Trouble & Treasure, Dave Moyer [ebook reader wifi txt] 📗

would get you out of this, and I will,” his voice was far more quiet now, and slower, as if he was choosing his words carefully, “But you are going to have to trust me. I know these people, you don't. I know this industry, you don't. I know how these things go down, you don't. Trust me when I say that the only thing to do is to get our hands on those other globes.”

I honestly had no idea whether to believe him. I was too tired, too injured, and too desperate to bother doing anything else. So I gave a single bitter nod and let him drive to god knows where and to god knows what next. Chapter Twelve

Sebastian Shaw

Shit, I was being a bastard, I really was. I mean, look at the girl, she was covered in scratches and mud, with torn clothes, and her shoulders huddled as she could hardly look at me. I shouldn't have left her alone in the car; I should have gone with my gut instinct and we should have continued along in my shot-up Lexus, ditching it at the first chance, but not going anywhere near old Arthur Stanton's manor again. I knew Maratova, and I knew he would have left some look out around the manor. Sure as hell they had found her, chased her through the woods, and given her what looked like the fright of her life.

That wasn't the only reason I was a bastard. Number one on the list of reasons to hate myself was that I was fucking lying to her. In all honesty, the best thing she could do was to go straight to the police, hell, maybe even straight to Maratova. While the guy was a monster, he wasn't nearly as bad as the others after her. Obviously the army could offer her more protection than I could. But there was this great fucking big problem for me, the singular reason that I was truly a bastard: if I lost Amanda, I might lose my chance at getting the Stargazers.

Though I honestly wanted to check on her to see that she was still okay, and wasn't about to black out or anything, I was finding it harder and harder to turn to her. I usually compartmentalized my work, rationalizing away the shitty things I did in order to get to whatever treasure waited for me, but this was a new low for me. I hardly ever had to deal with people outside of my profession. I wasn't talking about lawyers here: I was talking about treasure hunting. It was a closed off, specialized world, where everyone was cutthroat, and it didn’t matter if you had to tread on someone else's toes to get to what you wanted, because the toes belonged to a hairy, mean, son of a bitch who would as soon as kill you is look at you.

Amanda was normal, or at least innocent. She wasn't from this world, and it was clear that she didn't belong here.

I shook my head several more times, and sliced my gaze to the side to check on her, without turning to her fully. I was worried that if I faced her she would be able to see the lie dancing through my eyes. Pick up that I was leading her astray, that honestly the best thing she could do was ditch me and flag down the next police car she saw.

I’d been honest about one thing: I was going to do everything I could to keep her safe. But I was going to do that while getting my hands on those globes. I’d been tracking them my whole life, and I couldn't let go of them. Even if it meant that I had to do what I was doing: lying to a woman who looked as if she couldn't take any more.

Rather than taking her to the hospital or at least a pharmacy to get some bandages to clean her up, I was heading straight to the next clue. Because I didn't want to lose any time, because I didn't want to give anyone else any time to catch up. I didn't even want us pulling into a service station to grab her a drink and a bite to eat.

Dear God, I was a bastard.

“Where are we going?” she asked again, voice gentle, but not kind, I fancied, because she wasn't trying to be nice – she probably lacked the strength to make her words any more forceful. She was likely using all she had left to sit there.

“The coast,” I answered, honestly. Although I hadn’t planned on telling her everything, the words came out. I did owe it to her.

She nodded, hands still clutched in her lap. They were dirty and covered in scratches, like the rest of her. Those fitting cute clothes that Elizabeth had given her were ruined and muddy. There were several leaves and small sticks hanging out of her hair, but I didn't bother telling her, considering her general state.

For the millionth time I thought about how much of a bastard I was. Did I need her? Could I get through this on my own? Could I deposit her at the nearest police station? Maybe even call Maratova myself? I still had that worn leather journal of her great uncle’s. I knew the locations of the four Stargazers were in there, so surely I didn't need her anymore, right?

That would be the case if she hadn't proved to be so useful at that church. Though I hadn't admitted it to her, I wouldn't have solved that clue without her. I took the direct approach when finding treasure and solving clues: the one that involved the most explosives and the least thinking. It didn't matter how many permutations there were to a particular puzzle that kept you from the treasure within; if you packed enough c4, you could blast right through it.

In the few glances that I had managed to snatch at Arthur Stanton's journal, I was starting to appreciate that he was the other treasure hunter: the kind that solved puzzles, that looked for clues, that tried to respect the old and dated logic of whatever dead culture they were trying to uncover treasure from.

Amanda was like her great-uncle; annoying though she could be, she seemed to at least think things through, and at least slowed down long enough to look for clues.

There was also the fact she'd known him: Amanda had grown up with Arthur Stanton. That gave her a distinct advantage in understanding how the old codger had thought. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that the scales held a clue. I’d been frankly impressed that she had realized what the clue had meant, even if I had ignored it and destroyed the scales with a spade.

I wanted those globes, I really did. If keeping Amanda Stanton along for the ride was the key to getting them, then so be it. If it made me a monumental bastard to do this to her, then so be it – I would make it up to her later. I’d share the treasure with her, maybe even represent her for free if this adventure ever ended up in the courts.

Even I had to shake my head at my own thoughts: seriously, there was no way I could rationalize this to make it sound as if I was justified in stringing her along. Nope, I was going to have to come to terms with the fact that I was a universal-level dick.

“Why are we going to the coast?” Amanda asked. There were great long pauses between her questions, and I didn't know whether she was so tired it was taking her that long to think of a new one, or whether she was processing my answers that hard it was taking her virtually minutes to complete her analysis. Was she on to me? Did she appreciate how dodgy my story sounded? Was she thinking about ditching from the car at any moment and heading to the authorities?

“We are heading to a coastal town,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, trying to keep all emotion out of it lest I accidentally reveal to her what was going on.

“Why?”

“The scales, I know where they were made,” I answered, with 100% honesty.

“So you're going to the location where they were made?”

“Yes.”

“How is that going to help? The clue didn’t say anything about going to the place where the scales were made,” she said, and though her voice was still quiet, her words were gradually growing in strength.

“Amanda, trust me, I know how these clues work.”

“I know how my great-uncle thought, and he would never have done something so straightforward,” she replied at once.

Taking an enormous swallow, not necessarily because my throat was constricted, but more because I was trying to swallow my ego here, I tried to loosen up my shoulders. “What do you think the clue means, Amanda?”

She sat there for a long while. When I glanced over to see if she had withdrawn again, she was sitting there looking thoughtful. She scratched at her hair, her teeth biting into her bottom lip as they always did when she appeared to be thinking. When I felt that familiar flick in my gut at how cute the move looked on her, it was followed by a wave of even harsher guilt.

I am such a bloody bastard.

“The clue said something about the next clue being at the point where the shadow crosses the light,” she repeated. You said that the scales are from a town on the coast...” she trailed off. “I guess that might be important, but I doubt that the next clue is where the scales were made.”

Amanda began to count on her fingers quietly. I had no idea what she was doing, and for a fleeting moment I wondered whether she was counting the reasons not to believe me and to get the hell away while she still could. But that familiar look of thoughtfulness was back on her face, as was the rumple to her nose and the bite to her lip. Rather than smile at it, though that was my first inclination, I glanced back at the road, shook my head heavily, and tried to keep it together.

“My great-uncle used to say there is an infinity of answers to any question, but that if he could think of at least 10, that was usually enough.” She kept trying to count on her fingers, teeth drawing over her lip lightly. She had a faraway look on her face, a curled smile on her lips. In that moment, at least, she didn’t look as though she’d been fleeing from a gun battle hours before.

“10 different things?” I joined in the conversation. “You only need one, the right one.”

“There is no such thing as right, or at least that's what my great-uncle used to say. He said there were 1 million different ways to find lost treasure, and there were 1 million different things you could find other than lost treasure. You had to pick where, when, and how. If you fool yourself into thinking there is only one right way, and only one right answer to