The next morning, Daniel didn’t just drop the pouch on the counter. He placed it carefully and asked for a written receipt. That changed everything. The young employee at the desk looked mildly annoyed at first, then intrigued. She called over the branch manager, a stocky man named Frank who had the alert look of someone sensing paperwork ahead. Frank examined the watch without touching it, listened to Daniel’s explanation, and then asked a question that made Daniel uneasy: “Would you mind staying ten minutes?”
Ten minutes turned into forty. Frank pulled the vehicle’s history. The sedan hadn’t started as a rental at all. It had entered the fleet only eight months earlier as part of a bulk purchase from a regional leasing company clearing out older vehicles. Before that, it had reportedly belonged to an estate account, though the digital trail was thin and paper records were off-site. The car had been cleaned, inspected, and rented many times, but no one had ever reported a missing watch. No recent customer complaint. No staff recognition. Daniel watched Frank’s expression shift from cautious administrator to genuinely curious.
Frank finally said what Daniel had been thinking since the rest stop: the watch might be valuable, or it might be nothing. Either way, they needed to document it properly. He typed up a report, had Daniel sign off on where and when it was found, and promised the company would contact previous record holders. Before Daniel left, Frank made one more request. A local horologist—someone who specialized in high-end and vintage pieces—worked two blocks away. Would Daniel join him there that afternoon so the discovery could be assessed and witnessed from the start? Daniel had planned to head home. Instead, he found himself saying yes.
The horologist’s shop was narrower than Daniel expected, filled with old clocks ticking from every wall and a workbench lit by a single bright lamp. The specialist, a man in his late sixties with steady hands and magnifying loupes lined up like surgical tools, barely spoke for the first five minutes. He examined the dial, removed the strap, checked the reference and serial numbers between the lugs, and opened the case with such calm precision that even Frank stopped fidgeting. Then he leaned back and exhaled slowly. The temperature in the room seemed to change.
