Slater's good behavior at Midsummers and the Cameron dinner had seemingly paid off, because Monday morning, when she was getting ready to leave for work, her mom came to her, keys in hand and a smile on her face.

"Your father and I have talked it over, and we've decided you've been punished enough. If you promise to stay away from those friends of Kiara's, then you're ungrounded," Leanore said, handing her daughter the keys to the Subaru.

Slater's eyes lit up. "Really?"

Leanore nodded. "Perhaps your father was quick to judge you, Slater. You're a good kid, and he knows that. He just sees a lot of bad things happen on the job, and he worries about your safety. Yours and Maeve's."

"I know," Slater said, frowning. "But he should trust me to make good decisions on my own. Besides, Kiara's friends are -"

Leanore raised a hand, not wanting to hear anything further. It was as if she didn't want to be incriminated in whatever Slater was about to do, because she knew in the back of her mind that her daughter wasn't about to stay away from her friends.

"Have a good day, Slater. Curfew is midnight."

"Right." Slater grinned, giving her mother a quick hug. "Thanks, Mom."

Slater rushed downstairs, keys in hand, practically skipping to her Subaru. She couldn't wait to tell the pogues that she was a free woman. She contemplated texting them, but she knew they were all meeting up at the Wreck later that afternoon, so she could surprise them then.

She went through her workday with the best mood she'd had in a while, raking in more tips than she'd ever made in a single day. Apparently, having a genuine smile on your face was much better than a fake one in the service industry.

As she was hanging up her apron at the end of the day, Kiara approached her, a curious look on her face. "What's got you all smiley?"

Slater laughed. "I'm officially ungrounded."

Kiara laughed. "Oh, yay! I thought you'd just had a great time at the Camerons last night or something," she teased, giving Slater a knowing look.

Slater rolled her eyes. "Don't make me regret telling you about that," she said, her mind drifting to Rafe and the kiss on the boat. "I don't want to puke."

Kiara grinned and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Slate, it's just funny. Anyway, how was John B? Was he there, at the house?"

Slater nodded. "It was weird. He was. He and Sarah seem very ... chummy," she said, though she knew that was putting it lightly. She didn't mention the fact that Sarah had broken up with Topper.

Kiara groaned. "I was worried you'd say that."

"Kiara, your friends are here!" Mrs. Carrera called from the front of the restaurant.

"Well, let's go, then," Kiara said, leading Slater out of the back room. "I wonder what they found at Tannyhill."

JJ and Pope were perched at the bar, enjoying a basket of fries that they likely hadn't paid for. John B was nowhere to be seen.

Slater caught JJ's eye as they headed to the bar, and his eyebrows went up, clearly surprised to see her there. "Do we have an escaped prisoner on our hands?" He teased as she took a seat next to him on a barstool.

"Well, here's the thing," Slater began, beaming at him. "As of this morning, I am officially a free woman."

Pope let out a loud whoop, and the two boys erupted into a raucous applause. "Kie, can we get another round of fries for our freed prisoner, please?" Pope asked, shaking the empty basket.

Kiara scoffed. "You guys already didn't pay for those, so no, you can't."

The door to the restaurant jingled, revealing John B. "Sorry I'm late, guys."

"What, were you too busy hanging out with Sarah?" Kiara said, her voice edged.

"Yes, actually." John B said. "I'm staying at Tannyhill."

The pitcher of water Kiara was holding slammed down on the table. "You're staying where?"

"Tannyhill."

"So you're living with Sarah Cameron?" Kiara asked.

"Okay, look, the only reason I'm living there is because Ward bailed me out. It's way better than foster care, which, by the way, is where I'd be right now if --"

"So, are you, like, a member of the country club now?" Pope asked with a rare teasing tone in his voice.

Slater smirked. "John B, I know my sister would love playing tennis with you."

Pope and JJ continued to tease John B about his new kook status, and Slater watched as Kiara retreated further and further into herself. Slater wasn't sure if the boys knew the whole truth about what went down between Kie and Sarah, but Slater did. She didn't blame Kiara for being upset.

"Look, you promised," Kiara said, sitting down. "You said you weren't with her."

"Bro," JJ said from his seat beside Slater. "Just own it. She got you."

"Look, if you want to hang out with Sarah Cameron, that's fine. Just know I will not be present anywhere that she is." Kiara said firmly.

John B sighed impatiently. "Do you see Sarah Cameron here? No? Okay. You're going to have to trust me. She helped me get this," John B said, taking a piece of old parchment from his back pocket. Slater leaned over JJ's shoulder, seeing that it was an old plot map of Tannyhill.

The same night that Topper had pushed John B off of the Hawk's Nest, the Routledge boy had discovered that the Royal Merchant's gold had never gone down with the ship -- rather, it'd survived along with Denmark Tanny, and was likely buried somewhere on the Tannyhill estate. Or, what had once been the Tannyhill estate, as it had since been parceled off and sold before coming into Ward Cameron's hands.

Based on Tanny's letter, the gold was in what was known as Parcel 9.

"We've got the map. We just need to figure out where on the island Parcel 9 is," John B said.

"Good luck. It's all out of whack, the guy was gonja'd when he drew it," JJ muttered.

Kiara rolled her eyes and fixed JJ with an annoyed look. "It's because the coast changed, idiot. A little something called rising sea levels and erosion."

"So we just have to look for landmarks that haven't changed," Pope said, nodding as if the task were as simple as tying a shoe.

"What about the old forts?" John B offered.

Kiara grinned, and pointed to a location on the map."Battery Jasper!"

The pogues left the restaurant after stealing another basket of fries, and then crammed into the Twinkie. Pope called shotgun, leaving Kiara, Slater, and JJ to squeeze in the back. JJ took the middle, squeezing Slater's thigh with his hand as he sat down.

Her eyes widened and she shot him a look, but he smirked and looked away. Slater glanced at Kiara, but she was far too busy arguing with John B about Sarah to notice anything going on between her two friends, who supposedly didn't get along.

They headed for Battery Jasper, an old military encampment that was now a state park.

"I seem to remember coming here on a field trip or something," Slater said, glancing out the window as they drove up the hill to the battery.

"I remember that." Pope nodded. "Fourth or fifth grade, right?"

Slater nodded, settling back down in her seat. She'd known the group her whole life. They'd been going to the same school together since kindergarten. It was weird to think that they had all these shared experiences -- like a field trip to Battery Jasper -- and yet they hadn't connected until now. Or rather, Slater hadn't connected with them. She hadn't really connected with anyone until this summer.

John B pulled the Twinkie up to the remnants of an old stone wall, and the friends piled out of the van. From the battery, they could see much of the island, and out into the ocean. With Battery Jasper's location on the map, they could pinpoint what part of the island used to be Parcel 9, even with the island's changing coastline.

Pope studied the map for a second, then pointed out to the land around them. "If this is Parcel 9, then it's somewhere northeast of here."

"That's nothing but a bunch of subdivisions," JJ said, frowning.

"Now it is," John B agreed. "Tannyhill used to be this whole island, but it was parceled off and sold over the years."

Pope looked at the map again, then pointed to a landmark, northeast of the battery. "So we're just looking for an old stone wall."

They hopped back in the Twinkie before heading down to the aforementioned subdivision, searching for the remnants of the stone wall.

"What if it isn't here anymore?" Slater asked.

"Let's hope it is," John B said, catching Slater's eye in the rearview mirror.

Slater looked away, frowning to herself as she recalled her conversation with John B about his dad. She'd give anything to have just one conversation with her biological father, just so that she could have some memories of him that were hers, not someone else's. John B had a whole lifetime of memories with his dad, and Big John was just taken from him, without any body or closure. He was desperate for anything to connect him back to his father.

"Take a left up here," Pope instructed, reading off of the map. How he was navigating the subdivision with a map that was practically as old as North Carolina, Slater wasn't sure, but he seemed to be doing a decent job.

"That looks like a stone wall to me," JJ said as John B pulled the van to a stop.

"Not the Crain house," John B said with a grimace.

Like most children in Kildare County, Slater had grown up listening to tales about the crazy Mrs. Crain. Legend said that she killed her husband with an ax.

They got out of the van, each complaining as they walked up to the property.

"Worst case scenario," JJ muttered, running a hand through his blond hair.

Slater watched him with a smirk. "You're not scared of Mrs. Crain, are you?"

"This is no laughing matter, Slater. I heard that Mrs. Crain buried her husband's head on the property."

They headed into the property, winding through an overgrown garden.

"Honestly, I don't really believe the stories of this place," John B said.

Slater nodded in agreement. "My dad says it's just old island hearsay."

"No offense, Slater, but I'm not going to trust anything your dad says," JJ said, turning to Kiara. "Which stories did you hear?"

"The one where she killed her husband with an ax," Kiara replied.

"Not you too, Kie," Slater groaned. Kie turned to Slater with a smirk, letting her know that she was half-joking.

"I'm serious, this isn't funny. I knew Hollis," JJ said.

"You did not," John B said.

"Yes I did, dude. She was my babysitter," JJ protested. "She told me all about it, about her mother. It all happened in this house. When she was six years old, she heard her parents arguing, and then she walked in on her mom washing her hands in the sink, full of blood. Next morning, her dad's gone. Split from the family. Meanwhile her mom has the parlor closed off, keeps coming in and out with these plastic bags. Weeks go on, Hollis thinks nothing of it, then one day, she decides to use the outhouse. She walks in, and there it is. Her father's head, looking straight back at her."

The group was silent for a moment before John B let out a short laugh. "God, you are so full of shit."

"Did she call the police?" Pope asked, evidently buying JJ's story.

John B, on the other hand, was already walking off, leaving the rest of the pogues to bicker over the factual inaccuracies of JJ's story. "I don't give a shit if she is an ax murderer, okay? I have nothing to lose. I'm finding that gold."

Kiara and Pope followed after John B, leaving Slater and JJ, the latter of whom was staring uneasily up at the Crain house.

"C'mon, JJ. You're not scared, are you?" Slater teased, nudging him with her elbow.

"You're finally ungrounded, and this is what you want to do? Go crawling around an ax murderer's property?"

She nodded. "Yeah. If it's going to make us all millionaires, I will gladly take it up with a geriatric ax murderer." She smirked and said,"Welcome to the pogue life," before continuing after the others.

"We need to look for the wheat near water, like it said in Denmark's letter," John B said.

The gold was seemingly imprinted with a wheat symbol, which was the sign of the Royal Merchant. In Denmark Tanny's letter to his son, he instructed him to look for wheat near water. Except, the wheat wasn't wheat -- it was the lost Royal Merchant gold, the gold that had given Denmark Tanny his freedom, his life, and his fortune.

"Water is an extremely vague clue, John B," Slater said.

"Yeah, what kind of water are we talking about?" Kie asked.

"Bong water?" JJ interjected.

"No! It ... it just said to look for water, okay?"

"That's the shittiest secret message ever," Kiara said before stalking off in the opposite direction.

"Keep complaining, Kie. No one said it was going to be easy," John B replied before following after her.

"I'll search the northeast quadrant, you search the northwest," Pope said, pointing at JJ.

"Right. The decapitation quadrant," JJ muttered.

Pope rolled his eyes. "Slate, why don't you go with him? Since he's so scared of an old lady."

The pogues headed off in separate directions, each searching a different piece of the land. Eventually, with no water to be found on the entire property, they circled back around, meeting up near the house.

"It's the only place we haven't looked," John B said before crawling through the dilapidated wooden door that led into the basement.

Slater tiptoed through the dark space, wrinkling her nose at the musty basement smell.

"Down came Mrs. Crain and cut off all our heads," JJ sang in a low whisper.

"JJ, shh."

"Up came the sun and dried up all the blood."

"Can you stop?" Pope hissed.

"Another dead end," Kiara grumbled.

"There is no water down here," Pope said.

"Know why we can't find it?" Kiara said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Bad karma."

The three boys groaned in unison. "Don't start with this, Kie," John B protested.

"We had a good thing going, and then you decided to rope in Barbie," Kiara complained.

"You brought Slater in, and none of us complained," John B said.

"That's not true, I did," JJ said from his position by Slater, which earned him a gentle shove into the dusty basement wall.

"Slater is actually helpful, and she's not a backstabbing bitch either."

"This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you about Sarah. What the hell is the deal, anyway? What's going on between you two?" John B asked.

"Nothing," Kiara said, confirming Slater's theory that the rest of the pogues didn't know the whole story.

"Is it because I kissed you? Is that the problem?"

Slater's eyes widened and she exchanged a glance with JJ, who was stifling a laugh. Kiara hadn't told her that she and John B had kissed, but clearly, JJ knew. There was the sound of a hand on skin, and Slater realized Kie had slapped John B across the face.

"Stop treating me like some girl that's obsessed with you, instead of your best friend that's trying to look out for you."

They continued to slap each other as Pope, JJ, and Slater fought off what felt like an army of mosquitos.

Just as Slater was beginning to wonder why there were so many mosquitos in the basement, Pope uttered the same words aloud.

"Pope, what do you see?" She asked as he walked over to a part of the basement floor that was covered in wooden planks. She watched him drop a pebble down, and then they all heard the telltale sound of water as it splashed in.

The friends quickly removed the wooden planks, and were left standing over the remains of a very old stone well.

Pope grinned. "Well, well, well." 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ author's note ✫・゜・。.

it's been a while, hasn't it? decided to start writing again after netflix dropped the details for season 3 ... february can't come soon enough! this isn't the best chapter, as it's a lot of filler with dialogue directly from the show script (and if you know me, you know i hate writing like that) but it needed to be done. on another note, slater is ungrounded! yay! and i'm hoping to have some more non-canonical moments coming up soon. 

thanks for sticking around!

xx,

madi