Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
My heart beat triple time as I charged through the jungle, branches clouting my face, my toes hitting roots.
I picked the shorter path to the hut, the one that we hadn’t used today.
My heavy breathing and pulse flooded my ears, blocking any other sounds.
Was anyone after me? Perhaps I should have pivoted to the right and run toward the trap.
Hunter didn’t say where I should go. We didn’t agree where we would meet.
The beach? The trap? Like a knife, heavy and sharp, worry about Hunter twisted in my gut.
I should stop and wait for him or return to the cave and help him.
My ankle twisted and I tumbled face first, sliding on my chest and stomach into low ferns. I pushed off the ground and stiffened. Someone else moved fast through the woods. How long had they been following me? Was it Hunter?
They stopped. My breathing ceased. There was a complete cessation of sound.
My eyes were adjusted to the night, but I couldn’t recognize who it was.
I wanted to call out Hunter’s name, but fear (or self-preservation) took a firm grip on my vocal cords.
Panic pulsated in my neck, sending a vibration all the way to my toes. My heart drummed inside my ribcage to the point whoever it was probably heard it.
If it was Hunter, he wouldn’t stop running. If it was Hunter, he would whisper my name.
It was one of the three thugs.
A twig broke too close to my left. I sprinted.
I abandoned the idea of taking a straight pass to the hut and changed my course.
Trees whipped my face, setting my skin on fire.
My mind rushed over every idea of how to lose the chaser.
They didn’t know this island as well as I did.
High levels of adrenaline diluted the pain from stabs of rocks and twigs under my feet.
I made unnecessary turns and passed the garden.
If I reached the shed, I could grab the gardening tool, and if I reached the workshop, I could snatch a hammer. If only I could make it.
Why wouldn’t they yell at me so I would know who it was?
My foot slipped on a grassy patch, splitting my legs into a half-split and pulling my inner thigh muscle. Fuck, that hurt. Without looking back, I scrambled up and kept running.
At the last turn, I bolted toward the shed area and hid behind the mound of plastic garbage.
Breathing through my mouth, I waited. The jungle was quiet.
No one was after me. I had either lost them, or it was Hunter.
Where was he? He could have steered to the boat, or to confuse Tom’s men, taken off in a different direction from me.
Damn it. The workshop was a short distance from here. Crouching, I left my hiding spot.
In the blackness, it was anyone’s guess where the fucking hammers were on the workbench. With stealthy hands, I palmed the surface, only twisting once to see if anyone was advancing at me. My fingers brushed over the cold metal of the hammer’s head. I seized it.
Teaming up with the jungle’s darkness, I hid to catch my breath, my eyes trained on the lone sailboat in the bay, its lights twinkling in the distance.
I wished I knew where Hunter was. The thought that he was hurt, or worse, made the hairs on my arms stand up.
I should have not listened to him and stayed to help.
But I had to believe Hunter was fine. He was smarter and stronger than all three morons, and he knew the island better than any of us.
He would meet me at the beach, like we decided.
I had to move forward with our original plan.
Taking a breath, I readied to run the last stretch to the dinghy—about four hundred feet. I stepped out from the woods. My dirty white T-shirt reflected the moon’s light. I retreated. The moon wasn’t full, but it was too bright for me to race freely on the beach. Anyone could spot me.
Gripping the hammer’s wooden handle, I crept in shadows outside the jungle, where the sand mixed with pine needles and low creeping vines.
Soon, the outline of piled loot on the beach came into view, and near the waterline, the dinghy patiently waited for someone to take it out.
That someone was going to be me. It was another hundred feet before I could reach it.
I made it to the spot where Hunter and I had huddled behind trees earlier. Only thirty yards left to go. I licked my dry lips and took off.
A body slammed into me, knocking me off my feet sideways.
The hammer flew out of my hand.
Curse words punctuated their labored breath as they drove the side of my face into the sand, seizing my arms behind my back.
A devastating mix of panic and anger filled my veins, and I wrenched my arm out, only to get pushed deeper into the sand.
A heavy weight crushed my ribcage. He didn’t reek like roadkill in summer days. Tom? Jack?
I spat sand out of my mouth and hissed at the pain in my arm. “Let me go.”
Jack laughed and yanked me to my feet. He was awfully strong for a small man, or I was too tired to fight.
“Tom wants to talk to you,” he said.
“Where is Hunter?” I asked, digging my feet into the sand.
“Just walk.” He shoved me forward.
“Where is Hunter?” I repeated.
Before Jack had tackled me, the hut had been dark, but now light oozed out of the closed shutters as we approached it, shadows shifting inside. I paused the last step, my eyes meeting Garry’s, who stood at the door, holding a flashlight and blocking most of the entry.
“Can you move?” I asked, shielding the bright light with my hand. He didn’t step away. Asshole.
“Go on,” Jack urged me with a shove.
The porch planks groaned as I squeezed by Garry, avoiding any unnecessary contact, my heart beating unpleasantly hard.
This was the first time I had seen the room after Jack had raided it yesterday.
A flashlight on the desk threw a direct light into the space.
Bookshelves and drawers were mostly empty, their items thrown on the floor, and the bed moved away from the wall, its mattress crooked.
“Sydney,” Hunter said, and I turned, my eyes landing on him standing by the sofa. He sported a bloody bottom lip, and his right cheek was swollen. My body went weak as if I had seen a ghost, and I wanted to cry. My shoulders sagged with relief that he wasn’t hurt—badly.
“I almost reached it.” I hid my face into Hunter’s chest, wrapping my arms around his waist. A multitude of brown and green marks covered his beige T-shirt as if someone had dragged him through a grass field.
“You were very brave,” he said, embracing me.
“Next time we run together,” I whispered.
His low chuckle vibrated in his chest. “Okay.”
“I’m a little disappointed that you took all day to finally run away,” Tom said, walking in.
He took the same spot at the table as the last time, lit the lantern, rotating the knob until it didn’t turn any further.
The flame spitted and sputtered, and after a few seconds, the wick flared to life, throwing a gloom of light at his face, where a streak of blood ran down its side.
His eyes were cold and calculating and held a lot of anger.
“I don’t know how you didn’t go blind reading all this shit,” Tom said and stacked his feet on a chair, crossing them at the ankle.
Then he lowered the gun next to the journal and flipped through the large notebook until he stopped on the page with a sketch of the island.
A second later, he turned and squinted at the map on the wall with all the pins we had forgotten to remove.
Jack moved to the desk and picked up my father’s urn.
“Please don’t touch that,” I said. “That’s my dad’s ashes.”
The man’s eyebrow stippled with false pity, his one good eye focusing on me. His hand unscrewed the top and took it off. “That’s so sad that your daddy is dead.” He flipped the urn upside down. “Oops.”
The ashes spilled out on the floor, my father’s ghost wafting under the bed and around Jack’s filthy feet. Fresh grief throttled me. I felt sick to my stomach, my throat closing in.
“Dickhead!” Hunter crossed the room in the asshole’s direction.
Garry grabbed Hunter’s shoulder, but he shook off the hand.
Wrenching the urn out of Jack’s hands, Hunter kneeled and cautiously scooped ashes with his palms. He dropped what he collected inside the vase, then rose to his full height and placed the urn on the desk.
“You touch it again,” he said to Jack. “You’ll lose your second testicle. ”
Jack’s face tightened with irritation, and his hand went for his gun.
A single shot went off to my left. My hands flew to my ears as I hunched down, a horror unfolding in my mind.
For the second time today, the guns had become extremely real.
There was a hole in the wooden floor near the table.
My chest hurt as if a panic attack had taken up residence there. Hunter and I were going to die.
“Can we go back to the business?” Tom snapped, bringing everyone’s attention back to him. His hand held the pistol.
“Sydney, are you okay?” Hunter unpeeled his back from the bookshelf, his chest rising and falling as fast as mine. I gave him a curt nod and straightened on my shaky legs.
“The Treasure of Lima is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What you showed me isn’t worth that much. Explain to me the pins. The red one is where we have already been. What about the rest?” Tom asked.
There were ten pins. The purple, pink, white, black, orange, and light blue marked places that had all turned out to be a bust. But the red pin was the cave, the blue was the grotto, and green was the fishing lagoon, but its real meaning was the snakes’ spot.
The yellow was Johnny the Skeleton. This was our chance to try again to lure them into the trap.
Hunter’s gaze flickered to mine, communicating that the show was about to start.
“And before you come up with a lie, tell me where you found these?” From under the journals, Tom withdrew the bag with coins and gems that I had buried in the sand.
WTF!
I swallowed, the spit scraping my dry throat.
“Where did you get it?” Hunter said, the stiffness in his body unmistakable. I, too, froze to the point my muscles ached.
Tom sneered. “Jacko found it earlier today when the black cat dug at something. And he found a kitchen knife buried there, too.” Tom’s eyes cut to me, and he tsked. “I assume that was yours, Sydney?”
Goddamnit. Tuesday, the traitor, had utterly screwed us.
“Do not take me for an idiot!” Tom slammed his fist on the table again and the lantern rattled, making me jump. “I knew all along you were both lying. The gold is here. No one is leaving the island until—”
“We tried to take you there this morning,” Hunter raised his voice, “but you didn’t listen.”
Tom’s arm was casually draped over the back of the chair as if we were just having a friendly chat. “Because I assumed you fed me bullshit, but now I’m ready to listen.”
“I told you they lied to us,” Jack said.
“Shut up, Jacko!” Tom waved his hand with the gun at Hunter. “How much is there?”
“Four trunks,” Hunter said. “Take us to the main island. Tomorrow, you’ll get it yourself.”
“Hunter, do you hear yourself? Take us to the main island … get it yourself,” Tom said in a mocking tone. “I’m the one who has the boat. I’m the one who has a gun. I say who goes where and when. Why isn’t the location marked in the journal?”
I wiped my nose on my shoulder, the sand scraping my skin. “Because that’s where the gold is. And there isn’t any need to mark it in the journal if we both know where it is.”
“Okay. Let’s take a look now.” Tom scratched his scalp and got up. “Garry, find something to tie her up.”
My thoughts became turbulent, a whirlpool of horror and uncertainty. My eyes jumped from Hunter to the open door to Tom. No one was supposed to be tied up, especially me.
“This is unnecessary.” Hunter walked around the table and inserted his body between them and me. “Tom, Sydney walks with us.”
Tom shook his head. “She stays here. Garry, you and I are going to check it out. If everything is good, we’ll all go to Rarotonga.”
“What about him?” Hunter asked, nodding at Jack.
“Jacko returns to the Nauti Guy and waits for my signal.”
There went our plan to steal the boat.
“What signal?” I clung to Hunter’s arm like he was my lifeline. Everything was going against us.
“The signal to come back.” A cruel smile starched across his face. “You think I’m stupid enough to leave the dinghy on the beach for you to take if something goes awry? You already tried to steal it twice.”
“I can stay with her,” Garry said, unmoving from his original spot by the door.
I would rather be in a box with bats and snakes.
“Did I stutter?” Tom said with an irate tone. “Go find something to tie her up.”
Garry grunted and marched out of the hut.
“You don’t need to do this. Jack is taking the boat to the Nauti Guy. Where do you think she would go?” Hunter said, our fingers interlocking.
Tom’s calculating eyes studied the map on the wall.
“It isn’t about where she could go. It’s just a precaution to prevent her from doing something stupid, like finding another kitchen knife.
How many did you hide around here, Sydney?
” He looked at me with a sneer, but I didn’t care to answer.
Let him think we had more knives stashed around here.
Garry returned with four pieces of thin rope that once held the kitchen tent. He advanced in my direction, but Hunter put his free hand out. “Let me do it.”
“Get lost.” Garry reached around him for me, and Hunter knocked his arm away. Garry pulled the gun out and forced it under Hunter’s jaw. “Move.”
Fear stunned me like a scorpion. Garry’s small eyes, with their wickedness and instability, made it clear to anyone that the deranged man wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
“It’s fine. Let him do it.” I cupped the side of Hunter’s face with my hand and moved it so I could look him in the eyes.
“Show them where the rest of the treasure is and return to me. Okay?” I rose on my toes and pressed my trembling lips to his, then with my chin up and an expression of indifference, I walked to the chair where Tom had sat earlier.
Taking the seat, I aligned my ankles with the chair legs and draped my arms around the back of it, leaving some space. With any luck, I could wiggle my arms out of the rope grip and break free. And also manage to not throw up from Garry’s appalling reek.