Wolf Games: Granite Lake Wolves, Book 3 by Vivian Arend Page A

that’s not the usual location to find a nugget. Gold is rarely found loose like this, and never
    up that high. Someone had to have planted it there.”
    Maggie rotated the chunk again. “Still doesn’t look like much to me.”
    Jared added a few notes with a flourish. “One piece of gold.” He glanced up, worry back on his face.
    “There’s only three more clues before we run out and hit the blank section of the puzzle.”
    “Then we’ll stop for the night.” Erik rose and held out a hand to Maggie to assist her up. She took it
    gratefully. “That’s the last of the big uphill. From here on it’s rolling trail until we start down to Bennett
    Lake. The next clue is Reflections and the coordinates look like it should be by a water source, so let’s get
    moving. The day will be done before we know it.”
    He held up her backpack and Maggie crawled under the shoulder straps reluctantly. He brushed his
    hands over her body as he helped tighten the snaps and buckles, and her skin tingled.
    “Stop it,” she whispered. Great, now she was going to be hiking with sore feet, tired muscles and an
    aching need in her belly.
    Erik chuckled. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”
    She elbowed him.

    “But it doesn’t mean anything.” TJ scratched his head.

    www.samhainpublishing.com
    49

    Vivian Arend
    “It has to.” Jared paced back and forth and Maggie rubbed her temples. They’d set up camp two hours
    ago, had dinner and then the puzzle began to drive them all nuts.
    “They are totally unrelated words. It’s gibberish, no matter which way we read them.”
    Maggie stared at the papers at her feet. It was true. There was no logic in any of the words and
    symbols they’d found. “We’ve tried rearranging the words. We’ve taken the first letter, the last letter.
    We’ve…”
    “…tried everything.” Jared glanced over at Erik. “What if we don’t figure this out? Can we finish
    without the last six clues?”
    Erik nodded slowly. “We just need to get to the Bennett Lake check-in by three. That’s not a problem
    at all. Only in previous Games, the final challenge used information gathered from all the rest of the events.
    Five years ago the team in fourth spot came from behind to win because none of the leaders had all the
    clues.”
    Maggie sighed. She’d felt so useless this whole challenge. Unlike TJ who had more than pulled his
    weight, all she’d done was ensure they hiked slower than usual. Usually she was good at logic puzzles. She
    picked up the clues and shuffled through them again. Something caught her eye.
    “Erik, what are these notes?”
    He sat next to her and she soaked in his presence. “Those? I kept track of where we found the answer.
    I figured everything might help in the end.”
    Her heart raced. “What if the clues weren’t just to help us find the location, but we have to use them
    twice?”
    Jared plopped down across from them, hope shining on his face. “How do you use a clue twice?”
    Maggie laid out the paper and pointed. “We found the answer to number eleven by looking in the
    reflection of the pool at the base of the waterfall, right?”
    “There was the Greek symbol omega. We wrote it down. It means nothing.”
    She nodded. “But when you look at your reflection it comes out backwards.” She wanted to jump up
    and down. This was the right track, she was sure of it.
    Erik brushed her arm. “But the symbol for omega is the same whether you draw it backward or
    forward.”
    Maggie laughed. “But what if you think of it as the back of the alphabet? Omega is the last letter of
    the Greek alphabet. What’s at the other end?”
    TJ shot up his arm before lowering it slowly. “Sorry, too many years of school training. Alpha is the
    Greek A.”
    “Right.” Maggie started a new paper. She deliberately drew the symbol for alpha. “And here…we
    wrote down gold . But the clue said Cutting you off . The chemical formula for gold is Au. If we cut off the
    U we get an