was something a lot of them never thought they were hear being said about JJ Maybank. "There's a low-voltage current that runs across all rail tracks. Throw a chain on it, you close that circuit. It would read as another train. Crossing lights come down. Science is actually pretty sound."

The blonde boy nodded, proud of himself. "Science. I knew my science."

"Well, we don't have a chain," the Heyward boy pointed out, which was true. Bree looked down at her necklace and wondered if she could string hers with Sarah's and Kie's jewelry to make one long train that might stretch across the tracks.

Before she could voice her thought, however, Sarah offered a much better solution. She told them, "No, but I bet Topper's dad has jumper cables in the truck. Would that work?" Pope nodded in confirmation, and it was clear that he was beginning to get excited about the operation now that they were beginning to form a plan.

"Yo, what's going on? Are we doing this, or what?" Topper called from below them, waiting alone at his truck. He was getting more and more anxious the longer that they were there, which might be good for a time indication.

Ignoring him, Cleo turned back to the others sitting on top of the train. She said, "All right, you all wait here. Me and Pope will go look for it and send a signal once we find it." The others nodded, and the two hopped down and began scanning the rows of trains while the others waited impatiently for the signal.

About twenty minutes later, they heard some banging, like someone kicking a train, and they were blinded by a flashlight. Bree thought that they had been caught for a moment, but then, she realized that it was just Pope giving them the signal, letting them know that he found the train.

"That's it. We're green," Kie whispered to them, and they all took turns sliding down the side of the train, which was mostly a little bit of sliding and a lot of falling that had to end in a tuck and roll if they did not want broken legs.

"What's happening? You hear that?" JJ asked them, and there was a distant grumbling. He peeked in between the cars of the train, and his eyes widened because the train that Pope and Cleo were on was on the move. "Train's moving. Train's moving."

They ran back over to where Topper was waiting for them, and he greeted the Cameron girl like she had just walked over to him at a party. She brushed it off immediately before questioning, "Do you have jumper cables?"

"Here I am involved in illegal activities. I'm not even close to being okay with this," the Thornton boy ranted, and Bree honestly had no clue what the hell he was talking about. She just needed to know if he was helping them or not. "What are we doing?"

"Topper, if you don't wanna go, it's fine. We'll take the truck," Sarah told him casually, as if she did not just suggest that they used his truck for their illegal activities so that he was connected to them. He honestly deserved it for being Topper, though.

"The truck?" he exclaimed. There was no way he was letting them take his expensive truck without him in it, so he just sighed, looking around and calling out, "Hey, I just wanna make sure everyone here is okay with ending up in federal prison."

Bree climbed on the back of JJ's motorcycle and wrapped her arms around his waist. She was glad that he had not been paying attention because it would have been extremely awkward if he had. Little did she know that his heart was beating like crazy at her touch. He responded, "Uh, if it gets to that, yeah, I'll do it for Pope."