Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
We peered into the open mouth of the cave. “Are you sure you want to go in?” Hunter asked.
Nope.
“Yes.” My body tightened.
“I’ll go in alone. Wait for me here.” He took the hammer we brought with us out of my hand in case we had to bash something over the head. Hunter stole a kiss and stepped into the cave, murkiness consuming his body.
“No. I’m going with you.”
We plunged into the cave, Hunter leading the way with the bright light and me tiptoeing after him. The opening was large, with the damp ground and vegetation creeping as far as sunlight could reach.
I grimaced and pinched my nose from the assaulting smell. “What’s that?”
“Probably bat scat. Look.” Hunter nodded to stalactites and small fuzzy creatures clinging to the rocky ceiling.
It was hard to say how many were there, maybe a hundred or more.
My muscles turned into stone. I was expecting them at any second to act chaotically which would make me act chaotically too, but they didn’t move.
Hunter squeezed my hand. “You go back and wait for me outside.”
After what I’d experienced with the snakes, I could handle anything. “I can do this.”
We crept further, following the musty pathway. My flip-flop sank into mush, and my foot slipped out of it.
“Shit,” I hissed, balancing on one foot. “Light, please.”
I let go of Hunter’s hand, twisted, and bent to pick up my shoe. My knee wobbled, and I tumbled forward. My foot swung and kicked the flashlight out of Hunter’s hand, sending it flying into a wall. Everything around us went dark, only the dim light from the entrance curved around the bend.
Hunter uttered a snort. I was glad one of us found this funny. My palms and knees sank into bat-crap goo. Failing to suppress his laughter, Hunter helped me up, then picked up the flashlight and hit it once at the base. Light returned to the cave.
I rubbed my hands on a wall to remove some concoction of the dirt and crap, then yanked my flip-flop out of the mud and placed it back on my foot.
We continued navigating the cave, and soon, the passage tapered until we could barely stand side by side.
From there, the cave split into two paths.
We went left but shortly faced a dead end.
Hunter and I searched for anything out of place, inserted our hands into small cracks, and moved around odd rocks below our feet.
Disappointed, we returned to the fork and tried the other corridor.
Dark space with dense air contracted as we pushed further in, eventually cramming our bodies sideways.
We stopped. My breathing became quick and shallow as a suffocating thought that we could get stuck and die in here crossed my mind.
“Hunter.” I touched his arm. “I don’t feel good about being here. I can’t breathe.”
“Let’s go back,” he said.
Holding my hand in his, Hunter walked me out, planted a kiss on my forehead, and then disappeared back into the cavern.
I sat cross-legged under the tree, my back resting against it.
The bat cave was the right place to search, but I had a feeling we were looking at it in the wrong way. The passages were too narrow.
Not much time passed before Hunter appeared out of the darkness, his hair a mess, his shirt covered in dirt beyond recognition, his eyes downcast.
He slumped next to me. “Nothing.”
“Do you think John and his friends have already found it?”
Hunter shrugged.
I propped my right shoulder against the tree and faced Hunter. “We found proof that it is here. We just need some time and maybe extra help. If we bring a professional in to help, can we still claim the finder’s fee for the total value?”
“I’m not sure. But I need us to find it all. I need to do it for Edward and my family.”
A feeling of dread came over me, tightening a knot in my stomach.
It was important to me to finish my father’s sailing journey, and it was vital for Hunter to honor the man who raised him.
And then Hunter and I would go our separate ways.
A question burned inside of me. “Once this is over, will you really stay here?”
Full of sadness, his eyes searched mine, and he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
I shouldn’t have been upset about it, but my emotions were overpowering me.
Hunter made it clear earlier that he wanted to stay in the South Pacific.
This was a fun time, and the sex was out of this world fantastic, but this wasn’t my life.
And I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get attached to him—or worse, fall in love.
Maybe when I returned to spread my dad’s ashes, I could stay at Hunter’s resort and see him again.
Make love to him again then if he wasn’t involved with someone else.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. But right now, no boat waited to take me home, and I could pretend Hunter and I were meant to be together forever.
“This is the right place.” I rose and offered Hunter my hands. “The day is still young. Let’s go back inside and search some more. It’s hidden in there, and we just missed it.”
An hour later, I sat near the cave’s opening, taking a brief break. I placed the flashlight next to me and took a sip from my bottle, then offered it to Hunter.
He gladly accepted my offer. “I think someone found the loot before us.” He wiped his mouth with his hand and gave me back the bottle and leaned against the wall opposite me. “Or there is another death-looking place.”
Come hell or high water, I couldn’t consider quitting when we were this close.
Shifting my butt on the rock, I nudged the flashlight, and it rolled off the stone and dropped, casting light on Hunter.
There was something unnatural about the way the crack in the wall went up and around, making a large, jagged arch around him.
“Do you see how it has a lighter color than the rest of them?” I moved my finger up and down in the light, letting its shadow run the length of the split in a stone.
Hunter traced the line with his finger, then he pulled a knife from his back pocket and picked at the seam.
“I’m not a geologist,” he said, “but I think this is not original to this cave.”
“Is it possible they deposited the loot here and then constructed a wall?”
The unequivocal confidence of this idea steadied my heart race. If my hopeful imagination was right, then, holy shit, Captain William Thompson hired brilliant stonemasons as his sailors. And, no doubt, the two hundred years wait only helped to disguise the faux barrier.
“One way to find out.”
Grabbing the hammer, Hunter swung it wide and hit the flat rock hard.
Every muscle in my body vibrated from the first blast. The sound bounced from wall to wall, and then the cave swallowed it and then breathed out a shrieking noise.
Hunter and I flattened to the ground, covering our heads with our hands, waiting for hundreds of bats to rush above us.
Once the screeching and swooshing air stopped, we got up.
“You okay?” Hunter asked. I nodded in response and returned my focus to the wall.
Zigzag lines ran from the center of the first blow.
Hunter continued to hit the rock repeatedly until he made a hole.
Chipping off more rock with his hands, Hunter enlarged the opening.
I handed him the flashlight. Through the fog of dust and stone particles stored deep inside the cavity, trunks stacked on trunks came into view.
A feeling of pins and needles coursed through my body as I stared at our discovery.
My mind grasped that it wasn’t a hallucination from dehydration or exhaustion and that I wasn’t looking at a mirage that could vanish in the blink of an eye. It was real. And we finally found it.
“Finally,” Hunter whispered.
The rest of the wall crumbled with ease as our greedy hands pulled on the edges and enlarged the entrance.
Dust suspended in the air reflected the light as we entered the damp chamber.
My eyes widened, taking in what I hoped wasn’t a figment of my imagination formed through spending too much time dreaming of this moment.
“Please pinch me,” I said. “Wow. Just wow.”
Eight large wooden trunks crowded the space, lightly dusted with dirt. Some chests were filled to the brim with gold and silver candelabras, their lids not even closed.
Hunter opened a chest, exposing swords and daggers. He laughed, the sound equal parts disbelief and exultation, then threw the next one open to find more relics embedded with gemstones.
“Come look at this,” I said, walking to a spot where five large tapestries were propped up against the wall.
Grabbing the hem of the antique fabric, we revealed a colorful scene framed by a rich decorative border of scrolling foliage of a woman on horseback alongside two huntsmen, a pack of dogs trailing after them, a landscape with palm trees and vines, and a clearing in the trees revealing a flotilla of ships out in the sea.
Even in the semi-darkness, it was stunning.
Hunter picked up a dagger and weighed it on his palm as he studied it. The unpolished metal shone. Hunter lifted his head, and his glistening eyes found mine. “Sydney, we did it.”
My chest expanded with pride and thrill. Not only because of what we discovered tonight, but because in the short few weeks, I’d changed so much that the old me wouldn’t recognize me now. And I wouldn’t have done it without Hunter.
I was physically and mentally stronger (spending many hours in the sun was cruel for the skin, but the abundant boost of Vitamin D was much better for my mental health than sitting in my dark office in front of a 24-inch iMac).
I was living an adventure (not by choice, but I loved it now).
I got a new haircut (sort of by choice).
Most importantly, I took a risk of having feelings for someone I knew had no place in my other life.
Not because I didn’t want Hunter in it, but because he stated he wasn’t going back from the start.
This was his home now. And my home was Florida.
And it wouldn’t have been fair for me to convince him to leave.
Just as it wouldn’t have been fair for him to convince me to stay. My eyes burned with tears.
“What’s wrong?” Hunter’s eyebrows pulled together, and he dropped the dagger. “You don’t look happy.”
I pulled a smile. “Oh, I am happy.” The happiest I’d have been in a very long time.
“Then, why are you crying?”
I snorted and wiped my eyes, scraping my skin with dirt. “Because I’m really happy. Look at yourself. You are crying, too.”
“Come here.” Hunter stretched out his arm, and I took his hand. He drew me close, and in an instant, my body melted into his. “This is all because of you, Wonder Woman,” he whispered into my hair. “Thank you for being so incredible.”
He pulled away just long enough for me to see his face in the dim light.
His lips parted, and his eyes searched mine.
I stood stock-still, waiting. My heart pounded in my ribcage, no doubt its sound reverberating inside Hunter’s chest. The emotions flooded me the way he stared at me.
What? I wanted to ask. What is it? But Hunter pulled me back into him and let out a deep sigh. “Only two riddles left to solve.”
A heave of disappointment wrenched at my heart. It made no sense for me to dare him to say something that would abso-fucking-lutely mess with my future judgments. That wasn’t what he was going to say earlier. Was it?