Elias had been walking these Greyhound terminal halls for three days, the crumpled slip of paper in his pocket feeling heavier with every hour. He hadn't known what his brother meant when he whispered those six digits in the hospital—only that they were a "life insurance policy" the bank didn't know about.
Outside, a bus hissed to a stop, its brakes screaming. Elias looked at the maps, then at the exit. He had forty dollars in his wallet and a dead-end job waiting for him on Monday. 123956
He opened the lockbox. Inside lay a single, ancient-looking compass and a handwritten note: “The inheritance isn't what I kept, Elias. It's what I found and left behind. Start at the first coordinate. Don’t take the highway.” Elias had been walking these Greyhound terminal halls