16. Chapter 16
Chapter 16
T he four treasure hunters stood in a circle around the empty metal box on the cabin’s floor.
“Now, what do we do?” Sylvia wrung her hands. “We only have five days left, accounting for you still having to get to Georgetown. Where are we going to find the money?”
“I can sell the box.” James kicked the object. “Only 699 dollars to go.”
“The writing is well-preserved, thanks to it being stored in the dark.” Will turned the paper toward the light. “But this is still an old message. The lock is rusty, too. Whoever took the gold must’ve been here years, if not decades ago.”
“That rules out a chase,” James said. “I suppose we get the horses. If we’re lucky, we’ll find that bastard’s skeleton, still clinging to the gold, on the way back.”
Emily bit her lip, waited until Will looked at her, then motioned to the box.
“What is it?” he asked .
“Uh, would you two mind giving us a moment?” Emily said to James and Sylvia. They shared a suspicious look but still obeyed and exited the cabin.
“Travel back,” Emily whispered. “Morty said this was deposited during the gold rush, in the—uh—”
“If we’re talking Colorado, that’s at the end of the fifties.”
“Perfect! You weren’t alive then, so you can easily travel from here. We just need to find a date after the gold had been placed and before the other man picked it up.”
“You want me to time travel.”
“Well, yeah! I can’t do it, but you’re as good at it as I am.” She slumped. “Don’t say you’re afraid of doing this, too.”
“I’m not afraid!” Will raised his voice, looked around, then calmed back down. “You know I don’t like such manipulations.”
“Says the man who forced me to stick a freaking gum to a chair so your parents could get together!”
Will ran his hand over the lid of the box. “That was different. It’s easy—well, it’s not easy, but it’s safer to act when you already know the outcome. I always knew you were meant to save my mother. I always knew when and where you did it. I always knew she’d go to France and eventually come back.” He raised his eyes. His voice was even, but still couldn’t quite cover the slight hint of trembling. “I don’t know what will happen if I go back and get us the gold. I don’t know if we’re meant to have it, or this man was meant to have it—I don’t—I don’t know, Emily!”
Emily reached a hand to his shoulder while he calmed his breathing.
“Sometimes, the hardest choice is to decide you don’t want to know what will happen. Because seeing the results could make it so much worse.”
“Will. It’s just a few lumps of gold.”
“And it was just gum.”
She stood and walked around the cabin, moving aside a half-broken chair. “I think if we were given this power, we should use it. I used it to save your mom. You used it to tell me about that in the first place. Are you going to say that was bad? That it shouldn’t have happened?” She kneeled next to him. “Just this once. Please. It …” She swallowed against a lump in her throat. “It would kinda suck if James died because of it.”
Will clenched his fists, his eyes focused on a spot on the ground. Emily waited for long moments, ignoring the tingling in her legs from kneeling.
“You’ll have to go out,” Will said. “Keep an eye on the other two, prevent them from coming in here while I’m unconscious. It’ll raise questions.”
Emily let out a loud breath. “Thank you. I’ll do that. See you in a sec.” She pecked him on the cheek and ran outside.
“All right, boys.” She put her hands on her hips. “We’ll need to give Will a moment. He’ll employ his super investigative powers to find another lead. But this kind of brilliance needs peace and quiet.”
“What does he think he can find?” Sylvia asked, looking past Emily to the cabin.
Emily shrugged. “Don’t ask me. But whatever it is, I won’t complain.”
“Me neither,” James said.
The horses whinnied. Sylvia stepped toward them and slowly extended an arm, patting Black Charlie on his neck. “What’s wrong, darling? Tired of these forests? I know, me too.”
“Funny how she’s kinder to animals than people,” Emily said to James, but he didn’t acknowledge. His eyes were glued to the shrubbery at the edge of the clearing.
“I’ll see myself out, then,” Emily said .
“Emily.” James whispered, but the word was clearly an order. She stopped in her tracks. “Cougar.” James nodded to the bushes.
“What?” Sylvia yelped.
“There’s a cougar behind those bushes. See the head? It’s watching us.”
Emily gulped. The light brown head of a mountain lion was barely visible at the spot James had pointed out.
“Silly, move slowly away from the horses. Don’t crouch. Just move toward the cabin. If the horses get spooked, they can trample you.”
Sylvia nodded stiffly.
“You too, Emily. Back to the cabin.” James’s hand twitched, hovering over the gun, just like she’d seen him at the duel.
“But I—”
“Go!”
Everything happened between blinks. Emily began her mantra; Black Charlie rose on his hind legs, towering over Sylvia; the bushes whooshed aside as a sleek brown cat leaped from behind them.
And stopped, frozen mid-air, on its way for James’ throat.
Emily barely dared to breathe a sigh of relief before she got to work. Sylvia was closer and would be easier to move; Emily grabbed her under her armpits and dragged her a few feet away, where she’d at least be safe from the horses. Now, for the main course. James hadn’t grabbed his gun yet—if she got it and shot at the cougar, would that work?
The slightest shift of breeze stirred her hair. No.
The cougar leaped forward, straight onto James.
“James!” Sylvia screamed.
Emily gasped. Fear glued her feet to the ground. Heartbeat …
James wrestled with the beast, keeping one hand up to protect his face while another snaked down to his belt .
Heartbeat—now, now!
A shot sounded. The cougar jumped off James and scampered back into the bushes.
James let go of the gun and rested his head on the ground. Three slashes ran along his upper arm, the shirt already stained scarlet.
The paralysis let go of Emily’s legs. Still, Sylvia was faster, running to her brother and kneeling down next to him.
I messed up. How could I let the freeze go?
“I’m okay, Silly. I’m okay.” James rose to a sitting position and winced as he moved his arm. Emily slowly approached.
“What if that thing comes back?” Sylvia asked in a high-pitched, tear-colored voice.
“Unlikely. It must’ve been pretty desperate to even attempt to attack us. Now we’d shown it we’re too tough a prey. It’ll move on to something else.” Over Sylvia’s head, James’ eyes met Emily’s. “Next time I say go, you go. If our places were switched, that thing would’ve jumped on you.”
“I know,” Emily ground out, more annoyed at herself than at him.
“The wound doesn’t look too bad,” Sylvia said. “We’ll need to clean it and bandage it. I suppose it will be no trouble finding some alcohol in our supplies?”
James let out a low laugh.
“This isn’t funny!” Sylvia chided him. “And really, you ought to go easier on the whiskey. People around here seem to gulp it like it’s tea.”
“It’s not that,” James said. “Look at you. Inspecting a wound, and you didn’t faint once. We’ll make a frontier woman out of you yet.”
Sylvia seemed like she might be preparing to object the designation, but in the end shook her head.
“What’s going on here? ”
All three turned at Will’s voice. He approached them from the cabin.
“Your casual cougar attack.” Emily felt the tension slowly seep out of her body. “Didn’t miss much.”
“It could’ve ended badly,” Sylvia objected.
“Yeah, but it also could’ve ended better,” James said. “That could’ve been our dinner.”
A moment passed for the realization, and James and Emily laughed. Will switched his confused glance between the two of them. Finally, Emily remembered what this was all about. She checked Will, but he was empty-handed. “Did you succeed?”
“I have … found a trace.” Will scanned James with another look, confirmed all was good, then headed behind the cabin, picking up a shovel resting upon the wall.
Emily raised a questioning eyebrow as she watched him dig into the ground.
“I didn’t have an almonite bag with me,” he whispered. Sylvia and James joined them, the latter still clutching his shoulder, just as the shovel hit something hard.
Will cleared the hole, then pulled out a brown cloth bag. “I found clues in the cabin of a spare hideout.” He spread open the bag, revealing a few shining lumps, accompanied by some flakes, mixed in with the dirt.
“Gold,” James breathed.
Will and Emily shared a glance of a secret agreement before Will handed the bag to James. “Should be enough in there to pay MacPherson.”
“Just so,” James said. “Maybe even a little left over.”
Sylvia collapsed along the wall. “Thank goodness.”
James and Sylvia moved inside to take care of his wound .
“You had a busy two minutes,” Will remarked. “I’m surprised James got scratched at all, what with your abilities.”
“I … well, you said I was overusing them.”
“One would think that would not be a concern when a life is possibly at stake.”
“So you found the gold!” Emily changed the topic, clasping Will on the shoulder. “Was it hard?”
“Two tries. The fauxmonite barrel is good for one more, at most.”
“Too bad it was only that much. I was looking forward to us returning, bags loaded with gold. Making Richling Creek deserving of the name.”
“I had found more. Not that much more,” Will quickly added. “Two or three lumps.”
“But why—”
“I had to leave some for the man. The one who left the message.” Will shrugged. “If we found the message, that means he must’ve found the gold. He simply didn’t know there should’ve been more.”
Emily was about to scold him— he left more gold behind? —but then she thought about it and nodded. “That way, both parties get what they need. No if s, no messed-up futures. I’m proud of you, Gramps. Not just for leaving the gold behind. For doing it in the first place.”
Will’s lips quirked. “Come. I think we need to celebrate. Which would you prefer, beans or dried fruit?”
Laughing, she followed him inside the cabin.
There was no grand reception for the returning treasure hunters at Richling Creek. This was less due to their plunder not being impressive and more because few people were aware of the hunt in the first place .
But as the evening progressed, festivities picked up, and the saloon was soon bursting along the seams with at least half the town’s population in for the regular night of drinking, gambling, singing, and whatever else they might pick up.
Sylvia had gone to clean herself up, and Will was checking on Eggy and the new fauxmonite barrel. Emily sat on the stairs, since every seat in the saloon was occupied, and observed the party. James was behind the counter, serving drinks and wild stories about the encounter with the cougar. The wounds were healing well, with no infection, though he still winced occasionally when he raised his arm.
Molly walked by, and James signaled her. Emily leaned forward to see around the banister. James and Molly had stopped by the kitchen, and James pulled something out of his pocket. Emily barely caught a glimpse of a small lump of gold before it—and the pouch it was stashed in—vanished into the pockets of Molly’s skirt. Molly waved her hands and shook her head; James grabbed her by the shoulders and said something. Finally, she nodded, pecked him on the cheek, and disappeared inside the kitchen while James returned to the bar.
Deciding she wasn’t into the party, Emily slowly moved upstairs, mind buzzing. James had said the gold would cover his debt to MacPherson, and Will agreed on the judgment—made sense, since he brought that amount of gold back for a reason. A bit would remain, but on the way back, Will and Sylvia ardently denied wanting to take it. With those two paragons, Emily didn’t want to come out looking like an asshole, so she made no claim to the gold, either.
She was doing okay. Surely there were people who needed it more.
People like Molly .
Besides, she couldn’t exactly explain to Aunt Nicky she’d gone to Boston and someone had paid her for ice cream in unadulterated, unprocessed gold.
She’d barely been in her room for a minute when a soft knock sounded. “Come in,” she said, expecting Will with news of Eggy—and instead, found herself facing James.
“Hey,” he greeted with a bit of a smile. “Busy downstairs tonight, isn’t it? I … I wanted to say thank you.”
“What for?”
He approached her in slow, smooth strides. “You saved my life.”
“You fought off the cougar.”
“Not that. With the gold.”
Oh. Of course, he wouldn’t know about the cougar and her failed time stop attempt.
“Well, that …” Emily stuttered as he moved closer. “That wasn’t all me. Will was the one who …” James was close enough for touching now; enough that, when she breathed, she also took in his scent—a bit of whiskey, soap, and something forest-like—and her blouse brushed along his shirt. She tried to focus. “Uh, Will got the gold in the end. You should be thanking him.”
“I should,” James agreed. “But I can’t really thank him this way.” And he bent down and covered her lips with his.
Emily couldn’t say she often wondered how it would feel to be struck by lightning, but now she knew. James grabbed her by the waist and, with relative ease, set her on the dresser behind her. Then all of the exploring began—mouth, hair, back of the neck, hands trailing down the spine, down lower, to the front and up—did she lace her corset tighter today?—and his lips moved, hungry and soft and oh-so-delicious, down her neck, along the collarbone, then lower still, parting the blouse along with them.
Lost in the sensations, Emily’s mind drew up a tantalizing picture. What was a bit of a summer romance? Here this day, gone the next—the way they always worked. And with absolutely no consequences. It was like living a dream, only the dream was real and material, and felt so much better.
She could let him do everything he wanted—everything she wanted, too—and there’d be no price to pay.
James had popped up a few more buttons of her blouse, and his mouth continued, hot and wet, its path down to the valley between her breasts, nicely displayed by the corset. No price to pay. And it feels so good. Her pulse picked up. How would it feel if he removed that corset, how would he feel—
Heartbeat!
James froze in an instant. For a few seconds, Emily only sat there, catching her breath and the remainder of her brain cells. You did not go there. You did not think about sleeping with James. She wiggled out of her awkward position, leaving James in an even more awkward one, bending over, hugging the air. With shaking hands, she buttoned her blouse, then waited until she was partially calmed down. She had a feeling she wouldn’t know real peace for a while longer.
She let the freeze go.
James stumbled but caught on the dresser. He shook his head in confusion, then looked around, eyes finally landing on Emily. “Flicker?” he said, but by the last syllable, she was already out the door.