Chapter 55

• After another day of more walking than my swelling ankles were happy about, we finally realized the gates were all busts. We’d all taken the loss and put our heads together, because that damn song was still the only lead we had. We were going through the band’s other albums in the hopes of another secret message, but so far we had nothing.
• It was Matt’s idea to take the phrase less literally. What else could ‘golden gate’ refer to? Midnight Echoes didn’t have a song titled ‘golden gates,’ but was it maybe a euphemism, a business, another band?
• The three of us—Matt, Jordan, and myself—spend almost three days all but locked in my office, each of us pursuing different potential. I was the one who found it; The Golden Gate Casino, its gaudy neon sign flickering in the twilight. It was one of a few establishments with ‘golden gate’ in the name, but the rest of them had all been useless.