Chapter 24 Benny
Twenty-four
Benny
Three men burst into the chapel behind Grace with weapons drawn on Benny and Kimble. Ryan was right behind them, and he looked green.
“Down!” Kimble told Benny, pushing her to the floor, where she crammed the bird and Evelyn’s diary pages in her backpack with the pew behind her giving cover.
“The coin or your lives,” Grace said simply.
Kimble stood quietly, clearly thinking.
“Too late. Grab the girl,” Grace told the men, and two came for her, grabbing Benny by both arms as she kicked out, holding tight to her backpack.
“Enough!” Kimble said. “Leave the kid alone.” He threw the coin at Grace. “Take it. We both know I’ll get it back.” He smiled wickedly, and one of the men punched him in the jaw. Kimble went down hard. He didn’t move. Benny had to assume he was unconscious.
That’s my dad! Benny wanted to scream, but her head was spinning—Grace.
The coin. Kimble. Her dad was an immortal pirate from the 1600s.
How was that for the universe messing with her?
You’re the key, Kimble had whispered. She, out of all the Evelyns that had come before her, was the link between the original Evelyn and Kimble, whose theft of the treasure had started this whole journey.
She felt nauseous and elated. Finally, everything was becoming clear.
And now another immortal pirate was kidnapping them both.
“Don’t hurt them!” Ryan begged, as one of the men zip-tied her wrists, the backpack still on her arm, and the other did the same to Kimble. They carried them both to the van. “We got the treasure. Isn’t that all that matters?”
Grace leaned in close to Ryan. “No one asked for your opinion, child. Watch them while I call your grandmother and tell her to meet us at the beach.”
Beach. Had Grace found a way onto the island?
“I promise I won’t let them hurt you,” Ryan told her, swallowing hard. “Just do whatever Grace says, and everything will be okay.”
Benny glared at him. “Leave it to you to believe her. She’s a pirate, Ryan. Be smart. You don’t think she’ll use you the way she does everyone else?” She glanced back at Kimble lying on the bench in the back of the van. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Ryan looked frightened. “You should know something I heard: Grace say she can’t get onto the island without you.”
That doesn’t make sense. One of the men pushed Ryan out of the way before he could say more. They shut the van doors, plunging Benny into darkness. Benny tried to shimmy to the back of the van. Without her hands, it was harder, but she nudged Kimble with her foot. “Kimble? Wake up!”
He groaned just as the van rumbled to life. “That was some punch.”
He was awake! “Kimble—” Dad, her mind betrayed her. “Grace has the treasure. She’s taking us to the beach.”
“Beach?” She heard him sit up. “Turn toward me and let me get the ties off you first.”
“How are you—” Snap! To her surprise, Kimble had untied her. “How did you?”
“Find something—anything—you can use to clock those fools in the head when the doors open. If I can’t pick this lock so we can jump out, that’s our plan B.”
“I—” Yes, rescue first. Talk about parental relationships later. Still, she felt strange. He had to feel it too.
She heard him fiddling with the lock. “Blasted lock is on the outside!” he growled. “Maybe I can pry it off.” She heard what sounded like a small saw.
“Let me help you,” she tried. “Zara gave me this tool that—”
“Kid! Just let me do this myself!”
Kid. Key. She sat back defeated. That’s all she was to him.
A stranger, despite what they both now knew.
She felt her heart harden. Fine. She didn’t need a dad, did she?
Mom was enough. She herself was enough. Grams always told her she was stronger than she realized, and Benny knew that now.
She didn’t need Kimble—Dad—to see that. Benny pressed her fingers into her skirt and felt Evelyn’s pages hidden in the pocket.
The van hit a speed bump, and Benny fell forward, her phone sliding out of her pocket.
That gave her an idea. She could use the light to read the journal!
For all she knew, there could be a letter from Evelyn inside.
Something that could help them beat Grace.
She reached for the phone, fumbling as it slid farther away.
She tapped the screen for the flashlight, and it lit up the van.
“What the?” Kimble turned around, blinded.
“You focus on the lock and I’ll do what I need to do,” Benny said stonily. She pulled the pages out of her pocket. He looked at her for a moment, then went back to work.
Benny began to read. There were three new diary entries.
One was from earlier in Evelyn’s diary again—one of the entries missing in the first game.
It involved Evelyn having a dream about…
Lady Adrienne? Benny’s heart thumped hard.
It was a dream, yet it felt real, and the ring she described sounded very familiar.
Was that the one she saw Grace wearing? The same one Evelyn described in her pages about Charlotte?
Without realizing it, she spoke aloud. “It’s not possible. ”
“What?” Kimble asked, still trying to pry the locks.
Benny bristled. “Nothing.”
“Kid…speak,” Kimble said wearily. “Please.”
“Were you supposed to let Lady Adrienne know you found the treasure using a ring? One with a green gem?” Benny knew it sounded ludicrous.
Kimble dropped whatever he was using and clasped a hand on her arm. He looked haunted. “How do you know that?”
“Evelyn,” Benny told him. “She wrote about a dream she had with Lady Adrienne. She said the queen told her if she had the ring and said a certain phrase, Adrienne would know where to find you and the treasure.”
Kimble’s voice sounded hollow as he said the words aloud: “Se é um tesouro que você procura, navegue esta semana.”
“If it is treasure you seek, sail this week,” Benny translated. “Grace has that ring. I’ve seen it on her. If Adrienne is dead, why would she keep it?”
He was quiet.
“Kimble! Explain!” Benny insisted.
In the light of the phone, their eyes found one another. “She kept it because she knows the only way I can get the final piece of treasure is to summon Lady Adrienne to get it.”
“Like her spirit?” Benny asked, confused. “You said she’s dead.”
“I’ve always believed she’s alive,” Kimble said hoarsely. “I have no proof, but in my dreams, she comes to me.”
“Explain,” Benny said, a chill going down her back.
It took Kimble a few moments to speak. “In sixteen twenty-five, when Grace and I were asked to find the treasure and did, we disagreed about what to do with it once we realized it was…cursed,” Kimble said slowly. “Grace didn’t care. Was…elated, actually. To use a good Scrabble word.”
“It’s only six points,” Benny argued, her heart seizing with fear.
“She said we should let Adrienne die and keep the treasure for ourselves. I was so irate, I sent one piece of eight to Adrienne and taunted Grace with the news almost two hundred years later. She was furious.”
“Do you know if she got it?” Benny asked, her heart falling when she thought of this one coin lost forever.
“I don’t. Nor do I know if she got it before she died.
She was quite ill. The only way to know is to call her with that ring, and Grace has never taken it off,” Kimble said miserably.
“That’s the piece I know for sure is missing though I suspect Evelyn later found one other one that I gave to Grace the night she.
.. It doesn’t matter. This is why all Evelyn’s games are a waste of time!
Without that ring, we will never be able to end this. ”
“But you said—” Benny started to say, and he cut her off.
“I know what I said! I let myself believe we had a shot of ending this once we found you, but it’s hopeless without that piece of eight Lady Adriennne possessed.
This is a fool’s errand!” He banged his hand against the back of the van, and Benny jumped.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
Just let me do something right and get us out of this van. ”
Benny’s heart was thumping wildly as she thought about the truth of what Kimble just said.
If that coin was lost, if Adrienne never received it, if Evelyn hid another coin they didn’t know about yet, then there was no way to save Evelyn’s friends in time.
Yes, they could leave the island, but they’d be immortal for eternity.
No. There has to be a way, Benny thought. Winners never quit. She tried to focus on the journal pages she still hadn’t read. Maybe there were answers here.
She read on, realizing the entries were out of order again.
One was missing—the journal skipping to entry sixteen.
Where was fifteen? What else was Evelyn hiding?
Benny tried to focus on the information in the entry.
Evelyn had a baby sister who died in infancy.
Evelyn met Grace, who wanted help getting on the island, but when they went, the island refused entry.
It doesn’t trust you. That’s what Evelyn said to Grace.
Even with a coin, Grace couldn’t approach.
Why? Evelyn, however, broke free and ran onto the sandbar, where she was reunited with—
Benny gasped. “Aggy.” The two best friends saw each other again!
Benny’s eyes welled with tears. Not only that, Aggy assured her they could communicate through Winks even when the island disappeared.
“Impossible,” she whispered to herself. And yet not.
They already knew Winks was a cat that somehow lived two hundred years and traveled between worlds.
They also knew Kimble spent time with the cat too.
What else had Aggy and Evelyn corresponded about during Evelyn’s lifetime?
Did they know about Adrienne’s whereabouts?
Or the coin? Or coins if Evelyn got Grace’s back?
Benny’s heart beat faster as she read about Aggy forcing Evelyn to go back to Greenport to face an angry Grace, who might have killed her if Kimble hadn’t arrived and—
“You gave up more treasure to save Evelyn,” Benny sputtered, her voice louder than intended. “All those years ago. You came back for her and saved her from Grace.”
Kimble turned; his face was ashen in the phone light. “Yes.”
Benny shoved the pages in her backpack’s interior pocket in case someone searched her bag.
“Why did you help her after everything she did? How did you know her father? I want to know what I’m missing so I can end this!
” Kimble remained quiet. She knew she sounded angry, but she was.
“I’m more than a key,” she said, her voice cracking.
Kimble’s expression crumbled. “Kid, I—”
The van stopped suddenly, and the doors opened, flooding them with light. Benny blinked hard, trying to get her bearings as the men realized they were untied and lunged for them both, one knocking Kimble out cold again.
Grace peered around the corner of the van doors, Ryan behind her. “I told you he’d get loose.” She cocked her head at Benny. “Though I didn’t think you’d be free too. Benny dear, come with me. Time is wasting.”